the dark-skinned characters end up poorly lit and you have to manipulate the footage to bring out their expressions

Ah! Yes, that's such a good point. I hadn't even thought about the tech aspects of racial representation. I found the poor lighting in Leverage really annoying for a number of reasons, one of which is that it made it hard to catch the nuances of Hardison's facial expressions. And since facial expressions were a huge part of the vid, this was a problem. I don't have your tech-savvy, so I just fiddled with brightness settings until I found something that worked. The idea of mixing in the grayscale is totally new to me, and the results are subtle but striking. Thanks for sharing your process; I will definitely bring this point up in the panel discussion.