WPL Presents ArtWorks: Crissi Cochrane

On Wednesday, the Windsor Public Library released a short virtual concert that they invited me to produce for their ArtWorks video series. I’m very pleased to share it with you here!

I decided to share a song from each of my past three releases, so I opened with “And Still We Move” from Little Sway, followed by “Only You & Me” from Heirloom, and finishing with “Drive All Night” from Pretty Alright. The library invited me to share some book recommendations so I divulged some of my favourite writers and favourite kinds of books to read at the end of the video, and talked about how reading is keeping me sane during the pandemic!

Now, since you’re on my private little corner of the web where I have no qualms about being frank and honest, I’ll share that I had a bit of a crying meltdown when this video was first posted because I’m not 100% happy with how my video turned out (and how it made me look). I set up two cameras - my iPhone, which captured the lovely side-angle, and our nice Canon DSLR for the main wide shot. I feel like I really failed on the Canon footage… I worry that anyone who creates videos will cringe at my terrible lighting, angle, colouring, and focus... or that anyone who doesn’t know these things will just think that I’m not looking as good as I used to. My skin looks strangely yellow, and the lighting and angle gave me enormous bags under my eyes and made my nose look enormous. I feel like I sort of look like the crypt-keeper. I was doing this on my own, because Mike was working at CBC Windsor Morning early the next day and had to go to bed before I got my shots set up. I spent an hour trying to get the lighting to look right - I had to hit record on the cameras, jump into the shot for a minute, then jump out, look at the footage, move the lights, and try again. Eventually I had to just go with it before my false eyelashes fell off my face.

At least, I think I played the songs mostly pretty well! And I know that I’ll do better next time. It’s a big learning curve but it’s good to be adding new skills to our arsenal, slowly but surely! There’s a lot of demand for these virtual concerts, and I’ve produced four of them already… I’ll be sharing more with you soon!