makingstillwithyou

[makingstillwithyou]

blog post masterlist

a foreword:

the birth of an idea | pairing up for the project

fleshing out ideas | the general concept

thinking logistics & locations | deciding on the details

fallen-through plans | the end-of-year culminating stressfully

starting from scratch | the decisions we make & the consequences they beget

assembling the dream team | the decisions we make & the consequences they beget

a fruitful first shoot day | a tale of perseverance despite the odds

a tiring second shoot day | racing against the clock

an unexpected message | pairing up for the project 2.0

technical difficulties | into the editing bat-cave we go

slow descent into madness | and finally escaping the editing bat-cave

still with you | a music video

uploading the video & making the instagram (promotional website) | the last stretch

making the digipak & finishing up the instagram page | finalising it all

digipak (minor task)

creative critical reflection

navigation

[makingstillwithyou]

navigation

the music video (major task)

creative critical reflection

the instagram page (promotional website - minor task)

the digipak (minor task)

blog post masterlist

[makingstillwithyou]

Creative Critical Reflection

How do your products represent social groups or issues?

‘Still With You’ is a music video highlighting love and longing, and how they are both one and the same, more often than not. With such themes, it is at its core an effort to highlight the romantic lyrics of the song ‘Still With You’ and does not inherently represent any social groups, but there is a social issue that runs through the entire narrative of the song and music video and is specifically represented in it: the COVID-19 pandemic.

‘Still With You’ is a song released by music group BTS’ member Jungkook on June 4th, 2020 at the height of the pandemic and consequent lockdown worldwide. The song’s lyrics (self-written by the singer himself) therefore express his feelings of distress and detachment from the world felt universally by everyone during the challenging time that was the lockdown. The lyrics also poeticize the singer’s desire to see his fans again and his resolution to ‘run towards’ them as soon as the situation allows him to.

These feelings of longing to see your loved ones again and desire to be out in the world were truly universally felt by everyone during the pandemic, and so when making the music video for this song, I decided to make sure that the core concept of the video was in line with this (since relatability is an important factor to be considered when making any sort of media that one wishes is desirable to the general public).

In my music video for ‘Still With You’, the narrative I’ve constructed is as such: the unnamed main character has been separated from his beloved due to Covid (and although it is never specified in the music video, there is a finality to the main character’s grief that makes it easy to assume that his beloved has passed away- gone somewhere he can never follow).

Due to this separation, the main character is seen grieving his lost love and visiting the places he went to with her as he reminisces about when they were together. Throughout this, an obvious visual indication of the pandemic is that the main character wears a face mask in the parts of the video shot in the ‘present’ and no masks are seen in the ‘flashback’ portions of the video.

I also made sure to shoot the ‘present’ scenes so that no other people could be seen in the shot except for the main character, both to highlight his loneliness, and the pandemic.

How do the elements of your production work together to create a sense of ‘branding’?

My music video ‘Still With You’ was originally constructed with the intention of having two very specific colour palettes that would be used throughout it and help contrast the two time periods shown in the music video. These colour palettes were initially supposed to be cool blues and greens for the present-day shots and warm yellows and oranges for the flashback scenes.

Ultimately, the way we shot the video, this strong contrast between both types of shots was hard to maintain, and so the VCR effect was instead used to easily differentiate between both, but even then, we ended up with three main colours from all the shots in the music video.

When I initially began working on the title card of the music video and then the instagram page and digipak, I wanted to make sure to pick colours directly from the video to make sure that all the different aspects related to this ‘Still With You’ project worked together well and created a sense of branding.

In order to do this, I went through the finalised music video and picked out my favourite shots by screenshotting them. Following are the key ones I decided to use:

It was from these, and my original title card (also inserted below) that I picked out my main colours and pictures to be used in the branding of the project.

Apart from the colour scheme, one element of my production that is very important in creating a sense of homogeneity and branding for the project is the loopy, cursive font used throughout. I used this particular font because being handwritten meant it had imperfections, and yet the care that seemed to be put into writing each letter reminded me of a carefully-written love letter, which felt perfect for this project.

Yet another element of the project that creates a sense of ‘branding’ is the stylised lowercase used across the board in the project. From the blog and instagram page titles to the title card and lyric translations embedded into the music video, lowercase letters are used throughout and really add to the overall vibe and branding of the project.

Furthermore, every aspect of the ‘Still With You’ project is marked with a sense of romance and sentimentality that comes together and really solidifies into a sense of ‘branding’ for it. Overall, whether it be the music video itself, the blog, the instagram page, or the digipak, the sense of branding across all aspects of the production is strong and uniform.

How do your products engage with the audience?

Each and every aspect of ‘Still With You’ as a project is built to engage with the audience, from the relatable and empathy-inducing storyline of the music video to the instagram page that directly engages with the audience.

The storyline of ‘Still With You’, as previously-stated, symbolises longing and love with the backdrop of the pandemic. All of these relatable themes combined with the point-of-view shots in the flashbacks which directly engage the audience by making them feel like they’re part of the narrative and the English translations of the Korean lyrics being shown on screen to help the audience understand, relate to, and engage with the song and music video better all help engage the audience of ‘Still With You’.

The ‘Making Still With You’ instagram page in particular was built so that it engages with the audience in a multitude of ways. From the posts being written in a friendly tone, full of rhetorical questions, emojis, and prompts (such as ‘let us know in the comments!’), to the posts themselves being logo reveals and countdown posts, each revealing a little bit more about the project as the d-day of its release draws near, the instagram page constantly allows the audience to become engaged with the project whether directly (by asking the audience to let us know their thoughts) or indirectly (by counting down and therefore creating a sense of excitement for what is to come).

Another way that the instagram page engages with the audience is by posting links to the music video and reminding the audience to give it a watch- something very important in today’s streaming-dominated industry where online metrics such as views, likes, and streams determine the success of a project (whether the project in question is a film, music video, or just a song).

This instagram marketing campaign of sorts for the ‘Still With You’ music video was made and executed after studying and observing various examples of how music is marketed these days in the industry. The way that I structured the campaign on instagram, making use of the site layout to post pictures that interact as a grid and part of a whole, is a very commonly-used marketing tactic in the industry nowadays since it both looks aesthetically pleasing and allows companies to build hype for the upcoming project by posting countdowns, logo reveals, actor reveals, and even lyric and music video teasers.

These are the various ways in which the products of the ‘Still With You’ project engage with their audience.

How did your research inform your products and the way they use or challenge conventions?

As mentioned previously, a lot of research and observation of the industry has gone into structuring not only the marketing campaign, but every aspect of the ‘Still With You’ project. As mentioned in blog posts for the project, the digipak for ‘Still With You’ required some research so that I could figure out what exactly a digipak is meant to look like and the purpose it serves along with the conventions of digipak designs and then make my own accordingly.

For the music video itself as well, a lot of research informed my overall style of directing, filming, and editing the video. I drew inspiration from a  lot of my favourite existing music videos as well. There’s an editing quirk in the music video at 3:38, for example, where it’s a point-of-view shot (i.e. the main character filming his lover) in which the girl asks the main character to stop filming, covering the camera with her hands, and the video actually cuts out by going black for a second. This was inspired from the ‘G.C.F in Tokyo’ video shot and edited by Jungkook of BTS where I first saw this little editing quirk.

As for conventions, ‘Still With You’ adheres to a lot of music video conventions to create an introspective and romantic atmosphere. An example of this is the fact that there are lipsync shots in the music video, that flashbacks have been marked with point-of-view shots and an old VCR filter that includes a grain effect for an old film-like effect, and that a big chunk of the video has been shot using a projector to create an interesting visual effect. All of these are characteristics and conventions of music videos and examples of them can be found in many popular ones.

Rather than challenge conventions, I’ve deliberately chosen to adhere to them for this project since the natural contrast of the flashback and present-day shots in addition to the lipsync ones make for a video that is interesting and engaging enough that it need not challenge any conventions to stand out for the audience.

This is how my research has informed my products for ‘Still With You’ and how they all adhere to the specific conventions of their genre or product type. 

Overall, ‘Still With You’ has been an incredibly important project to me on a personal level and something I am so ultimately proud of. And of course, since I could not possibly have done it alone, I’m also very grateful to all my friends who helped me film it and Dania, my teammate, for helping me dream up the concept for it in the first place.

~ navigation ~

[makingstillwithyou]

digipak (minor task)

digipak front mockup:

digipak outer packaging:

digipak inner packaging (+CD):

& finally, here’s the designs individually (without the clear / plastic overlay on them to make the mockup look more realistic):

outer packaging designs:

CD art:

[makingstillwithyou]

making the digipak & finishing up the instagram page | finalising it all

the digipak:

the way dania and i had previously talked about, we decided to make separate minor tasks for the portfolio to better show our individual colours and talents. therefore, i began working on the digipak first.

i definitely had to do a fair bit of research going into making the digipak since i wanted to be sure i knew the exact kind of product and outcome desired of me (due to the fact that digipaks aren't exactly a 'thing' anymore, for lack of a better phrase, with the music industry fully relying on digital music streaming platforms to distribute and even sell music rather than actual CDs).

but i believe i ended up with a good understanding of digipaks and their purpose, which helped me in designing my own for 'still with you'.

i based my digipak heavily on the title card sequence of the music video that i had already worked on to create a sense of uniformity between the song and both kinds of its visuals (i.e. the music video and the digipak). therefore, i made sure to use the same cursive, loopy handwritten font and the same red and blue colours for the digipak.

after playing around with a couple different ideas (some a lot more fanciful than others), i eventually settled on a relatively simple but, in my opinion, more impactful design for the digipak.

this is a design i made (and quite liked) but ultimately decided against using:

and following is the final digipak design (including a full mockup of what the CD & its packaging would look like):

digipak front mockup:

digipak outer packaging:

digipak inner packaging (+CD):

& finally, here's the designs individually (without the clear / plastic overlay on them to make the mockup look more realistic):

outer packaging:

CD art:

& that’s all for today!

signing off now,

rida zeeshan siddiqui 🤍

[makingstillwithyou]

uploading the video & making the instagram (promotional website) | the last stretch

even though it has been a long, long day indeed, i just really wanted to get things done as quickly as possible, so i pushed through the fatigue & both uploaded the video:

and made the instagram page that will serve as part of my 'minor tasks' that call for a promotional website to be created for the singer / song:

[makingstillwithyou]

slow descent into madness | and finally escaping the editing bat-cave

dated: 230331

technical difficulties but they got worse:

this past week… has really been something. the reason i call it an ‘editing bat-cave’ is because that’s exactly what i turn my room into when i edit a project- i’ll sit with my laptop and a bottle of water, open up my editing program (filmora 10), and just… disappear into the process until i check the little clock on my laptop and realise it is now six hours later.

from having my (brother’s) laptop shut down at almost regularly-occurring 15 or 20 minute intervals because it couldn’t deal with my editing program and the high-quality footage to scouring the internet for ways to fix the problem and make my editing process just a little bit smoother, it was quite a lot to deal with.

still, i didn’t let all of this affect me and just kept on working- making sure to save my project as often as i could so i wouldn’t lose any progress once the program crashes as per schedule.

starting in earnest:

i whittled my ‘usable footage’ down to 27 minutes of cut footage, and then got to using it to tell the story i wanted to. i actually realised with a start at this point that the footage i had might not be enough for the music video, but since planning another shoot day (even just a small one- an hour or two at most would’ve given me enough time to film the extra couple of shots i wanted for diversity) at this point was practically impossible due to my actors not being available, i just had to try my best to work with what i had.

it took me a couple of days, but i finally completed my first draft of the music video (which meant that i had synced up all the clips i wanted where i wanted on my timeline in accordance with the song lyrics and music) by the 30th of march.

color-grading:

from there, i then moved on to do the colour gradation for the music video, experimenting with a couple pre-set lut’s but ultimately deciding on colour grading all my footage myself so that it would fit and look best with the aesthetic i was going for.

initially, i had actually planned to have all my flashback scenes where the couple was together colour-graded in soft, warm hues (yellows and oranges) and to have the present scenes where the main character was alone colour-graded in stark, cold hues (blues and greens) in order to really drive home the contrast between the two states of emotion.

but ultimately, i realised that colour-grading my present scenes like that (in harsh blues) didn’t make them look good since a lot of my present scenes naturally had warm, sunny tones to them.

things work out for the best:

instead, to make sure that the flashback scenes and the present ones had a clear contrast between them, i opted to put a grain and film filter on the flashback scenes and construct a viewfinder overlay to put on top of the point-of-view flashback scenes so that it would seem like the main character was filming his significant other in those scenes.

this allowed for a much more natural-looking colour gradation for my music video footage overall and still let me clearly differentiate between the two types of scenes in my music video, so i thought it was a good call on my part.

making the title (an ode to canva):

after i was done with this, there was only one thing left: to make the music video title! in order to make the title, i turned to my photo editing ‘software’ of choice: canva. i know it’s not professional photo editing software by any means, but photoshop has always felt too complicated and clunky for me whenever i’ve tried it, and canva truly works wonders for most everyday projects with the bonus of having a wonderful, clean, easy-to-use user interface.

plus, i’ve used canva for all of my photo editing needs since something like 2018, so it’s a program i’m really comfortable with, and that’s always bound to make the going easy, so canva was a no-brainer choice for me here. in any case, i got to work playing around with the official album art for the song ‘still with you’ released by jungkook’s music label ‘bighit entertainment’, and that’s how i ended up with the following:

animating the title:

after i was done making the title art to my liking, i headed back over to filmora (my video editing program) to fiddle around with the effects etc. there and maybe figure out how to get some movement into the title.

while looking for some inspiration regarding this on the internet, i came across a tutorial on how to do a handwriting effect for titles, and though it was (quite frankly) an unnecessarily long process and i very well could have just settled for a simpler title sequence, i decided to give it a go since the handwritten title would go really well with my overall music video aesthetic (there’s something sentimental and analogue about both handwritten notes and old film, after all).

after a lot of fiddling around with different settings and trying out a variety of movement effects on my title, i finally ended up with the following, which i was fully satisfied with:

at this point, all that was really left was to add my newly-made title sequence to my music video timeline, but i felt like something was missing in the title card… and that ‘something’ was: a little ‘writing with pencil’ scratching sound so that it would really feel like someone was writing the title.

making the credits:

after i had added the sound effect, my title was complete, so i moved onto the next order of business: making the credits. i opted to keep my credit sequence fairly simple, with just a film overlay on top of some unused b-roll footage of my main actor walking along the beach and simple, white credits popping up on top of the footage.

first export of the video:

it was now that i was finally ready to export my music video! i exported the project in 4k with a happy heart, and when i played it after it was done, i realised that i had put the grain intensity a little too low (25%) for the flashback scenes and that the grain was barely visible in the final video despite having looked okay in the viewfinder of the editing program.

still, adjusting the grain settings to a higher intensity (50%) wasn’t really hard to do, and i just exported the project once again. this time, when i watched the music video all the way through, i was overjoyed not to find any faults in it.

and finally, escape:

and that is how i finally escaped my editing bat-cave! it might’ve been one of the most stressful, awful weeks of my life where i felt my sanity slowly slipping away from me every time filmora crashed or my (brother’s) laptop shut down on me, but i finally did it, and ‘proud’ is an understatement for how i feel about the outcome of this project or myself for finishing it.

& that’s all for today!

signing off now,

rida zeeshan siddiqui 🤍

[makingstillwithyou]

still with you | a music video

here it finally is! a true labour of love & the sole cause of more emotional breakdowns than i currently care to admit, but a piece of work i'm so proud of despite it all:

click here to go to 'navigation' to find convenient links to all major and minor tasks as well as the creative critical reflection

[makingstillwithyou]

a foreword:

welcome to my blog dedicated to documenting my journey of completing my advanced portfolio for my a levels media studies course ♡

i'm proud of the work i've done & how much i've grown through the process of making 'still with you', & i sincerely hope my work justifies that pride

please remember to make use of the navigation to navigate the blog! thank you for reading this far, and i wish you a great day ahead!

signing off now,

rida zeeshan siddiqui

here is a link to my AS media blog for reference.

[makingstillwithyou]

technical difficulties | into the editing bat-cave we go

dated: 230323

the downsides to 4k footage:

the first wall i hit in the process of editing this music video? the fact that my pc simply refuses to even play the 4k iphone footage we shot, let alone muster enough processing power to edit said footage. still, it wasn’t too hard a problem to fix since all i really had to do was borrow my older brother’s much-more-powerful laptop for the week.

it took me a good two full days to just download all of the raw footage and then transfer it to my brother’s laptop, and even then, i was really worried about how i’d go about editing it all since the footage was pretty choppy to play on there as well. still, i got started today in earnest.

slow-going, but it's progress!

despite the fact that progress is painfully slow-going because the sheer processing power required to edit such high quality footage takes a lot out of even my brother's laptop, i am starting to get somewhere.

for today, i mostly just focused on sorting through all the footage and separating usable footage from the rest. while i believe that in total, we have around an hour or so of footage to work with, the amount of 'usable footage’ is likely to be much smaller than that.

signing off now,

rida zeeshan siddiqui 🤍

[makingstillwithyou]

an unexpected message | pairing up for the project 2.0

dated: 230323

roughly an hour ago, dania reached out to me again. she had been going through a really hard time due to something tragic that had recently happened, something i was aware of, and that meant that the group she had joined was forced to do their work without her input. 

apparently, that group therefore decided that they wouldn't let her work with them anymore. this struck me as surprisingly cruel, since dania had had a genuine reason for not being able to contribute, and she was still willing to put in the work going forward, but to each their own, i suppose.

anyhow, dania asked me if she could re-join my ‘group’, and i happily agreed. we had, after all, worked on the initial concept of the whole project together. we decided that i would go ahead and edit the film on my own as was always the plan, and she offered to work on our minor tasks (i.e. the digipak and website etc.) too, but we ultimately decided to work on our minor tasks separately and make our own websites and digipaks so that we could both show our work separately and not have to sacrifice either of our artistic visions.

for now, though, i’m going to get started on the editing!

signing off now,

rida zeeshan siddiqui 🤍

[makingstillwithyou]

a tiring second shoot day | racing against the clock

dated: 230319

gearing up to go:

after everyone had gathered at my house, i made sure our actors’ costumes for the music video were appropriate, that we had loaded up all the equipment we would need in the car, and that we were ready to go.

at the beach:

our first destination for the day was a relatively-nearby beach that still took us an unfortunate two hours to get to due to traffic, making it around four in the afternoon when we arrived. immediately after arrival, i scouted around for a good place to film and found, much to my surprise and delight, a few grassy knolls that even had lots of little purple wildflowers scattered around on them.

i set up my camera with the help of my crew and we got to shooting some more lip-sync and other shots of the area and my main actor. when we were done with all the solo shots, i wanted to take some flashback (and specifically, point-of-view) shots with our actress, so i moved to another knoll with slightly different fauna for a little diversity in my shots.

having to make some new 'friends':

we very quickly realised, however, that as pretty as the flowers and patches of grass were, they were also extremely riddled with all sorts of creepy crawlies that had no qualms about climbing up our pants. still, despite the ants and miscellaneous creatures i don't even care to name, wreaking havoc beneath us, i settled my actress onto my backpack so it could serve as a cushion and we got the shots i needed in record time.

seaside shots and a slight panic:

afterwards, we finally moved towards the actual seaside and shot there. i made sure to get a lot of b-roll of the sea, the sky, and the pretty gulls flying about so that i’d have an adequate amount of footage to play with when i started editing.

at this point, it was six in the evening and i could tell the sun was barely 20 or so minutes away from full setting, which was definitely cause for alarm since we had to hit one more location today and daylight was of the essence.

our little crew packed up our equipment as quickly as they could under my admittedly-panicked instructions, and we all piled into the car, driving to the nearest park (in accordance to our original plan).

racing aginst the clock at the park:

as soon as we got to the park, i took a couple more lip-sync shots and while my actor was practising, i made sure to keep my camera open to get as much b-roll of the sunset and the park as i could.

we filmed our last lip-sync scene just as it got too dark to film anymore, and we all breathed a sigh of both relief and slight regret, on my part, since i had wanted to shoot just a couple more takes of everything we had shot in the park just to be on the safe side, but it simply wasn’t possible that day.

nevertheless, it had been a day extremely well-spent, and we wrapped up our day of hard work with a group hug before getting some food.

& that’s all for today!

signing off now,

rida zeeshan siddiqui 🤍

[makingstillwithyou]

a fruitful first shoot day | a tale of perseverance despite the odds

dated: 230318

a late start:

i had truly prepared everything for our first shoot day with the utmost care, making sure to ask everybody about their schedules and confirm the game-plan for the day and everything, but due to an unfortunate mix of unforeseen personal matters that needed to be taken care of and traffic, one of our actors was delayed and consequently, our shoot day started a good couple of hours later than we initially intended it to.

mini briefing and setting up:

we quickly got to work as soon as we gathered, though, starting off by setting up our 'camera' (in actuality an iPhone) and the main star of our first shoot day: the projector. after we had set it all up, i actually gave the whole team (both actors and crew) a small presentation-like briefing on what we were hoping to achieve with this project and how we would go about it.

i discussed the aesthetics we were going for, the locations we were hoping to hit, and tried my best to give them all a clear general idea of the direction we were going for so that they could in turn help me realise my vision.

getting to work:

after the short presentation, we got to work in earnest by taking all the shots i had in mind for the projector. it was mainly experimenting with different kinds of backgrounds to figure out which ones worked best with the vibe i was going for, and which ones actually looked the best on camera (since a lot of the backgrounds simply proved to be too dark or too bright).

i also fed the korean lyrics one line at a time to my actor, making sure to break down the pronunciation into simple syllables so that it’d be easy for him to memorise, but it was still (admittedly) quite a struggle since it took us a good five minutes of repeating one line back and forth for it to really stick, & only THEN could we shoot it.

once i was satisfied with the amount of lipsync clips we had shot, i decided to make use of the projector to take some cool shadow shots for the flashback portion of our music video with both actors.

this led to quite a frustrating bit of fiddling with the angle of the camera because we were shooting in the confined little space that is my bedroom, and the camera angle had to be set very specifically to capture shadows produced by the projector but not the camera or cameraperson (me) themselves.

we actually experimented with quite a LOT of different angles and approaches to shooting the shadow scenes, but they ultimately turned out looking just the way i had imagined them to be, much to my satisfaction.

off to a good night's rest for tomorrow (shoot day 2):

by the time i was mostly satisfied with the amount of footage we had shot for our first day, it was around 2 at night and all of us were understandably tuckered out, so despite wanting to shoot just a couple more lip-sync lines, we all treated ourselves to some delivered ice-cream and called it a day.

all in all, it proved to be quite a fruitful first shoot day, and i was left hoping for the best for the second day as well.

& that’s all for today!

signing off now,

rida zeeshan siddiqui 🤍

[makingstillwithyou]

assembling the dream team | the decisions we make & the consequences they beget

dated: 220315

the solution aka the consequences (our decisions) beget

newly solo on what i had thought to be a joint adventure until now, i called up a trio of people most dear to my heart & in under two hours, i had made a whatsapp group titled 'mission: still with you' & my ragtag team of dollar-store avengers was on the case.

i quickly briefed my friends on the project that we were about to take on together, & determinedly ironed out any possible crinkles in our plan as i figured out the logistics to get us all to that first shoot on the 23rd of march, 2023.

following is my affectionately-nicknamed 'dream team' & their contributions to the project:

muaz jahangir: actor / singer (the main character), driver, kindly surrendering his phone & home projector to the greater cause (making a music video i can be proud of!)

mishal waheed: actor (the girlfriend), providing creative input & emotional support (which is necessary, i promise)

khizra waseem: assisstant director, providing a near-constant onslaught of humour & emotional support from the sidelines

the first shoot day has been decided to be on the 18th of march, 2023. until then, i will be gathering props, making sure that everyone will get to 'set' on time by making sure there are no scheduling issues, & that everyting will work out the way i need it to. best of luck to me!

& that’s all for today!

signing off now,

rida zeeshan siddiqui 🤍

[makingstillwithyou]

starting from scratch | the decisions we make & the consequences they beget

dated: 220314

the fallout aka the decisions we make

today, on march the 14th, i messaged my project partner dania to arrange for 2 shoot days this week so that we would (hopefully) be done with the filming by sunday at most.

although we were late to shoot compared to when we ideally should've done it, it was not too late to give it our all, & i was confident that i'd give both the filming (which we were to do together) & the editing (which i was supposed to undertake solo since the beginning) my absolute best.

dania, however, evidently did not share the same sentiments as me since she messaged me back saying that she had switched to working with a different group in our class.

although i was upset at her not even taking the time to give me a heads-up before she did so, i understand that she must've been scared about her work not being complete in time and i can't fault her whatsoever for making a better choice for herself.

i wished her the absolute best for her portfolio, & we parted on friendly terms <3

more on what i did immediately after i realised i was flying solo for the project later.

& that’s all for today!

signing off now,

rida zeeshan siddiqui 🤍

[makingstillwithyou]

fallen-through plans | the end-of-year culminating stressfully

dated: 221014

through college apps and midterms and general year-end typical chaos, there really wasn't much space to breathe, frankly speaking, & so our plans on the advanced portfolio were pushed back despite us having hoped to finish filming in december or early january at the latest.

certainly not for a lack of trying on our side, though! we actually settled on our first shoot day being on the 13th of january, 2023 & we traded back & forth our game-plan for the big day & figured out logistics and everything, but due to unforeseen scheduling conflicts for our chosen actors, the plan fell through.

i tried to decide on another date for a shoot day, but at that point, dania & i were finding it hard to communicate with each other due to mock exams also coming up very soon.

before i knew it, it was march, & we had still not been able to shoot our video. my initial anticipation & excitement for the project had long-since turned into this ball of anxious nerves that settled itself into my stomach & refused to let up. it was almost like i was waiting for the other shoe to drop, & very soon, it did.

signing off now,

rida zeeshan siddiqui 🤍