VIDEO CRITIQUE FOR INSPEKTA MWALA
Introduction:
Inspekta Mwala is a hilarious weekly show that takes place at Kona Mbaya, a small town centre. It’s a local Kenyan drama aired every Monday from 7:30pm-8:00pm on Citizen T.V. It involves insecurity issues going on in the town an also incorporates the current activities going on in Kenya for example the ‘Operation linda nchi,’ an on-going military operation in Somalia where the Kenyan army is fighting Al-shabbab militants. The people who carry out all these are stationed at Kona Mbaya Police Station which has five policemen with a lady and inspekta mwala as their leaders. Sometimes the actors pass across messages of social responsibility and encourage good behaviour in the community.
Critique;
After watching ten episodes of Inspekta Mwala, I realized that the cameraman used the same camera shots in most of the episodes, nothing was done differently. The drama always starts with a long wide shot of a town or houses. This is also a common characteristic with Machachari, a local T.V drama aired on Citizen. The camera is usually zoomed out at this point. After a long wide shot of a town or houses, there is a close up shot of cars either in a jam or cars moving in a highway. For both these scenes, there is usually music in the background which is droned by the sound of the moving cars in the second scene.
After these, there is a close up shot of the actors in the third scene for example a shot of a man and woman talking.
After which the camera man takes a medium shot of each of the actors. At this point, the actors would be conversing and in most of the episodes, the conversations carried out in an enclosed place always have a little bit of feedback.
There was the use of the sun as a form of natural lighting, the light was evenly distributed in the room and there were no noticeable shadows.
After the third scene, to break monotony, the cameraman takes shots of different places and mixes up various camera shots. The next scene is then acted outside in a sunny day, this means that there will be no need of light since then sun is already there. This scene is acted out in the police station where the cameraman takes medium close ups from one actor to the other. This type of shot usually gives more detail and makes the audience get a clear view of the face of the actors. The lighting at the police station is always affected by a reflection caused by the door this makes it hard for the cameraman to take a shot of a person walking into the station. The production team should find a way of dealing with the reflection.
The next scene is usually a long shot of a building or an extreme close up of moving people’s legs. The lighting at this point is facilitated by the sun. The cameraman then uses the dolling shot from one actor to another. This is not a suitable shot because someone can see the actual camera movement, it looks unprofessional. A medium shot or a medium close up would have been used for the two actors who were conversing.
Finally, the cameraman takes long shots from one scene to another while zooming in. Apart from this, there would have been use of transitions to connect one scene to another.
The cameraman ought to reduce on the many long shots, he or she should incorporate other shots like over the shoulder shots (shot behind the person taken towards the subject), point of view (taken from near the eye-level of the actor and shows what he or she might see) and selective focus (using a large aperture value thus creating a shallow depth of field; this effectively leaves one part of the frame in focus while blurring others such as the foreground or background) and cutaways. The production usually relies a lot on the sun as a form of lighting, in order to show professionalism and skill, there should be the use of artificial light; the key light, fill light and back light.
