The Legend of Mr. Ma

Every now and then I have a brush with greatness. It doesn’t happen often, but when it does incredible things happen. On my latest project “Disciples” I had the opportunity to work with a gaffer named Mr. Ma who is one of the best, if not the best in China. It means something special when you are #1 in a nation of 1.5 billion people!

My first experience with Mr. Ma was over the phone. I was talking to my producer who was talking to a translator who was talking to Mr. Ma. We were discussing ways to light a basketball court in a gym we were about to shoot a scene in. Originally I wanted to blast large lights through the windows and create shafts of sunlight on the court. Unfortunately Mr. Ma said this was impossible because he didn’t have enough crew budgeted to pull it off. So, I went to my plan B which was to hang an array of space lights to the ceiling and simulate typical gym lighting. Mr. Ma seemed to like this idea, but he had a problem – a big problem. You see, space lights are tungsten balanced (orange like a light bulb in a house lamp) and there were large windows in the gym with daylight coming in which is blue. Normally you try to keep the colors in a scene the same and Mr. Ma told me, “It is illegal to break the laws of color temperature.” Personally I break the laws of cinematography often, but I guess it is rare to do this in China. I am an American rebel!!!!! I wasn’t sure how to handle the situation so I responded by saying something like, “OK…can we PLEASE hang the space lights from the ceiling?” I could hear a lot of discussion happening in Chinese. They came back to me and said, “Mr. Ma has agreed to break the laws of color temperature as long as you grant him permission.” I immediately said, “PERMISSION GRANTED!” The scene ended up looking sweet even though some laws were broken.

That experience was just a warm up for the ultimate challenge Mr. Ma and I had to face. We had to light an entire stadium for the final event of this show. I ordered so many lights the Chinese crew laughed at me. Yeah, they actually laughed and had to ship lights in from other parts of the country. There was a lot of drama, but I am not going to bore you with the details. The bottom line is that at one point we were down in a hole and Mr. Ma was able to work some magic to pull us out of the hole and make it look super sweet. The 2 photos posted here were taken under our lights. Special thanks to photographer extraordinaire Davi Russo for the photos. You can see more of his stuff at www.davirusso.com