Cristian Mungiu's "4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days" (2007) , Xiaogang Feng's "The Banquet" (Ye Yan)( 2006)

Mungiu's film was interesting to say the least but not one i would recomend, the fetus scene unlike other people i thought was nessesary as both a shock value and to realise just what the action of abortion leads to, the loss of a human life. This movie uses lots of fluro and blue lightng with the exeption of the whiteish halogens that are used when Otilia is looking for a place to dump the fetus and crosses an overbridge that is lit with spots of overhead light, and she moves between them going into areas of light and darkness. Another feature lighting wise is the use of flikering fluroessent lights, helping to show the dingyness of the places and the situation that these two women are in. A trick they also pull that is in common place in movies is lighting the characters through windows to re-create sunlight using redheads and other such lights, somtimes this even means constructing scafolding to get lights placed outside the windows. Compared to other movies this one has really no harsh light, pretty much all of this movie is in soft 5600°k and usualy is topical light in the hotel to represent the fluros above. As a side note in the hotel one shot there is a shot of Gabita with a reflective of the doorway to the bathroom and Otilia dealing with the fetus, this would have to be one of my faverite shots as the set would have to be complete with both celings and four walls or 3 at the most making it hard to hide the camera and still get both characters in shot. Lastly noted is the overbearing sound effects of the tap dripping to create an overbearing mood and re-enforce silence if that makes any sence what so ever. As a side note the funnest thing about this movie is when it burnt out 48 frames before the end of the movie was entertaining to say the least.

The Banquet was one of my faverote movies and as such i didnt write much about it down when watching it so this is peiced from memory, and yes we are all aware that its a take off of shakespeare's Hamlet and yeah i was anoyed that the ending was open to who killed her bit thats the beauty of the movie. One thing that i found encredibly anoying and is one of my only notes is the damn watermark that kept comming up and anoying the hell out of me, seriously that should have been removed or done diffrently although it was probley not a digital version. The best moment of practical lighting in this movie would have to be the use of the so called candle trees that surround the main hall creating little sources of light all around the scene. Another source of light that is less noticable is the light that comes from the top of the camera to light the actors faces, and is seen afew times. The next lighting thing i like is the light that spills from the bathroom or large bath up to Empress Wan's bedroom through a decorative holes in a raised segement of her floor.