The Shooting of Rumi's Protege

We finally began the shooting of Rumi's Protege. We met up at our producer, Zainab Hyat's house and began preparing immediately. The location scouting wasn't much as the only locations used were Zainab's house and our A Levels college campus.

 Zainab's garden that showed the protagonist's 
"happy place"

The shot for the thumbnail of the film opening

Zainab applying makeup on Mustafa Babar, the protagonist

Shooting the final take in our A Levels College

A celebratory picture with the entire theme along with our cast

It was a really fun and memorable day, however we did come across a few problems while shooting indoors.
The lighting was very dim and we wanted to show sunlight entering the room, luckily we were able to fake it using an artificial light source

faking sunlight with an artificial light source

Making Rumi's Protégée: The Animation

I was told to make an animatic of the film opening but I wanted to take that a step further. Even though it might seem overkill, I'm making a fully rendered 3D Animation which is hopefully approx 2-2.5 minutes long.

I'm using Blender 2.8 and its real-time render engine to make the animation.

At the moment, I'm modelling the environments in which the animation will take place. I already have a set of low-poly models already rigged and textured (by me) which will be tweaked a bit to match the needs of this animation

Here's the dining room scene so far. I'll add a few props in this as well as a few plates and low-poly food models to show the breakfast scene.

Risk Assessment Sheet

We had to write down a risk assessment sheet for security purposes of the crew and the actors. 

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.