H.D. Motyl

In The Shadow

Southern Illinois University

The 2017 total solar eclipse in the US was undoubtedly one of the most anticipated events in recent history, with Carbondale, Illinois smack in the spot of longest duration.

Students, staff and faculty of SIU’s College of Mass Communication and Media Arts taped hundreds of hours of eclipse-related planning and interviews even before they captured this natural wonder above Southern Illinois. The resulting documentary, In the Shadow, highlights the history, the science and, above all, the sublime human experience of witnessing a total solar eclipse in Southern Illinois on August 21, 2017.

Producers: H.D. Motyl and Mark Stoffel
Editor: Mark Stoffel
Executive Producer: Deborah Tudor
Music: Jenny Johnson, Mark Stoffel

The documentary was co-produced (and directed) by Mark Stoffel and H.D. Motyl. Mark also edited the film. H.D. is an Associate Professor in the Dept of Radio, Television and Digital Media, and is the Interim Chair of this department as well as the Interim Chair of the Dept of Cinema and Photography. Mark Stoffel is the Digital Media Systems Specialist of our college who also teaches courses on editing and editing platforms. Together, H.D. and Mark produced the documentary beginning about a year before the actual eclipse, and worked with other members of the university community to interview and follow as they prepared for the eclipse and the influx of people to Southern Illinois. Jenny Johnson, a NTT faculty member in our Radio/Audio sequence, wrote the title song.

The Executive Producer is the Interim Dean of the College of Mass Communications and Media Arts, Deborah Tudor; it was she who originally proposed that our college do a doc, and brought the idea to Mark and then, H.D. From the beginning, student involvement was always to be an important component of the project.