Exhaustion of goodwill

I spent another day on editing. In between, when the electricity was gone, I walked outside for water and made some food. Despite all of these forced breaks, I pieced together the entire sindhi film. Work began on king’s court, which is the largest and most complex backdrop thus far. It took a while to finalize the design and figure out the best approach for creating it.My friend Ustad Anb Jogi (composer and music director of “Risalo”) was supposed to come to Lahore, but I had not heard from him. During one break, I called his number and his brother answered. I was told that he had two heart attacks and was in the hospital in Hyderabad. Amid all the work, life just seems to happen. I felt sick and worried about my friend. My mind raced with thoughts on what I could do. In the past I have run campaigns, but they are very difficult and take a good deal of time. It is also not good to exhaust those who trust and support you by constantly trying to drum up funds. I want to use those generous bits of support to create self sustaining ways to raise future funds, rather than exhaust people's goodwill.I can only wait to see what the situation is.

Do I really need that bit?

I spent another day just editing music. I focused a lot on sur Karaayal, which features Jamaluddin Faqir. I have to listen to each bit of music and see where I can trim a bit, but not destroy the flow and then match that in the Urdu version as best I can. Nothing can be precious and anything can be cut in service of the story. That means there are entire sections that are being removed where I do not feel that there is a need for more time within the film to explore a particular moment.

Editing and back to Landa

After editing until 4am, I slept for 6 hours and then woke up again. I liked the sound of the section I had been working on. I keep switching between sections that I am working on, to keep from getting exhausted. The smaller sections are very rewarding to work on after spending days on the longer ones as I can get it put together a lot more quickly. So I played back Sur Kalyan, the introduction of the film as we ate another breakfast by Umar.He was the first to hear the Sindhi mix. It’s not finished yet, but I have a good idea of the length and all the pieces are in place with a bit of mixing. We looked over a king’s court design I had made and then head to the Landa Bazaar to pick up cloth so that Umar can start sewing it.

Editing all day

I spent the day editing music. There are so many pieces to this thing. The recordings are long, but I have to make sure that I keep them as short as possible. Ideally, I want to cut down the main stories to between 25 and 30 minutes each and the shorter pieces down to 8 to 15 minutes. I don’t want it to feel like a music video, where the shots are stretched longer than they should be, just to fill time for the music. The narrative drives the pace of the story, which is why I recorded music based on the story boards that I set to rough audio while planning the film.This is it. I have to get each of these many steps done before I can go home and I can’t lose momentum or sacrifice on quality now.

A delcious meal

The next morning we all got up early and head toward the airport in the van taxi from the night before. I haven’t been out when the sun is rising in a while and it was quite beautiful. We said our goodbyes to Kristeen and then head back home. It is a weird feeling to not have her here, but she’s headed back home to work on her own project.I poured myself into work. Umar made us breakfast and I spent the day organizing and editing music for “Risalo”. There are hours and hours of tapes to piece together and edit. It is one of those things where you just have to get in there, be stubborn and get it done. Once it is all sorted and synchronized, I can focus on the art of it. For now it is all about finding the pieces, seeing if something is missing and lining up each of the three tapes that were recording simultaneously to get 6 separate audio tracks to work with.The electricity keeps going and my laptop will only run for so long before I am forced to take a break. On one such break, I walked down the street and picked up a bag full of vegetables. It is odd to walk around without Kristeen.I put the bag of vegetables on the table and fell asleep in the room for a bit. Later, I woke up and got right to editing. Then a friend dropped by and Umar and he were cooking. I stepped out of the room and sure enough the okra had been cut and was being cooked. His friend even took out some of the meat that neighbors and friends had dropped by on Eid and added that to the mix.All I did was wash some cilantro and pluck the leaves, and we had a delicious meal.

Printing...

We went to visit a friend for lunch, then visited another friend in Bhatti (in the old city). Kristeen said her goodbyes to friends as we had to relatives days ago. I needed to print out her ticket information. Sometimes simple tasks like this can be very challenging. I had put a pdf file on a usb and thought I’d print it whenever we were near a print shop. No one I know has a printer.So, in the evening, while visiting our friend Mohsin and his family, I walked with his brother all around Bhatti, Mochi and Lohari gates of the walled city. Shops were closed or without electricity. One shop had a printer, but no paper. So we walked down several lanes and picked up a couple of sheets of paper, then head back to the shop. After much struggle, the guy could not get his printer to print. The shop was rather odd. I don’t see how anyone can earn a living from it. There was a lot of garbage in the shop including discarded plastic wrap from soda bottles. There was a freezer with soda bottles and a pile of sodas outside of it. There were all kinds of odd, random bits of things amid the dusty garbage. There were a few cel phone chargers and headphones, as well as dusty, empty boxes for electronics. A cannibalized security camera without a casing hung from the ceiling, but it is doubtful that it worked. Outside the shop was a beat up looking soft ice cream machine. Inside, three young men sat around behind the counter, surfing the net, looking at their phones and just hanging out.After that, we decided to forget about printing it. Sitting with Mohsin and his family was nice. His mother is so loving. She treats Kristeen like her own daughter. We had some nice daal and rice at her place and our friend Mohsin is slowly getting better after injuring his eye. On the way out, one of Mohsin’s brothers helped us negotiate a good rate with a taxi van outside Lohari. He even dropped us home so he would know where to get us in the morning.

Nankana Sahib

We head out to Laria Ada, the crazy bus stand of Lahore to wait for our friend Umar. It took some time to coordinate. Eventually we met up and then walked all the way down the long line of buses, down the street, past buildings asking for the Nankana Sahib bus until we reached the end of the bus stand and boarded the right bus.We passed through the dirty, smog filled parts of the city, before hitting the countryside. There were green fields all around and from between them we made our way to Nankana Sahib, the birthplace of Guru Nanak, the first Guru of Sikhism. I had been there about 7 years ago.We started at the Janamashtan Gurdwara, situated on the site of Guru Nanak’s family home, and the place of his birth. There is a great deal of work being down on the Gurdwara. The new front section is beautiful. We walked around and learned about some of the history of the place. Afterwards we went to the langar hall and enjoyed some daal and rice followed by some tea.We went to pick up our shoes from the little stall where they are kept and the two little boys there escorted us to the restrooms. While we were waiting they shared a lot of information about their religion, making connections to similar practices in Islam. They asked me what I did and their eyes lit up when I explained that I work on cartoons. Their favorite is Chota Bheem. They were quite proud that they watched it and would not even let the rest of the family watch any serials when their show was on. They were brothers, named Gurjit (1st grade) and Dildar (3rd grade). Dildar made a point of explaining that he was not the Dildar who is a famous dancer or something just to make certain I would not get confused. I did not know who that was, but appreciated the clarification.They had a lot of information to share and I started joking around with them because they were so darned cute. They told me about a Gurdwara that we could see the top of off in the distance. It was the place where Guru Nanak played as a child. I often had to repeat things between Kristeen and the kids so that both sides could understand. I told Kristeen that the kids told me that Guru Nanak used to play as a child on the site of the Gurdwara close by and that the children had taken all of his toys home and now there were animals there. Kristeen wasn’t quite convinced but the kids started to open up and let their silly selves out. They told us all the kinds of things that adults would probably not mention. How someone had died in the pool before because it is actually very deep in the middle. They asked us about each other. When Kristeen spoke in clear Urdu to them, they just looked at her confused then looked at me to explain.They invited us to come to their home in case we wanted to drink a soda, but they lived very very far away. In fact, it would take 10 minutes by rickshaw. They studied Gurmukhi in the morning at the Gurdwara, followed by school and then they did their seva keeping track of the shoes at the Gurdwara before heading home. They were really fun little kids.Their father asked if the kids had bothered us as we were heading out and I told him how wise and sweet they were. On the way out we spoke to the man in charge of the Gurdwaras there before heading down the street to explore some more Gurdwaras. The town has 7 Gurdwaras, each built on the site of a significant event in the life of the Gurus of Sikhism. Most are related to Guru Nanak. There is the spot where he was born, where he played, where he fed some starving faqirs and talked religion under a tree rather than spending money to buy goods as his father had told him. That lead to his father spanking him under a tree that still stands there.There was another Gurdwara on a spot where he was herding cattle one day. He took a nap and a cobra opened its hood to shield his face from the sun. A muslim king named Rai Bhaloor saw this and realizing that he was a man of God, gifted him the land that is Nankana Sahib today. It was fun to visit each place along the way back to the bus. We stayed behind a bit longer than we should have. By the time we made it to the bus stand, the last bus to Lahore was packed. We managed to hop into a little wagon that would take us part of the way there. It was crazy how many people they packed in. We made our way to Ferozpur. From there we let a few more packed buses go by, before we found a more reasonably packed bus where we could squeeze into the back seats.The rest of the ride was long and bumpy. We hopped off and took the metro a few stops down and then a Qing Qi the rest of the way. I guess we were lucky to make our way back so…easily.

Shahdarah

I am more than a little afraid.

naughtiest kid

People waiting for boat across Ravi river.

Bara Dari

Steep climb to Bara Dari

Ravi River

Mehboob’s brother and us.

Mehboob and family

Shahdara neighborhood.

Child wrestles control of Qing Qi from hepless driver.

As the multi day Eid festivities continued, Kristeen and I hopped on the metro to visit Shahdarah. We met with my good friend Mehboob and his family. It had been just over five years since we last met, though I had kept in touch over the phone.Mehboob had worked as a security guard at the NCA hostel back when I first met him. He and I became good friends during my stay there. Each night the electricity would go, and I would sit with him for hours, talking and sharing. I had visited his family back then as well and learned a great deal about him and his very positive outlook on life and the work he put in to making it better for his family.So it was, that years later, Kristeen and I met up with his family over home made aloo gobi (potato and cauloflower) parathas in Shadhra. We spent the day chatting with the family, visiting Bara Dari (a Mughal era garden along the Ravi river), Noor Jehan (Mughal Queen) and Jehangir (Mughal King) tombs. It is great to see a lot of restoration work being done on these tombs. I remember visiting about 11 years ago, and there seemed to be no sign of preserving these sites.At night, we had some rabri faluda.

Bhatti at night

mural by my cousins

We had stayed the night with my aunt. In the morning, we visited other relatives in the neighborhood. One of my mamus (uncles) shared a bit about my great great grandfather who died young around 28 and great grandfather who lived to about 81, moved to nawabshah from Lahore and bought land there.After visiting another uncle, Kristeen and I got a ride back with my cousin Sarmad. After some rest, we visited our friend Mohsin whose eye was injured a while back. His parents were so sweet. His father; a tailor, had lived and worked all over the middle east. It was fun to see their wedding album, and the photos of their youth. There were so many fantastic photos of Mohsin’s mother dressed up in the very fashionable outfits that her husband had made for her with children in tow.

Qurbani

After another day of digitizing DV tapes, I spent the next three days editing footage. There is a lot of work to do before I can create another draft of storyboards to prepare to shoot the puppetry portions of “Risalo”.I took a break from work on Eid, to visit relatives. Kristeen and I stepped out into the narrow alley in front of our friend’s place we were staying at. There were animals waiting to be sacrificed line up and down the lane. There was a large cow, and lots of waste to the right, so we walked the opposite way to get to the next lane and walk out to the main road where my relatives had come to pick us up.The qurbani or sacrifice had already begun in the next lane. We walked past a frightened cow and through the blood of another as we made our way to the street. It is all pretty terrible, but not all that different than every day meat consumption. I mean, the only real difference is that this is in your street and you see it.We made it to the car, then spent the day in Mughalpura with relatives, good food, plenty of it vegetarian for Kristeen. In the evening we went to Guddi Khala’s for dinner. Qurbani is an annual thing here, and a lot of the meat is distributed to those in need as well as relatives. It is a huge spectacle here because it is done out in the open like this.

Random adventure

It was raining this morning. Kristeen stayed home. I grabbed the umbrella and head out after breakfast. As usual, I crossed the street and waited to flag down a passing Qing-Qi (front of a motorcycle frankensteined into a multiple passenger vehicle with a carriage in back). It is cheap at 10 cents and gets me to the main road where I can hop on the metro bus (20 cents) to get the rest of the way to the office.The day began with a sense of stress regarding finishing this project and financially making it back to LA and beginning all over again. Out in the rain, I let go of that feeling, as I watched vehicles go past. A few Qing-Qis passed, but they were all full. A young guy on a motorbike pulled up. He saw me holding my umbrella, waiting. He asked where I was going and I said to the main road. So I hopped on and shielded the two of us with the umbrella. It turned out that he was going to Model Town. My final destination, Kalma Chowk was on the way so instead of hopping off at the metro we kept going. We took the same route that the metro bus does, but the bus is several stories above the street on its own platform. Today, in the rain, I got to see the view from below. It was a lot of fun zipping around traffic in the rain. We chat a bit on the way and eventually I reached the chowk and hopped off. That little happenstance changed my mood and the day was good again.I walked the rest of the way with my umbrella, which I had tucked away 15 minutes into the ride when I could no longer hold it as we picked up speed. Sometimes it is fun to slow down and look around. Todays task would not be easy. I needed to deal with the most difficult mini dv tapes that were dropping frames like crazy and those that had some sections that needed to be patched in by digitizing again. I counted 23 tapes successfully completed last night, with a good number close to finishing and just a few undigitized at all. I’m getting there, thanks to friends at CheckPost who have opened their doors and facilities to me.When I got home, Kristeen and Umar had made some pasta with homemade sauce. Now that is a great day. Why does Umar have a biker light on his head? There's no light in the kitchen of course...

Digitizing tapes, but here's a "New" Anarkali Bazaar

Digitizing tapes, but here's a "New" Anarkali Bazaar. It's not new, more like, less ancient than the rest of Anarkali.

12 down, 13 lingering and 10 to go

just like reading at Barns and Nobles.

We were going to go out for some ice cream and the sunday book fair, but it ended up raining. It was nice to rest and figure out how many tapes have been successfully digitized and how many need to be patched due to dropped frames, versus tapes that have not been digitized at all. Usually this is very frustrating, but today I am just grateful for the progress that has been made. 12 tapes have been successfully digitized. 13 tapes need to be patched and 10 need to be digitized completely. Well, that’s a start.We visited my friend at a used book shop then grabbed some ice cream at Chaman together.

Saturday

I went back and digitized some more tapes on Saturday. This is my life until I finish this step. I got a few more done successfully. After many hours of digitizing, the computer was understandably needed for office work. That was a reprieve for me. I left a few hours earlier than usual, and I needed the rest. The music itself is really great. It took even more pain to get it recorded, so I don’t want to compromise on the digitizing process. Dropped frames create noticeable breaks not only in the video, but more importantly in the audio track. So, often, I lose half an hour or more each time I try a tape that fails miserably. Yet that same tape might work another day or even in another machine..I hope.

Express card to nowhere...

I took the metro to Qalma Chowk as usual, then hopped on a rickshaw to Hafeez Center, the place to get electronics as far as computer and phone related things in Lahore. I started in the basement looking for a Mini DV head cleaner tape and an express card with Firewire ports. Yes, this is really boring nonsense, but this is what I am up to.The process is, walking from shop to shop, asking about the items I am looking for and usually spending a while to explain what those things are, followed by a quick shake of the head ‘no’ or being directed to some other shop. I went to 2 floors of the building, which is quite large and filled with shops. Without becoming disheartened by the majority of shopkeepers who just hear the name of some item that sounds odd and shake their heads and look away, I managed to get both items. I was quite tired by the time I had them, but here was something more I could try. This has been my process with pretty much every step of working on “Risalo”. I struggle and try so many options for every bit of every step of the process, until it gets done.I went back to my friends at CheckPost who have given me a spot to try and wrestle with this problem. Mansoor’s camera and one of the computers there are the only things that have worked thus far, but it is a slow process, and I don’t want to rely on that computer being available. It is for studio use so I don’t want to occupy it when it is needed for work. I don’t want these friends to regret their kindness towards me. So while one tape was digitizing on that machine, I was busy trying to get this express card with firewire ports working on my own laptop so that it could be used for digitizing. That involved reading a ton of web pages and trying everything I could think to do. It did not work on the mac and when I booted to windows, it did not work there either. There are some incompatibilities at work here. I guess I will return it.Besides that, I went to my friend Diep ji’s office and she had brought another mini DV camera for me to use. I looked through the bag of cables but the camera or battery charger cables were not there. It is ridiculous how many cables we end up accumulating due to phones and different technology almost always using unique types of plugs. What a waste. Yet no matter how many we have, that new item always uses something different.So, I had a second camera, but would need a cable. Ok. This could still be helpful. We also noticed that one of the PCs in the room had a firewire port and I could use that to digitize. That would be very helpful. I even tried another monstrous DV deck that Sohail sahib had sent over for my benefit. Unlike the last one, my test tape did not get stuck in it. It even forwarded and played, but of course no signal was going to the computer. This is what makes it so tough. There are so many steps, and you can find success at many of them, but then it often fails at some point and you waste a lot of time trying to figure it out and make it work. What choice do I have? I have to keep trying.I’ve been digitizing tapes, this week, but there has been a lot of wasted time due to some tapes skipping so much that I can’t use the footage. Ones that skip a few times here and there can still be used, as I go back and digitize an overlapping section to patch in. This is insane. That was the day.

Qing Qiiiiiiiiiiiiii

much like thanksgiving for turkeys...things won't end well for the beautiful new neighbor in our street

I woke up and for the first time in a while, I did not have a feeling of dread. Often some lingering stuff from my dreams leaves me a bit down when I wake up. There is a lot going on and I think those thoughts are wreaking havoc in my mind. Today was different. I woke with some energy and a renewed excitement to take this piece forward, even if only an inch at a time.

Still going

view from the daily qing qi ride

that sticker is awesome

the gear that somewhat works

hello again…July?

Government College, view from the metro stop

view from the daily qing qi ride

I spent the day digitizing dv tapes. 2 or 3 digitized fine, but the rest have dropped frames which means when you play them back there are clearly spots missing. It is frustrating to spend the day waiting an hour for each tape to digitize, with most of the results unusable. The music is really beautiful and I don’t want to let technical issues prevent me from showcasing it in the best way possible. Too much work has gone into it to not take the time to figure this out and make it right.I also met a puppeteer who was working on the Pakistani version of Sesame Street when that was happening. My friend Yaser also dropped by and offered his help and advice on the film. There is a lot to do and it is quite overwhelming, but if I take a step back and put the pieces together one at a time, this could be quite amazing.Afterwards, we caught up with some friends over dinner, which was a much needed break from struggling with technical issues.

The pressure is off

So, it turned out that the “client” was not the client. There were at least 3 levels of approvals, with no direction or connection in between. The pressure came off. We were just testing to see if this was something we could do. We could not. It would go to someone else if it was going to be done at all, as that was also in quesiton.The whole commercial was still being edited and drastically changed at that as it turned out. I should never have stepped into this. Finally, the pressure was off. After seeing the process, I will stay away. I will manage some other way. Earlier I had put together some courses to teach for an online university here in Lahore. They had sent me materials, then I promptly sent them revisions and put together course notes, only to have them completely drop it after I put in all that effort. That was another potential source of income to help keep things going that fell through. We were set to schedule recording dates for the lectures the following week, and then I never heard back. I think I am done with trying to earn while I am here. Let's just get this project and leave, even if I am completely broke by the end of it. I need my energy to make the best film possible, not all this other stuff.I met a Pakistani American DP who is working here in Pakistan thanks to Sohail introducing me. We got to talking about my project and some of the challenges and how he might approach such a shoot. That was nice. I will send some follow up questions and see what I can learn.Starting tomorrow I can digitize the dv tapes, thanks to Sohail and Mansoor offering me use of their computer and camera as no combination of cables, vtr or camera seemed to work with my laptop. I walked through another fire and there is a glimmer of hope on the other end, and probably a whole lot more fires.

Where are we going again?

The client came in to look at the cloud shot and offered a vastly different direction to the many I had been chasing down on previous days. I started the shot once again, virtually from scratch. Another day was spent finessing this version. It always amazes me how extra time magically appears. Do we have a week for all shots or somehow a week on this shot? Those types of things also help determine which approach will be taken to do a task. I was starting to think that volumetric 3D clouds would be the better approach, though I did not think I had adequate time to get up to speed on the tools and with the added level of complexity, there was a good chance I would be brought down by long render times (meaning you have one shot to get it right, if that) and there are so many deep layers of options and tools (meaning there are a million ways to mess up).Still, I did what I do. I pushed the whole day on the new direction, using the tools that I knew I could deliver with and handed in a new version before I left at night.

Sunday

I’d been dragging my wife through the misery of this work and public transportation in Pakistan every day. She took a break today. I feel horrible on all levels. I had suggested that it might be better for someone else to take the shot as nothing I had created seemed to be in the unclear direction that the client wanted. With quick turn around projects, it is important to make decisions to switch tasks, methods or even artists quickly to save time. That is why I pushed to knock out a version to show what I could do for this cloud shot on the very first day.Still, I was being given a chance to keep pushing, so I needed to do just that. I guess they turn off the elevator on the weekend, so I walked up 9 flights of stairs after the usual, dehumanizing metro experience. I started fresh and created several more versions based on additional suggestions. My job is to give the client what they want. Unfortunately, I don’t know what that is, and I have doubts that I can provide it.This has replaced my own work and no one is happy with the results or clear on what needs to be changed or willing to get buy off on movement and positioning of the clouds before we move on to finishing the look. Another bad decision on my part. I was given this opportunity because as my project has run so long and met with such great difficulty, I clearly need to earn some to keep going.