Matilda’s Arrived

The moment I read the script, I could immediately picture its visual world. The rich texture and atmosphere of the church provided a striking backdrop for the story, creating a natural contrast between the building’s grandeur and the tension and comedy within the narrative.

I developed a warm, high-contrast palette that embraced the church’s darker tones, stained glass and rich wooden features. The lighting plan was designed around these existing elements, using them as a foundation rather than imposing a look onto the space. This created a visual language that felt intrinsic to the location, allowing the cinematography and narrative to work seamlessly together.

While much of the film centred around two- and three-person conversations, I was keen to introduce motivated movement early on to establish energy and momentum. The opening sequence felt perfectly suited to Steadicam, and this fluid movement immediately drew the audience into the world of the film while setting the tone for what followed.

I chose the ARRI Alexa Mini for its exceptional colour rendering and natural skin tones. After extensive lens testing, I paired it with Tribe7 Blackwing T-Tuned lenses with Amber Skin tuning. Their characterful rendering, smooth focus fall-off and blooming highlights — particularly when shot wide open — added a distinctive texture and dimensionality to the image, while their beautiful skin-tone reproduction made them an ideal fit for the film’s warm, atmospheric world.

Macadie Amoroso is a director and actor whose work spans stage and screen, including an appearance in The Comedy About Spies at London’s Adelphi Theatre. From the early stages of pre-production on Matilda’s Arrived, it was clear that the project had all the ingredients for a strong short film: a sharp script, a talented cast and a visually rich location.

The creative challenge was to honour the tone of the story while ensuring the cinematography remained visually engaging without overshadowing the comedy. Macadie was particularly focused on making sure each comedic beat landed, so our approach had to support the performances and timing rather than draw attention away from them.

One of the biggest production challenges was capturing the film across two short shooting days. With limited time for both lighting and filming, efficiency was essential. As much of the story centred around conversations, we were able to focus our preparation on a smaller number of key spaces. However, the scale of the church still required the lighting team to work quickly and strategically to prepare each setup.

Thanks to detailed pre-production and an exceptional crew, we were able to capture everything needed within the available time, bringing together the script, performances and location to create the film we had set out to make.