Our "Cast" - HAHA!

No, I cannot help my laughter at this post. It's hilarious because there's really no story to tell. Initially, we had decided the lead character would be played by either me or Zara, depending on who would look more natural in front of the camera. Here's the test footage: you can clearly tell who we decided on for our lead actress.

https://video.wixstatic.com/video/ad4fda_0050570bff724e7a94113c27a8a095c1/1080p/mp4/file.mp4

Unfortunately we don't have enough representation of lead women with hijabs; if there were, we might've felt like it was just right having me play the lead, but for OBVIOUS reasons you can now see in the video above, we decided that Zara was perfect.

It was easy directing someone so familiar with my bossiness. On a more serious note, our actress needed to be flexible. She would have to understand the idea and be able to adapt to it changing, since we ended up changing it so many times ourselves. Having our lead understand the art that goes into working behind a camera equally with what goes on in front of it was a huge advantage, partly the reason we wanted it to be one of us. She understoo what we set out to achieve and her creative outlook changed accordingly, allowing Fatima and I to direct behind the camera but using her media literacy for the best oucome. Plus, there wasn't any dialogue involved (thankfully), otherwise casting would've been a LOT trickier - no offense, Zara. But still, it was great working with you as our actress, and I'm so happy I hafd the honour of shooting it twice!