Production - LOG 31st September 2023
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The decision to have another day of filming was taken after seeing the rough cut of our film opening. It felt incomplete, so with further planning, we coordinated the shoot to be held in LGS OPF (our school) since it was the most feasible option for all of us to meet, excluding Miraal.
With the date set in mind and a vision to shoot in the O-level art studio on a Saturday morning, we realised our date clashed with our in-school event. Our request to open the art studio was denied; thus, we had to devise a plan. Our last night's meeting saved us single-handedly as we were armed with a bunch of decoration material we each had collected from our homes to set up the studio. We had an adventure bringing down the straw chair from the second-floor A-level admin office (with permission) and a desk from a nearby class. The cushions were brought from our A-level common room. With a bare minimum setup in the garden next to the main gate, we got to decorating. The sunlight worked in our favour, shining directly toward the garden we were shooting in, though time was quickly running out as, by noon, we were still setting up the shot and making arrangements. The shots themselves were not complicated; we wanted them to be slow and smooth deliberately. A shot that makes the audience think about its importance just by its duration and simplicity: it is so that the audience has time to decode what is being presented to them onscreen, and comprehending Noor's painting featured in the shot plays a crucial role in showing Zoya's Character taking an interest in politics through a medium such as art, she is comfortable with. |
Production- LOG 212th August 2023
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The time crunch started at exact 12pm as Miraal quickly went over the basics of her camera: point-and-shoot with an autofocus button. I did not have the time to go over the details of ISO and more manual stuff, and the standard setting of the camera seemed good enough to me as a beginner with a crash course on filming by watching tons of shooting with camera videos on YouTube the night before. I shot the footage at the standard 24fps, and the max resolution it could shoot is 1920x1080.
I had printed out the shortlist the night before, which came in handy as I needed more time to open my phone and scroll through to find what I needed. Call me old school, but pen and paper work the best for me, so I printed out a copy of the script, too, which helped while directing our actresses whenever they forgot a line and before the start of shooting each scene. To speed things up, Zahra shot the scenes at the Lahore Heritage Club with me, using the iPhone 12.
After wrapping things up at LHC, we headed back to our school on a Sunday since it is located near some open fields. Since the crops were private property, we were unable to shoot there due to it being closed off by a fence, so we found a lot with a wild grass area nearby that seemed to work.
It had rained the night before, so the field ended up being a little muddy. here is a link to a short that weebly won't let me link as a youtube video: https://youtube.com/shorts/P238eMI5FRU We took the opening shots of Emil and Zoya running across the field, and afterwards, I used my lap to stabilise the camera and take levelled footage of the conversation. The entire experience was memorable as we were dominated by a group of cows surrounding us in the field, and we had to hurry up as soon as the cows took over the tree we were shooting at.
Now it's up to me to use the movie magic to make all our efforts presentable to an audience as a film opening .
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