Segment 1: Location

Now that the story board is ready, we have to film our shots. We our beginning the documentary with introducing the primary location i.e. the city of Lahore. Thus, we decided to film the main historic monuments of Lahore i.e. the citadel of Lahore, the Shahi Qilla (aka Lahore Fort) and the Badshahi Masjid.

So we took the storyboard and the handy cam and went to the Walled City Lahore, where these great monuments are located. Ifrah didnt want to do the camera work so I filmed the shots while Ifrah explained them to me as they were written in the storyboard.
The structure of the Lahore Fort is so huge that i couldnt fit the whole of it in the frame. However, I crossed the barbed wire, securing the Hazuri Bagh and somehow managed to capture most of it.

It wasnt easy to shoot how we had planned. We shot each shot 4 to 5 times until we got it perfectly.

This was my first try to take this shot. I was trying to pan it slowly to give it some time to show properly in the video, but the pan wasn't smooth at all which looked inappropriate. Also, as i was filming, the pedestrians showing in the frame interrupted the shot. Thus, the first try was clearly a fail.

This was my second try at this shot. This time there were no pedestrians in the shot and it was relatively better than the previous one. However, the pan movement was still jerky. So we decided to try again until we could get it right.

This time I panned it quickly to keep the movement steady with minimum jerks possible. Fortunately, i achieved a smooth pan, however, it was a bit fast. But we thought it was good enough for it had to appear only for a few seconds at the most.

Next, we moved on to film the other great monument, the Badshahi Masjid, which is situated opposite the Fort.

We wanted to film the Masjid, but the security guards didnt let us take the handy cam and the tripod inside. So we shot the entrance of the Masjid instead. There wasnt much space in front of the structure so I took the shot from the side. Coincidentally, it was exactly how we had drawn it on the storyboard. 

This was the first attempt. The shot was fine except for the electricity pole that messed it up at end.

This was the second attempt. The shot was interrupted by the pedestrian's head walking by, so we had to take it again.

This was the third and successful attempt. The pan movement wasnt too jerky so it was a pretty much acceptable shot.

Posted by Shahbano Tariq