Segment 2: The Street Palmist

Before we begin with our discussion on the topic; Palmistry, we thought it would be better to introduce it to the audience first. We wanted to show a stereotypical perspective that majority of us have about Palmistry in this country. So we went to the place where all these "fake" fortune tellers or charlatan are found. We were surprised to see so many of them sitting on the footpath with their boards and stuff. 

 THE CLIENT: Hamza Khan

        As we had to shoot the scene, we took a friend of ours, Hamza Khan, with us to be the client. Hamza could also be seen in another part of our documentary where we took the public opinion. Hamza was dressed in shalwar kameez to represent the local majority which avails such services. 

THE MAKING

This was a test shot. We were checking the zoom of the handy cam. The zoom button when pushed, zoomed in or out very quickly. So in order to zoom out slowly, it had to be controlled carefully to keep the zoom smooth and steady. The surface was uneven, so we had to adjust the tripod properly to avoid any jerky movement or a canted shot. 

This shot is similar to the first test shot. We recorded it again to ensure we were doing it right. However, we used this shot in our video because the hand gestures of the palmist give a more realistic impression to the viewer. 

This is an over the shoulder shot of the palmist just as we have drawn on our storyboard. It was a fairly easy shot. We managed to zoom out properly in our first attempt. 

The knob of the tripod was too tight, which caused friction and irregularity in the pan movement. Also, Hamza Khan, the palmist's client, turned his head around which caused the entire shot to be certainly unnatural. 

The second attempt at this shot was not as much a fail. The pan movement was smooth and steady. So it was an acceptable shot. 

We wanted to take a shot of the client's hands so that his lines could be shown clearly. In this particular shot, Hamza's hand was half covered by the palmist's hand and so the lines were not prominent.

This is a pan movement to show the client's face, but Hamza smiled by mistake

and the camera didn't pan smoothly so we couldn't use this shot.

We zoomed out from Hamza's close up to mid shot. The way he nods while listening to the palmist seems very natural so we decided to use this shot.

We took this shot to introduce the palmist by showing his board. However, we used only first 2 seconds in slow motion.

This shot was unnecessary. The angle was not correct as Hamza's hand could not be seen clearly.

We tracked the camera from top to bottom but it didn't seem to work because it took quite a few seconds to cover the subject (Hamza's head to hand). We couldn't use such a long shot because of out time limit.

This shot was not very hard to capture and we nailed it at out first try.

This is the ending shot of the first scene. Hamza was not in the middle of the frame plus the camera did not zoom out at the right time.

Posted by Shahbano and Ifrah