Production: The Shoot

Hello blog! It's been a while, with all the political challenges in Pakistan causing school closures therefore pauses on our assignments. This is an important post for my group's Preliminary Task, therefore a big responsibility on my shoulders. I was tasked with (read: chose) taking on our Behind the Scenes video and documenting our challenges.

We thought long and hard about where we wanted to film and couldn't sway from the idea of travelling to "Androon Lahore" (Old Lahore). This location, when we thought of it, was absolutely perfect for the aesthetic we wanted for our dreamscape. We sat on campus trying to work out the logistics of how to go. Knowing that this is a very public and often unsafe location, a lot of planning went into actually going. We reached this very busy location at 9 o'clock on a Saturday morning regrettably missing one of Sir Zia's more interesting classes (we'll forever hold showing the class Black Mirror without us against him), and prepared for our adventure.

We went pretty clueless about what we were to do. We had planned to observe each location and decide there and then what we wanted for our shots.I (Rija) did the camera work while the multitalented Zara acted and Fatima became our director while also filming all of our BTS footage (with commentary!) One thing we were sure of was that we wanted a huge variety of shots and lots of those would be candid. We were lucky that the weather was perfect for what we wanted and we ended up shooting our first few (and favorite) scenes at our first location before we went inside Lahore Fort, which was our main shoot location.

I got my mother to accompany us and with her literature-centric insight we were able to get some great contrast shots. She also lended me her Gimble on which I mounted my phone to film. We knew that we couldn't get a camera for cheap and we'd have to use my phone, but we were pleasantly surprised with the results.

An issue we encountered throughout the day was filming in such a public place with lots of people staring at and teasing us making us uncomfortable, so we tried to do it as inconspicuously as we could. We spent a while trying to get the best angles in this little corner street with beautiful colored buildings, views of the mosque's pillars, a coincidental heart-shaped tree and a flock of pigeons. The use of the Gimble made a huge impact on our filming process and our videos became so much more cinematic. Then we had to face another complication, which was that the use of our amazing (and only) piece of equipment was prohibited inside the historical premises. We had to promise to not take the very expensive device the security woman was hell-bent on keeping, out of our bag. It was for this reason that this camera woman faced one of the bigger challenges - keeping her camera stable.

Anyways, we moved throughout the Fort for our variety of shots with Fatima telling us to go here and there, me reenacting scenes to Zara to "capture that emotion" and Zara sacrificing her entire body to getting the most perfect shots. From sitting in the fungus-filled corner to laying completely on bare bricks, she did it all, something I never thought we'd get in an actor.

What we called "The Money Shot" was one of my favorites to film. We came to a viewpoint where we could see three historical sites at once, and it was just breathtaking. I knew I wanted a natural shot of Zara in this area, so I started recording and told her to do "whatever you want". So she ran to the wall and twirled around, watched the sky and the birds, and after a few takes we had one of our best shots. And the last shot we took was the one where she ran away from the camera, which was to transition to her waking up from her dream. I ran after her and shook the camera, she ran while I stopped, she ran straight ahead till the end, she ran turning her head back constantly - clearly we took lots of takes to get it perfect, but that's what we did - got it perfect, just the way I had envisioned. It being fast yet slow and anticipating at the same time. Once we were done filming this shot, we made preparations to leave the Fort.

Fast forward about half an hour with us stuck in traffic trying to be productive. As tired as we were, we wanted to reach home knowing what to do. Our next task was to find the music for our video. It wasn't supposed to have any lyrics, just an instrumental, so we could convey the emotion we needed without the use of words. Yet again we got lucky with our music choice because after about 5 minutes of searching I found the audio we wanted. We played it out loud on my phone and just sit back and listened to it, closing our eyes and thinking; imagining what it would be like playing over the shots we took. Slowly we found our sound effects and brainstormed ideas for transitions and editing, then came the final task: deciding the title.

We wanted an Arabic or Persian title in calligraphy appear at the end of the short film so we got our trusty friend Google to help us out. We kept searching words for "dream" that connotated an evil or a fear, and we ended up with two options, "Roya" (Persian) and "Hulm" (Arabic). We got an idea of it once we saw some calligraphy on Google and it just sent chills down my spine thinking of how beautiful it would look. "Hulm" means "an evil dream" in Arabic and it felt graceful as well as menacing as we said it. So we decided, the title of our film opening would be Hulm. A huge shoutout goes to my artist of a mother who decided to take on the task of creating our title card. The minute I saw her making it I knew my team and I would love it - and of course we did.

https://video.wixstatic.com/video/ad4fda_5d911bbc750545d5baae9e1639169f9d/720p/mp4/file.mp4

Long story short, we had countless editing complications leading us to edit on a Samsung tablet, but we got through it. Fatima and Zara had been working at my house since 8am, and left around 9pm. Although we were exhausted, Zara and I continued to finish our project even once Fatima left, but once it was over, we couldn't stop being in awe. We were extremely happy with the way it looked. Although we knew it needed improvement in lots of areas, we showed our parents and friends and they loved it too. All we cared about though was Sir Zia's opinion, who seemed to really like it (we could tell through the very subtle changes in his expressions and of course through gossip with our seniors).

https://video.wixstatic.com/video/ad4fda_f7ec769916224fafb20a972e2d0d4205/480p/mp4/file.mp4

So even though it wasn't perfect and we had our fair share of challenges, we decided to work through them and continue this task for our final project. None of it would've been possible without my amazing teammates and their dedication, so keep checking my blog for our group's latest updates and projects! We'll see you in the next one, reader!