Baitullah: Short Film
Assistant Director
Baituallah was a short film project adressing the atrocities of child labor. It was directed by Jitendra Rai. My role as an assistant director was to make sure the process from casting to reccee to filming was smooth sailing. The director had to only worry about the creative vision while I took care of all the logistics.
Introduction
When I met Jitendra, he had been working on this script for a few months. I wanted his mentorship to guide me through the process of shooting a commercial live action film. There were multiple scripts for films, short films and ads that he had in the pipeline, so the idea was never to work specifically on this project but to support him and learn through all these different ideas.
He was planning to shoot this film by the end of year so we pivoted all our focus on this project and I started out helping him with the initial step outline.
Initial Step outline
First Recce
We knew the film would require multiple side actors doing various day to day tasks. To keep the authenticity we went around the Muhammad Ali road area and interacted with numerous such people, from people working in a Humam, to a lady selling chickpea plants to be fed to a cow and a band of tailors. I was tasked to make a list of all these people and their contacts.
Look board: Muhammad Ali Road
I also created a look board to give a visual reference of how the film would appear.
Shot Breakdown
We worked on a shot breakdown based on the reccees and step outline. I listed down the locations along with the required actors and props for the scene.
Shoot Schedule
Once we had a shoot date in place, I worked out the schedule for the film. It was a 48 hour shoot. My role as an assistant Director was too make sure that the crew is on time and we manage to wrap according to the schedule. Since it was a guirella shoot and most of the people were not actors it was important to be very punctual with the shoot.
Release and Response
Baitullah did multiple rounds of festivals winning numerous awards globally. It was later released on the "Humara Movies" YouTube channel on children's day.
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