Moving Entities

Within the student union at the University of Florida, there is an art gallery dedicated to showcasing student art. This gallery, completed in late 2019, was a new addition to the student union. However, like many other facilities, it went stagnant during the pandemic. In 2021, the gallery began scheduling new exhibits, and to increase awareness among students, we created a short vignette highlighting the current exhibit.

The featured exhibit, “Moving Entities” by Monsur Awotunde, includes several abstract pieces exploring themes of travel, dislocation, and food. Monsur, an international student from Nigeria, experienced isolation during his travels due to the lack of familiar foods and ingredients in the US. This sense of disconnection is reflected in his work through the use of Nigerian food packaging materials. These materials, particularly those used to transport food such as plastic bags and paper wrapping, emphasize the link between the movement of food and the migration of people.

Our main challenge in lighting this scene was managing the ambient light in the space. The gallery’s lighting, which illuminated all the art pieces, came from tungsten sources. The issue arose from a large floor-to-ceiling window on the north end of the room that let in a significant amount of daylight. To avoid the problems caused by mixing different light colors, we turned off all the room lights and brought in daylight-LEDs to match the natural light from the window.

For the interview, we used a 5ft octabox to light Monsur and positioned additional fixtures to shape the light around the art pieces in the background. During the b-roll shots, we kept the octabox on rollers to quickly move it around and capture each painting. This setup allowed us to achieve a soft spotlight on each piece without wasting too much time on setup, which was crucial as we needed a variety of shots for all nine pieces in the collection.