Pre-production Stage

After we got our tutors approval, we started to plan the budget and the team members required to travel to India. We agreed that three persons only can go to India: I as a director, production manager and sound technician, Omran as a producer, a film researcher and an interpreter and my colleague Marius as a cinematographer. We estimated the budget as 3000 sterling pound to cover the cost of vaccines for the three of us and getting the visas as well as tickets, accommodation and food for the period of our stay in India which is three weeks!, that is because I need enough time to choose an interesting and suitable person for our film. I also need to study this person before starting to shoot the film and decide what I want to shoot from this blind person as well as studying his place of living. We must first search for good shots to take for him and determine a complete list of these shots before starting.

  We tried to get support from companies or charities that help the blind but in vain so we thought to present our idea on “Kickstarter” web site and ask for support from all those who like our idea and its noble message to show the life of misery those people live. We made a short video in which we present the idea and objective of the film, we also explained where the costs are utilized, and hence we wrote the plan and its ideas completely. We start to publish this in our page on Facebook, twitter and whatsApp to get financial support from our people and friends. The idea was applauded from all. Actually, we could collect all the amount of fund needed at the exact time. We started to prepare for our travel, got the tickets, bout vaccines and other equipments. We got all what we want from the university loan store. Unfortunately, the university did not provide us with specific equipment like special lenses we use to shoot wide landscapes. I discussed this matter with my colleague the cinematographer who assured that the university does not usually provide such things. We decided to hire lenses from outside the university and on our account, not that the department manager offered to give us financial support to buy the lenses. The cost of the lenses was too high to buy so we decided to hire them from India, we searched for them on the internet and could find them and discovered that we would save a lot of money by hire them from India.

   The day of travel has come and we were enthusiastic and eager to start work. We had lots of questions like what may we face there? , how the experience will be? What is India like? We took the plane full of hope and enthusiasm!