25 word pitch

Fatima Ali came up with the 25 word pitch for the film just when we needed it:

"Escaping from the reality of his parents toxic relationship; he comes face to face with his father’s affair but can’t escape this time."

Location Scouting

We have already finalized the locations for our short film. All of the house scenes will take place in Zainab Hyat's (our producer) house.

The Dining Room

The Bathroom where he falls into a trance

The rusty ride and the environment

which will be depicted as his imaginary world

Storyboarding

Zainab Hyat's storyboarding of Rumi's Protegee

Rumi's Protégée: Screenplay

This is the screenplay that Ahmed Sarym, our director wrote:

Scene 1:

The protagonist loses himself to a Sufi dance in the shower, fully dressed, breaking down. He’s transported to a parallel universe where he escapes, he sees himself on a swing; albeit that too, is broken.

Scene 2:

He is interrupted by a phone call from his mom, he gets out of the shower and changes into his uniform.

Scene 3:

He joins his parents at the dining table for breakfast, who are amidst a heated argument. He quietly has his meal, emotionally numb, yet has tears in his eyes.

Scene 3:

He sits in a car with his father, the two travel to his school but no dialogue is shared. He places a notebook on the dashboard of the car.

Scene 4:

He gets off the car and forgets the notebook. As soon as he walks into his institute, he realised his missing notebook and goes back to get it.

Scene 5:

He gets out to see his father driving out of the parking lot with another woman getting into the car. He’s so deeply disturbed by the sight of his father cheating on his mother that he loses himself to dance, again, in the middle of the road and tries to go back, but is unable to and breaks down.

Equipment

For shooting, we will primarily be using Fatima Ali's equipment. A Sony A6500 Mirrorless Camera along with a 50mm f/1.8 for a shallow depth of field.

I'll be using an M1 Boya Mic to record foley sounds for the Sound Design and for the narration as well.

On the editing side, I'll be using my Desktop PC with 16GB RAM and a Radeon RX580 GPU. Footage Assembly will be done in Adobe Premiere Pro, Color Grading in DaVinci Resolve and compositing of visual elements (if any) in Blender 2.8

Research: Conventions of a Psychological Drama

My technical analysis of the Joker trailer

In the psychological genre and all its sub-genres, I have noticed a few similarities in the technicalities of all the samples I watched.

Most of these films comprised of slow-paced editing which fits the mood as psychological films require more thought to be put in so that they could be properly understood and enjoyed. Short, fast paced editing is quite uncommon as it does not give enough development to the scene in a psychological drama.

Another important role in psychological films is color theory and the type of color-grading that is used. The picture control in the cameras used to shoot the raw footage is set to "Flat" which reduces the contrast in the raw footage so that the colors can be easily and more finely manipulated in post-production to create a final product of much higher quality. Flat style, low contrast footage contains more data and can be manually graded to a much greater extent than the default standard style.

Lawrence Sher, the Head of Cinematography at Joker explains how a Teal hue was used for the overall cool shade of the film whereas deep yellow lights were used for lighting the subjects. The complementary colors on the color wheel (opposite sides of the color wheel) are used for creating a high amount of contrast and set a mood in the film.

Representation of some sort of ability or disability is also very common in psychological films and series. In the case of Joker, the protagonist was shown to have multiple mental disorders including psychopathy.

In the case of the TV Series Mr. Robot, a psychological thriller, the protagonist is shown to have a command over technical computer related elements yet suffers from anxiety disorder and clinical depression.

Most films in the psychological genre deliver a feat which is unconventional from other genres, the protagonist of Joker was shown painting his tongue in the trailer which is something very unusual and out of the norm.

Although the camerawork is not special in most psychological films, there may be a few scenes where handheld footage is shown with a little bit of shake to portray an unsettling situation.

Rumi's Protégée: Synopsis

Ahmed Sarym's synopsis of "Rumi's Protégée"

"In sheer isolation, a guy fully clothed in a shower transports to a parallel universe immersing himself in dance before he is interrupted by a call from his mother. He changes into his uniform for school, joins his family on the dining  table for breakfast but the clamour and constant arguments makes him walk away with his bag to the car

His father joins him and no dialogue is shared throughout the ride to school. He gets off and enters the school but realizes he forgot his bag in the car.

He goes outside but sees his father driving off with another woman. He wants to transport back but is unable to, so he physically runs and escapes from reality."