The planning for the second day of filming went much smoother than the first time. We all made sure to confirm our free days a few weeks before so there would be no sudden changes in plan. Unfortunately, one of our teammates, Sasha, wasn't able to make it as she was travelling on that day, so the three of us filmed with the help of Keyona (who played the mother) and Eman's little sister (who played the childhood self of the protagonist). All the equipment that was needed, along with all the props were all brought by each of us on the day. Here is how we split the things among ourselves:
A sourse of inspiration for our movie is a short film called 'Broken'. Eman showed it to us while we were planning the shot list, and it seemed like a pretty good idea. We decided that we won't really use scenes with actual physical abuse in it since that would be very hard to film, instead we decided to use verbal abuse instead, and leave hints of physical abuse through showing the mother as an alcoholic.
Although our idea isn't completely similar to Broken, the thought process is the same. I think it's good to challenge the stereotypes because usually the child is shown to be abused by the father while the mother is the source of inspiration, in our movie it'll be the opposite.
Here is an idea of how we plan to show the mother's personality; old, worn clothing, constantly surrounded by cigarettes and alcohol, cold and bitter personality-similar to the mother shown in Broken. The only difference is that the mother in our film will be shown inflicting abuse more verbally than physically although the hints of physical abuse will be there.
By having these two female leads we will be showing our audience how women have different sides to them too. Our main protagonist is a character that was abused in the past but fought through it with hard work and determination, and became a professional boxer-a career that not many films show females having. Her character is an example of women's strength.
Her mother however, is an example that women are able to be manipulative and abusive too. It breaks their 'fragile' and 'soft' stereotype and will show our audience that not all women are as great as they are made out to be-some are capable of inhuman things.
By having these feminist undertones in our film, I believe the concept we came up with now are very interesting to follow. We have already started planning our shots as well as the dialogue which we previously forgot, so hopefully the second day of filming goes much better than the first.
Our first day of filming was a downer for all of us. The reality that filming what we had originally planned was too out of our league for the moment due to the absence of many things shone through on that first day. To counter that we knew we had to come up with something else, something that will allow us to keep our original idea without too many changes.
Knowing that filming an actual fight would be impossible to do, we decided to not complicate ourselves too much and decided to take a more simplistic route.
We decided to expand on the main protagonist's back story.
We already had a few points concerning her backstory, but we didn't really go into too much detail, not expecting that we needed to do so. A few shots had already been planned to be filmed with the mother to be used in the fighting scene, but since we couldn't use the fighting scene anymore we decided to focus more on the mother and daughter's relationship. With this new idea we will be able to show a more deeper side to the audience by exploring real world issues such as abuse.
Following what we previously came up with, we decided to keep the idea of Joud's father dying in war and her mother turning manic because of that. This time there will be hints of child abuse present in the film.
The basic idea of the film opening is this: A younger version of the protagonist will run up to her mother to ask her if she could go to a boxing match. Instead of listening her mother (who is shown smoking and drinking) tears up the poster and threatens the child. Scenes of abuse such as these will appear throughout the film until in the last scene present Joud will be seen punching the mother then the scene will cut to black.
We plan to use as well as challenge many stereotypes whilst filming this scene. Hopefully things will go much better than they did last time. I'm sure they will have we learned from our previous mistakes and know what to do properly.
The first day of filming really did not go the way we planned it to. Once we started filming we realized how difficult it is to film a fight scene. Although we tried to do it to the best of our ability, as you can see in the rough draft, it did not end up looking really good. While trying to edit, we noticed that even though we slowed/sped up the shots after putting them in order, the scene was still awkward to watch. We couldn't even use transitions to fix it because then the scene itself did not make any sense.
Another thing that we had overlooked was the script. None of us had remembered or even planned to make one. We had decided on early while doing our research that we would stick with action and not words. That proved to be very difficult once filming had begun.
Once we realized that a fighting scene would not work at all, we decided to add some unplanned scenes into it, which once again, did not work out. The people acting had to improvise a lot of the dialogue which was difficult because every time we filmed another shot again the audio had to be changed due to them not remembering what was said previously.
The audio itself came out pretty weak because by the time we started filming the dialogue filled scenes, more people had arrived so the background noise was too loud to properly cut out.
Although the shots were of good quality, I doubt we will be able to use them due to the lack of coherency. We might have to change our idea completely or film someplace more private.
Due to this experience mt team and I learned how crucial it is so plan everything in detail beforehand-even things we think we may not need. I am quite disappointed that a day was wasted, but this was a learning experience for all of us, and hopefully, will not happen again during future filming days.
Before we went to film properly my whole group and I went to the location to check it out and to get some test shots. The place was really good, but one concern we had was the fact that the ring was surrounded by exercising machines, and while filming it would be difficult to crop them out as only a small section is covered by a wall.
We quickly resolved this by planning to film right after school; a timing when most people would be absent. And we also decided to film the part of the cage that overlooked the wall so that the machines would be out of shot.
Another concern was the fact that there was a speaker placed right on top of the boxing ring which would make getting audio very difficult. Thankfully, the owner of the gym was kind enough to say that they would be able to switch the music from that speaker off the day we film.
Looking through the test shots I was very pleased to see that they had come out pretty good. It makes me feel excited for the actual day of filming. Although filming this will be difficult, I believe we will be able to do it.
Getting together to film had been much more difficult then any of us had planned. Each of us had an activity either for school or outside of school during different days, so picking out which date to film at QGym proved to be very hard.
However, after much discussion,and planning through both social media and school time we all finally set what time we were going to film. But, we only had one opportunity to film at our location as the rest of the days were packed for all of us, we decided to plan all of our shots carefully so that we could finish all the scenes concerning the ring at one go, without the need of going there again.
A copy of all of our private schedules. As shown, the four of us barely had any days where all of us were free, and since we all had our own individual jobs, we couldn't go filming whilst missing even one member of the team.
I didn't know that just planning to film on a certain day would be this difficult. I noticed that the communication between our team needed to be improved as all of us couldn't settle down enough to talk about our filming day properly, thus causing us to lose precious filming time.
These are the types of looks we are hoping to achieve through the use of make up. This is because our main protagonist will be filmed during the middle of a match so through this we will be able to show the audience the aggressiveness she holds.
Sasha will be the one doing this make up for both Nour and Eman as Nour is playing the opponent whilst Eman will be playing as our main protagonist-Joud.
This is just a basic idea to showcase what we are planning to do on the day of our filming.
Our story-line's main protagonist-Joud- suffers through a horrible past. After her father passed away her mother turned to alcohol and drugs causing her to become a cold, bitter and abusive parent. Living in a home full of anger and hate, Joud turned to her one passion in order to find some sort of release-boxing.
Boxing helped Joud become a stronger person, it helped her become the person who she wanted to be, a person that her father would be proud of. Due to her skill in the sport, she was able to take boxing as a professional career. However, as she was rising in fame, her mother-the person who plagued and emotionally scarred her from when she was younger-comes back to try and become 'a proper family'. Burning with hurt and rage Joud has to deal with the fact that the monster that ruined her is now asking to be brought back into her life as a family. But, the memories of when her father was alive causes her to hesitate-what if her mother changed?
Since our film plot followed the story of a female boxer, we decided to look for gyms in Qatar that would have a boxing ring and other boxing facilities. Our options were a bit limited but we find two places that we could have filmed our boxing scenes at; QGym and Strongbox.
However, there were some problems with both locations. QGym only had a section for its boxing ring, meaning that there would be troubles filming the fight scene as all the rest of the machines, along with the people using those machines would be seen in shots, which would make our film lose its purpose.
Strongbox on the other hand, unfortunately, did not have any boxing ring, only a room where punching bags and other things related to boxing were located, which would help us film the scenes between the coach and the main protagonist. It also had a locker room where we plan to shoot the first few scenes of the film.
Eman had contacted both gyms and received a confirmation to film at both places. However, the owner of QGym had wanted to promote his business at our school in return, which we agreed to do after discussing with our teachers.
The only location we had difficultly looking to film at was the scenes about the protagonists past. We needed a house where we could pull off the required mise en scene. We couldn't find an appropriate place to do so, so towards the end we decided to do it at my house as we were running out of time to film. Although the setting wasn't what we needed it to be, we decided to use it anyway to test it out so we could see how the shots would come out once filmed there.
Shots of the rooms we would use for filming at my house.
Most of the props we needed for filming were already available and really cheap to buy. We split whatever we needed among the four of us so the cost would be evened out. The only problems were the old television and the boxing book. To counter those problems we decided to not show the television during our shots, and instead of buying an actual boxing book we decided to print the cover of one instead and pasted it on another book to make it look realistic.
Sorting out the props was easy to do as there were four of us to split it against. We planned to gather all these things together before filming begins so we could sort out any mistake we found, or make any improvements if necessary.
After discussing with the group, here is a more detailed plan about our costumes. The basic plan/mood board can be found here. The costumes we decided upon suited the stereotypes of some of the characters as it would be simple, less expensive, and would easily present the characters the way we want them to be presented.
Following are the examples of how I personally envision the clothes for each characters to look like.
The mother would be dressed in tattered clothing, showing her lack of concern towards her overall appearance. Her clothes would be comfy to wear with holes ripped in random places to show off their poorness. The pictures above are how I imagine her clothes; soft home wear along with a cardigan on top to complete the look.
The coach would appear during the boxing match (and shortly during the training scene) where he will be dressed in a formal attire; a white polo button up with black trousers and leather shoes.
During the training scene with the main protagonist he would be wearing the stereotypical normal gym clothes, and would be equipped with normal boxing training gear.
The men that would bring the news of the protagonist's father's death would be dressed in full military suits, following the stereotypes normally shown in media when the news of a dead soldier is brought back home to their family.
The clothes worn by the protagonist's younger self would not only be old, but mismatched as well to show her mother's lack of attention towards what her own daughter does. The mismatching clothes would also help to represent the younger one's innocence as she would not know how to properly dress herself, which would show the neglect. The colour red is symbolic in the film. It will be the colour of the bow the younger one wears during her scenes, and it will be the colour of the boxing gloves the older one will use during her fights. The bow is something gifted to the younger one before he leaves for his soldier duties, which is why the colour itself is treasured so much, as along with that fact it also symbolises the anger felt by the protagonist along with all the hard work that led her up to becoming a boxer.
The scenes in which the protagonist is about to go for her fight, I imagine her wearing what the model on the right wears, as it is another stereotype shown in boxing movies. During the match however, I imagine her dressed in the clothes on the left. Although female boxers wear something differently Eman, who is playing as the main protagonist, would not be able to wear something like that as it is inappropriate in our culture. Due to that, fully covering clothes will be worn by her in the fighting scenes.
