PRELIMINARY WORK

In order to polish our skills, make us more familiar to the pre-production, production & post-production involved while making a short-film, our teacher made us undertake several preliminary projects. All the given practice projects greatly helped me in improving my skills to use various camera shots, angles and experiment with their compositions. I learnt to utilize my creative skills while learning how to use Adobe Premier to edit our projects and Adobe Photoshop to produce the poster for our short film. All of this was quite interesting as I had no prior knowledge nor skills of shooting and editing a moving image such as a short-film.

Shots, Angles, Movements & Compositions:

This was our first practice project in which we had to randomly shoot a few, random scenes involving different camera shots that involved some movements and compositions at various angles.

PROCESS: At first I thought of making a short-film that would include all these camera shots, angles, movements and compositions. However, I soon realized that this was easier said than done. Hence, as I was newly exposed to the vast field of film-making. I took random shots all around Islamabad, for at-least a month because this was my first A2 project, I wanted it to turn out perfect. I used my aesthic sense and utilized my creative side to compile this. Although, shooting for this project was easier as I was fully interested in it, I found its editing to be a challenge. I have barely edited any videos in my life and when I used a heavy software like Adobe Premier and its vast features for the first time, it proved to be no less than an obstacle. Hence, the poor editing techniques can be seen. There is absence of sound and after the failure of producing any substantial work in this project, I pulled up my socks for the forth-coming ones!

Short-Film:
‘Safee Jinn’

This was our first preliminary short-film. The whole class was involved in this project.

Writer: Safee Muhammad Khawaja

Cameramen: Uzair Khan & Samia Asif

Actors: Safee Muhammad Khawaja, Sara Kaleem, Rahim Tarar & Ariyana Rimmal

Edited By: Ariyana Rimmal & Sara Kaleem

CONCEPT: The concept behind this short-film was mine. This was all thought out within a 40-minute class. I have always been pulled towards the horror genre films such as Stree, Paranormal Activity and Insidious. Hence, I proposed this idea that we would show 4 friends in a room who would be shown playing a horror board-game known as ‘Ouija Board’. Some of them would be up for this adventure, however, one of them, Ariyana, would back-out of this plan as soon as she senses its severity. The rest are successful in calling a spirit through the game and it starts showing its presence, such as through the shaking table and the water bottle falling to the ground. Rahim and Sara soon realize that the spirit has possessed Safee who seems to be choked by a supernatural force.

EDITING: Two separate edited versions of this short-film were produced, by Ariyana & Sara. It was a tough job as there were serious issues regarding the graphical relations between the scenes and the difference of camera quality due to the two cameras that Uzair and Samia used to shoot the short-film.

SOUND: There was an obvious absence of any background music that is present in every horror film to create tension and give an eerie feel to it. There was a lot of white sound accompanying the dialogues too, although we tried recording our dialogues on voice-notes when we were shooting. Hence, we learnt a lot about the importance of sound through this project and even learnt how to remove white sound to fix the dialogues of actors in short-films, for instance.

WE LEARNT…: There was a lot to learn in this project. We thought it would be very easy to produce a 40-second short-film. However, it was quite difficult. We learnt about different camera shots, angles, compositions and movements that we used and could use in the projects here after. Our teacher thoroughly guided us and gave her feedback about the editing process of this short-film. She told us ways to fix the sound and also highlighted the importance of graphical relations in-between two or more scenes. However, our biggest learning was to know how difficult it is to act & how acting can make a project successful or a complete failure. My laugh at the end was totally natural as I knew how poor my acting would be looking on-camera!

Short-Film:
‘Memories’

For this short-film, once again the whole class teamed up to complete the project. We all mutually agreed on the plot and decided to enact and shoot it.

CONCEPT: It was based on a group of friends who are attending school and their classes. However, boredom strikes them and a plan initiated by Safee & Ariyana, ends up with all 6 of them deciding to bunk their classes. It has a very carefree, energetic and appealing feel to it as it takes the audience down the memory lane when they would feel thrilled by doing the same. One by one, each student leaves their class and when they all are successful to reach their school gate, the guard stops them and instead tells them to immediately go back inside. Their sulking faces and disappointment is just temporary as they walk back towards the school building with smiles on their faces depicting carefree days of school life.

CAMERA: As this was a preliminary project and we were new to film-making, the camera was continuously going out of focus. The shots could have had more movement, such as pan, tilt etc. More importantly, there was no establishing shot of the school building and the beginning of this short-film seemed as a continuation of some other scene. The scene where Rahim lifts his phone should not have been shot like that as the text message was hard to read and on-screen, the shot was rotated anti-clockwise.

EDITING: The editing although was quite better off than our last project’s, ‘Safee Jinn’, however still there were made issues regarding it. Firstly, as our song was a Hindi song, we should have added subtitles below that would have shown what the lyrics depicted about true friendship. Moreover, there was lack of a rhythmic relation in-between scenes and the importance of sound-bridge was not kept in mind while editing the short-film.

SOUND: The dialogues had white noise in the background that did not give the whole short-film a natural feel. However, the choice of the song, by Ariyana, was a true fit to this story-line. The song, ‘Roobaroo‘ is sung by A.R. Rahman & Naresh Iyer and is from the film ‘Rang De Basanti’ under the music label, Sony Music Entertainment India Pvt. Ltd.

Short-Film:
‘Pursuit’

This project took the longest time to develop as we were hit with different ideas constantly. For this project, Ariyana, Rahim & I teamed up to make a short-film. The film was directed by Safee Khawaja (me).

Team-Members

Plot:
Written by: Safee Muhammad Khawaja

The story revolves around a 14 year old girl, Anaya, who is shown enthusiastic, energetic and studious. She aspires to do something big in her life. She is athletic too and also scores the highest marks in her class during her assessments and tests. She has an older brother, Rahim, who she is intimidated by and he hardly appreciates her efforts in school. However, one day Anaya scores such good marks in her class that she demands a bracelet or basketball as a gift from him. However, life takes a very different turn for her as suddenly 8 years later, she is seen putting on makeup in-front of a mirror and her husband, Safee, shouts her name from downstairs. She quickly grabs her shawl that depicts how strict and back-ward thinking husband she has. It soon hits her that her brother also used to tell her to bring food just like her husband does. Disappointed and heart-broken by her ill-fate she leaves the room. In the end, as a public service message, statistics appear on the screen suggesting how girls similar to Anaya do not pursue a career in education due to early marriages.