Changes (Planning for attempt 2 of the project.)

 The days following our completion of the first attempt were surely an epitome of utter chaos and uncertainty. We could not decide whether we should reshoot and re-edit the same story and script and execute it in a better way, or change the entire script and narrative. Haseeb mildly persisted on changing the narrative altogether. Zuha, and our teacher suggested that we stick to the same narrative, just execute it in an improved way. Being the producer, I obviously had to be as flexible as I could, which at this point had become increasingly difficult. It was sort of up to me to keep everyone on the same page. I was trying to create negotiations between both parties and get them to agree to one or the other. 

We also came up with several ideas, and shortlisted them to two potential narratives we could go with. 

Story 1:

A fastidious schoolgirl is reading in the library, when her phone rings; an unknown number is calling her. She picks up the call but no one seems to respond to her “hello”. She hangs up and gets back to reading. This happens a couple times. Then she receives a text from the unknown number; the text says “find me”. She gets suspicious but not too terrified. She leaves the library and proceeds to go find her friends. She arrives at the schoolground and one of her friends is waving at her (OTS shot). She hears someone whispering “find me” in her ear, and abruptly turns her neck to see who it is, but there is no one. She then goes and joins her friends and sits with them for a while, and then she starts hearing all these distorted noises and excuses herself. She runs away from there and goes to a relatively isolated area of the school. She still keeps hearing the “find me” sound and she tries to hide in panic and confusion. She says “who are you? Where are you?” She then hears a booming voice that says; “you can’t find me, you can’t see me, you can’t touch me. I am not an angel; I am not a god. I am the evil inside you. The girl blacks out and the screen fades to black, she then wakes up, blinks (POV and closeup). She is still lying still on the ground, and someone pulls her leg abruptly.

Story 2;

A young boy (Haseeb) is sitting on his bed in his casual outfit, with unruly hair, working on his laptop, trying to create a device that will help allow him to go forward and backward in time (basically a time machine). His room is full of his calculations and his work in progress to create the time machine. Suddenly, someone jumps into his room (from what appears as a “hole” in the ceiling). Haseeb looks up and is shocked to see who it is; a slightly different looking, older, neatly attired version of him, with trimmed hair and a tattoo. “Who are you? You can’t be me… I don’t believe you” Haseeb says; in denial. The future Haseeb makes a comment about something only Haseeb knew, in order to convince him that it is in fact him from the future. The two conversate about the time machine, and the consequences. Future Haseeb turns around to leave, then looks back at his past self and lightheartedly advices him to not get the tattoo in the future. He proceeds to leave the room; younger Haseeb begins to question why he’s going through the bedroom door if he came through the time machine at the ceiling but then waives it off. A tracking shot of future Haseeb shows him walking out of the room, and he goes to a study room, and walks towards a desk that has newspapers lying on it. The camera shows the newspaper, which has a headline regarding the new government, and how the government aims to take measures that concern the project Haseeb is working on.

Personally, I loved the second story a lot. It was very fascinating to me and the visualized version on set Haseeb explained with camera angles and editing made it seem great. We discussed these with our teacher. He said the sci-fi story seemed good but the execution was not easy. He suggested us to stick to our initial split personality disorder one.