Cinema Lighting

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I have very limited space at home, so does the Queen of England in Buckingham Palace.  The strides in technology really put me in a spot because when new technology comes knocking, I open the door to let it in, and also take out the old technology to the curb, to be picked up by garbage collectors.

Before Ibaka TV, Iroko TV and Netflix, it dawned on me that my VHS movies are holding up space I need for new technology, DVD’s.   My dilemma now is deciding which movies I should replace with DVD.  I tried to come up with a replacement formula.  It is not approved by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) but it works for me. Lighting definitely is criteria for replacement.
Film is like a painting in motion or flirtatious clouds fanning themselves looking for a confrontation with the sleeping rain, worse still thunder.  Spike Lee’s More Better Blues is a candidate for replacement because it has wonderful strokes of lighting e.g. the record shop scene where Shadow (Wesley Snipes), is making moves on Clarke (Cynda Williams) with credit cards that are declined.

There are also extra toppings for the pizza, in the form of Bleek Gilliam (Denzel Washington) who lives for and loves only one thing, his trumpet and Shadow who is literally his shadow, waiting to topple him as leader of the band and Clarke’s partner after dark.

If lighting is the number one criteria, I must definitely replace The Legend of Fong Sai Yuk.  What attracted me to film projects from Hong Kong were creative camera angles and director Corey Yuen and his Martial Arts Director have unbelievable martial arts scenes in this film that are properly lit.  Maybe that is not the right way of putting it because cinema should not be lit like a soap opera. 
Take the scene where Fong Sai Yuk played by Jet Li and his mother (Josephine Siao) go out in the rain to find his father.  Corey Yuen must have used a blue gel or filter to show that it was at night, but removed it when they entered the room with his father.  The film also has a unique story line anchored around married women who are martial arts experts.

It will be a sad day in cinema when lighting is snuffed out by special effects.


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