Aiman's Blog

As much as we loved shooting day 2, we still faced some difficulties.  One of them was obviously the park being a public place. We had almost no control of people being there and we did not have the place all to ourselves. There were often people in our frame in the background and we had to find a vacant, isolated tree.  As we were relying on the natural lighting, and as plentiful as it might've been, we could not really control it. We had to go according to its direction and make sure we found appropriate spots. 

 Time lapse of us working on day 2, recorded on Frame lapse. 

  This might have been my favorite day of the project so far. I scheduled the shooting on Friday, January 20th, while keeping in consideration everyone's availability. As co producer, I was supervising the logistics and scheduling. I discussed with Moiz his availability, and discussed his costume. I took out a suitable time frame from his schedule and on Friday, after school, we went to the park for shooting. I had also been mindful of the weather forecast while scheduling, because we obviously could not shoot on a rainy day.  The weather was pleasant and the circumstances were favorable. We briefly scouted for a suitable tree that was in a vacant spot, and had appropriate natural lighting.  We shot the establishing shot first; Haseeb, the cameraman, Haseeb, climbed up a tree to record a decent shot.  We shot from several different angles. We asked Moiz to try out several different expressions. I told him to keep his chin tilted down slightly. We liked that particula...

  Since Centaurus is a frequently visited and popular mall, we faced a major issue; many cars in the background. People coming and going, parking their cars within our frame, or driving away. This highly interrupted and damaged the continuity, for instance, there was one car in the background of a particular shot, and in the next shot, a completely different car was parked there.  Another unforeseen difficulty that arose was that the most important prop, the knife that I had originally prepared for the final shooting, we had kept it in Zuha's bag, as it was likely to get damaged in mine. Unfortunately, Zuha had left that particular bag at her residence. The residence was about a 40-minute drive, and we did not have much time on our hands. We checked multiple stores at the mall, hoping we can find a toy knife that could be used instead of the one I had made. We couldn't find it so we used one of the spare knives I had made for rehearsals. They were in my bag already. They were ...

  T ime lapse of us working on set. Recorded on Frame lapse. 

  I scheduled the shooting of the second scene on the 18th of January, and we all agreed to film that first because it seemed appropriate considering the availability of Zainab, our actress. We also had agreed the date and time with the authorities at The Centaurus Mall. The time slot we had requested from Mr. Kashif Butt was 1 pm to 5 pm. We left from school around 1:30 and arrived at the shooting location around 2:30. I had arranged the transportation for the females, whereas Haseeb provided transportation for the male crew and cast.  For security purposes and adult supervision, I had asked my older brother to accompany us and stay nearby.  We were allotted a specific basement (B2), where we could shoot. This floor was mostly empty, and so we all went to find a suitable spot to park the car. We used Haseeb's (family) car as the girl's car. Haseeb parked the car at an appropriate spot (he is over 18 and has a driver's license), and we had agreed to that specific slo...

  Since we had decided to use an underground parking rather than a bedroom, we needed permission to shoot.  We had decided to go shoot in the underground parking of The Centaurus Mall, a well known mall in F8, Islamabad.  We asked the help desk to give us the phone number of the mall authorities that we needed to talk to in order to get the permission to shoot. We then  asked our media studies teacher to first call them and discuss it with the marketing director, Mr. Kashif Butt.  I, along with Haseeb prepared a rough draft for the permission letter. We checked in with the school administration, and asked them to produce us an official letter. Haseeb met with Mr. Kashif Butt, and got the permission approved.  Here is a scanned copy of the formal permission letter.