What I learnt from making a war drama set in Afghanistan
Day One is one of the thesis films for my Masters in editing at the American Film Institute (AFI) Conservatory. AFI has six disciplines - directing, producing, editing, screenwriting, production design and cinematography. Members from each discipline worked in teams to make 27 thesis films in my year. Our team members were Michael Steiner (production), Henry Hughes (direction), Kee Kyung (cinematography) and Benjamin K Cox (production design). I was the editor.
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| Poster of Day One, which won the Annual Student Academy Gold Award 2015. |
The experience
It was a tremendous learning curve. I was involved in the pre-production stages discussing the story at the script level, right through helping out during the actual production in the sets and then spending months in the editing room cutting the movie. The opportunity of working with my incredibly talented classmates and the time discussing and honing the story with our director were highlights.
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| At the set of Day One. |
From idea to movie
The film is based on our director, Henry's experiences in the US military in Afghanistan, where he did two tours. He was inspired by his interpreter and their experiences serving together. Henry was also the screenwriter.
The actual shooting of the film took a total of eight days giving us some 14 hours of "takes" and "re-takes" to work with. Editing these 14 hours to 25 minutes and the post production adding sound, colour and visual effects meant it took us a full year to complete.
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| Film crew and actors at the set. |
We improvised
On the one hand, any movie faces the constraints of budget and time. This was especially so because our student thesis film had a fixed budget of 65,000 USD. Within this strict budget, we had to pay for the set build, rent locations, get permits, etc. This also put a limit on how many scenes one could shoot or the scale of the sets on location. We had to improvise. We were fortunate to get professional actors like Navid Negahban.
Our production designer, Benji did a fantastic job replicating an Afghan village to give an authentic feel to the film within these budgetary constraints. We were supported by AFI's Editing Facility, by Skywalker Sound (owned by George Lucas), Andrew Francis at Sixteen19 for Color and our composer Omar Fadel for the post production. The credit goes to our producer, Michael for making it all happen.
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| Team Day One. |
Great story
On the other hand, Henry's story itself was a very rich and layered one with compelling characters, subplots and a range of themes covering military occupation, terrorism, gender relations, innocence and guilt. Editorially speaking, my biggest challenge was staying focused on the main plot while doing justice to the characters and subplots within the 25 minute duration, all while keeping the viewer engaged. The film is about a serious topic, and it was important to give the viewers some breathing space to process the scenes as they happened.
Life after the award
I have been overwhelmed by the response to the award and the interest people have taken in the story. Day One will now be eligible to be nominated in the short film category in the Academy Awards next year. Personally, I stay focused on my current projects. Going ahead, I hope to work with great filmmakers and on stories that inspire on a wide variety of subjects and keep challenging myself.
Sound advice
Great filmmakers have said, that if you want to make movies, just go out there and make them. Having said that, the right environment is important. I have been lucky to study in a school like AFI where one is exposed to real-life filmmaking from the top professionals of the field, many of whom are our professors. I would add that it is really helpful to find people who can give you constructive criticism.