Use of lighting in 'Mama'

Within the film Mama, lighting is used in various different ways, I am going to talk about the lighting in the last scene of the film and how it is used to tell the story (87:16 – 95:27).

During the end scene a lot of cold colours of blue lights were used to give the audience a cold, dark, sombre feeling. The use of the blue light might also be used for a more natural moonlighting.

Low-key lighting is often used in horror films and in the film Mama the low-key lighting is used to create a mysterious environment; this causes a lot of shadows in the sequence. The darkness also makes people more vulnerable and threatened, as they are afraid of the unknown and places where they cannot see.

Andy Muschietti slowly brought the creepy character ‘Mama’ into the film and did not show what the character actually looked like until the very end. This creates suspense and tension towards the viewers and builds enigmas, which leaves the audience watching. In the end scene when they introduced Mama properly, keeping the detail and the highlights of Mama’s facial features and skin tone right till the very end. As the audiences have not seen a proper close up of Mama it adds visual interest and mood throughout the scene.

The three main types of angle lighting that are used in the film are back lighting, under-lighting and side lighting. All three of these angles of lighting techniques are used to add to the mysteriousness in the film, each angle with a different effect to the visual. Back lighting creates a silhouette to the characters and gives it a creepy effect with the many shadows on Mama’s face; under-lighting is used to disfigure the faces, this is used in many horror films and the third type is side lighting and this produces a shadow across the character’s faces and on the set creating mysteriousness.

Deconstruction of 'The Last Lioness' Documentary.

This documentary is literally about Lady Liuwa the last lioness, living across the isolated lands of Liuwa Plain. She is alone with no support or care from any of her own species as illegal trophy hunters came and wiped out her entire kind in that region, so she is the last only known lion that is surviving on Zambia's Liuwa Plain. In this documentary camera man Herbert Brauer spent four years as he watched her lonely life unfold and something amazing happens.

The documentary starts off with an very extreme long shot slightly zooming out of a buffalo with the endless background of Zambia's Liuwa Plain, this shows the audience that the environment is proper isolated and lonely. Then it cuts to close ups, mid shots and long shots of Lady Liuwa literally doing everything on her own from attacking for food and just spending time alone. The close ups show Lady Liuwa's facial expressions of her feelings and emotions of loneliness and the long shots again show how empty and alone she is on this land. 

After about one minute into the documentary, panning longs shots are shown of the buffalos, zebras and birds to show that their species are still going strong as there are groups of them travelling together and then it fades to a static shot of Lady Liuwa walking across the empty land; this is heartbreaking to see as you can tell that she is the only lonely species that is travelling on her own.

When they talk about the illegal trophy hunters attacking Zambia's Liuwa Plain, there is a panning shot and the it fades to black and white this is to show the audience that it is in the past also with the help of the voiceover. This is also done in slow motion to give it more of a dramatic effect as well as it being black and white with the sad music playing in the background. 

Photo Portfolio

To support our Practice Portfolio grade in the production module, we had to complete a photographic portfolio showing our understanding and knowledge of composition, choice of lenses, control of aperture, ISO, shutter speed and the use of focus and how it works with lighting.

We had to think of a theme that linked all our images together, I chose the theme of 'Christmas Lights' as it was during the Christmas period when I was capturing all my photographs. In 20 photographs I needed to illustrate a concept or two from visual organisation, proportion, lens effects and aperture/shutter. Each concept had some themes within them and we had to make sure each of our 20 photos included at least one of each theme within the concepts. The themes that we had to fulfil were things like Frame within a Frame, The 'Sinuous S', Deep Focus, Under Exposure and so on.

At first I wanted to do the theme 'Urban' and capture images around the City of London of the main landmarks in London and the way people travel in London like the tubes, buses and taxi. I thought that theme was a bit too broad and it would have been hard to link the images together, so then I thought of the theme 'Lights', which was still a bit vague so I narrowed it down to 'Christmas Lights.' The theme of 'Christmas Lights' was a perfect theme because it was the right time of the year as it was Christmas and all the lights and decorations were put up, which gave me the chance to capture some beautiful images of the lights and whilst capturing my photos, I found that a few of my peers had also chosen the theme of lights and others Christmas but no one had done Christmas Lights I don't think.

We had a tutorial with Dale Wightman using the Canon EOS 7D's before going out to shoot with the cameras, so we got a rough idea of the how to work the controls on the 7D. The kit comes with 3 different types of lenses; a 28mm prime lens, 50mm prime lens and a 18 - 135mm zoom lens. I used all three of the lenses to suit each of the concepts as each of the lenses work in different ways, the prime lenses you can not change the vocal length where as the zoom lens you can vary the vocal length from 18mm - 135mm. This allows me to use the zoom lens to change the composition of the subject without having to move. The prime lenses are smaller and lighter to carry around, they also offer better light-gathering ability meaning a larger maximum aperture. I used the prime lenses mainly for the low lighting whilst I was shooting at night and to get the wider angle shots, so it does not cut off the edges.

Middlesex Now show

I was a VT Supervisor for the second 'Middlesex Now' show, which requires a lot of responsibilities and time. I learnt a lot whilst partaking on the role of VT Supervisor, a few things I already knew and a lot that I have taken on board. 

The 'Middlesex Now' shows are based on the current affairs happening around Middlesex University campus. The second show was based on the Raise And Give (RAG) student society, which plays a big part within the University. We got Sophie McKay, the President of the RAG society to be part of one of the VT's and even got her in the show as one of our guests. Our second topic was on the Artist, Kelvin Okafor who graduated from Middlesex University and he drew amazing lifelike portraits of ordinary people and celebrities using only pencil and charcoal. The third VT to finish off the show was a prank VT consisting of Frankie Checkley dressed up as Ronald McDonald the clown, going around the University campus trying to capture some of the student's funny reactions.

The role of VT Supervisor involved a number of different things; I had to make sure that everyone who was a camera operator had the correct tutorials and that they filmed on the right format. After all the filming was done and all the XD cam disks were handed to the correct editors, I would make sure that all the footage was imported into Avid Media Composer, as I learnt from the VT Supervisor for the first show because she had trouble with one of her VT's not being imported properly and suffered the consequences of all the footage from that VT being erased. Once all the footage have been imported into Media Composer properly, I can then begin to sit down with the editors and the directors from the location shoots and talk about how they wanted the finished product. Sitting with the editors gave them the chance to ask me any questions or if they needed any assistance I would be there to help them. After all three edits were completed I ran them by the VT Producer, Director and our tutor to see if anything needed changing. The completed edit will then be exported back to the XD cam disc with all the timings of the VT's written accompanying the disc for the VT Operator.

There were a few problems I encountered whilst supervising, the Directors from the shoots were not there whilst I was working with the editors, which was difficult as we had nothing to work with so I just went with my own initiative and just edited the VT's my way and informed the VT Producer and Director of the show what was going on. As I am new also new to Avid Media Composer, there was a lot that I did not know, like colour grading for example so I had to get one of the technicians to help me. Next time I would make sure that the location Directors will be with me whilst editing and that I improve my knowledge on using Avid Media Composer before I start any editing.