vioja mahakamani

VIOJA MAHAKAMANI
week1: 1st Feb
Vioja mahakamani which means comedy in a court room is a program brought on Kenya Broadcasting Corporation every Wednesday from 7:30-8:05pm, it is a recorded program that is presented as if it is aired live and usually takes the scene of a court room because it has a Judge, Prosecutor, the accuser and the accused.
In my opinion the program being a local comedy is very interesting, we have the accuser and the accused making jokes but the judge and the prosecutor are serious people whom you might think are professionals in their area of acting. At the same time the program addresses major problems that this Country is facing like corruption among the police force, poverty and insecurity. The poor cannot defend themselves because they cannot afford lawyers or pay bonds but the rich walk away freely because of the Government influence on the Judiciary something that addresses the gap between the rich and the poor in this country.
In terms of time allocation it is sufficient since it is not a continuous series that you have to follow events from the previous week. The time that it is aired is most appropriate since it is for all family viewing and can be understood by anyone from the age of seven because the language used is simple Swahili. The other factor that makes it to have more viewers is the fact that not everyone has had a chance to be in a court room so most people are usually enthusiastic to know what happens in the court room.
8th Feb
There is the use of more than one shot because it has a number of scenes; for instance when the judge is addressing the accused they use the close-up type of shot to bring out emotions on their faces unlike when the prosecutor is talking and they show the entire court room using a long shot. The type of transition used is mainly cut because we have movement from one scene to another in a twinkle of an eye such that the program flows without destructing the viewers.
Basically the order of the programs is organized such that the program meets the time allocated to it hence there is no rushing through that would lead to suspense. It has commercial breaks between it and since it is a family viewing program the kind of commercials brought are usually not gender sensitive but things like Banks, Insurance Companies and Supermarkets.
On the side of Character allocation I must commend them because the program has been on air for a long time and they have managed to keep it going without running short of ideas that is why they rarely repeat themselves or scenes, we also have new characters which shows they are willing to nature young talents and at the same time we have good flow of ideas and creativity.
15th Feb
Any vioja viewer will agree with me that the lighting is good and one thing that has made the producer succeed in this, is limiting themselves to one room or what we call he court scene, this allows him to use all the necessary lights like the fill light, compared to other local programs that try acting in the field and end up limiting the quality of production because of things like lack of boom microphones that can clearly enhance or capture sound clear out there and on the other hand they lack high quality cameras that would clearly bring out good shots without unnecessarily creating shadows and this is one thing that also applies to vioja’s shots.
22Feb
The themes in vioja are well chosen they are things that one can relate with since they tend to be current with the news; they act on issues that have lately hit our media headlines which makes it interesting to watch. Their use of diverse culture is commendable because most tribes are usually represented by different characters which makes it easy for any Kenyan to relate with and in a Country characterized with tribal lines like ours I think there are great moral values to be drawn from these but the limitation comes in when they overdo the vernacular such that some words are completely lost to the audience.
1 March
One noticeable thing though is that vioja has kept it analogue especially in its production, I say these because when you look at their sound effects they are manual, the producer hasn’t dwelt much on recorded or digitally created sounds. On the editing techniques vioja since time immemorial has used cut, split screen and at times wipe where one picture wipes the other one out this something that was very observable this week, compared to other programs that are using fade in/ out or even superimposition this one thing that I would recommend the program to improve on.
On the use of sound effect they use silence to direct the audience emotion for example when the prosecutor hands the case to the Judge for the final verdict and there is silence in the entire court room, I believe the producer does these deliberately to establish mood and you can see that tension has filled the entire court room.
Critique by:
Babu Elly
08:2029
Daystar Student