I'm editing a music video for a band. The concept revolves around an injured circus dancer that tries to overcome her disability.
At one point in video the dancer undergoes a transformation from her "real self" to her "perceived self". This is is manifested in the footage by having the dancer perform her routines in a gray outfit on a white rope with minimal makeup under cold lights as opposed to a with black outfit on a red rope with stage makeup under hot lights.
I'm struggling with editing this exact point of transformation (which is a climax of the audio) . The director's vision was that we'd have a shot of her doing a drop in the "regular" outfit and when she climbs back up she's in the stage outfit (to signify her triumph) however the raw footage doesn't contains shots that can make this work.
I thought about maybe doing fast match cuts between her face in both outfits but the footage I have doesn't support this either - no good face closeup in both. Rough example (I know it's jarring) :
So the question is
Can you suggest a different approach to an editing character transformation? I'm fresh out of ideas and could use some creative advice 🙂 Preferably with a link to a visual reference from another video/movie