Campaigns Blog

STARX'D blog - Day 2

Day 2 of STARX’D workshop

by Osha Al-Mossallami

Day 2 was on 17th January and started at 11 am. At the beginning, the shared feeling of tiredness and morning slumber was obvious from people’s expressions and half shut eyes. However, once we started with a few games, one by one people started waking up. Firstly we had a similar game to the one we played on Saturday where we had to speak about ourselves for a minute, although this time it about our actions from the moment we left the MYH office the day before to that morning. Stories varied from watching “trashy” Saturday night TV, homework and half done make up before collapsing on a bed. The game that got everyone was awake was the genius Jungle Game. All eight of us were seated in a row whilst Belal designated each person with a sound of an animal found in wildlife. The hierarchy of our game and sounds that accompanied were:

Lion: the sound was a roar WITH claw motions *actions had to be also carried out correctly*

Giraffe: you had to say “Chomp Chomp” WITH your arm stretched about your head and your hand snapping together to symbolise the giraffe eating….something.

Shark: the accompanying sound was “dan-na-nah-na-dan-na-nah” – ok that may be a you-had-to-be-there-moment because that makes no sense even to me. The action was one hand twisting from side to side.

Gorilla: was the classic “ahhhhhhhhh” whilst hitting your chest.

Snake: sound was “wiggle-woggle-wiggle-woggle” and you had to wiggle your finger.

Cat: the traditional “meow” with whisker actions by your face.

Dog: a “woof” with paws.

Jellyfish: everyone’s absolute favourite “flob-a-lob-a-lob-a-lob-a-lob” and your hands circled each other as you bent down.

 

 

 

The rules of the game are if you are for example the lion and you have to pass to the snake you would say: “roar to wiggle-woggle-wiggle-woggle” – with correct actions of course! If you were then the snake without hesitation you would then pass to someone else, for example: “wiggle-woggle-wiggle-woggle to flob-a-lob-a-lob-a-lob-a-lob” etc etc. The moment someone hesitated they would be out and everyone would move up and you would become the sound which belonged to the person’s chair you’re sitting in and the person behind you would become the sound you were.

We played a few goes of this with many enthusiastic roars and of course “flob-a-lob-a-lob-a-lob-a-lob’s. Yet when you reached the last two we seemed to have created a terrible animal based rap which went: roar to chomp chomp, chomp chomp to roar, roar to chomp chomp, chomp chomp to roar, roar to chomp chomp etc etc….

We also played wink murder and had to include exaggerated deaths and a game with cards. The game with cards was played in the two groups that we used yesterday, the girls and illuminate and with this game a red card meant you had to tell a truth to the other team whereas a black card meant you had to say a lie to the other team. The number or picture of the card decided how big it was, if it was 2 red you would say a small truth: I had a cup of water this morning or a king black would be an enormous lie that would be absolutely impossible: I met the queen yesterday and we swapped hair and make-up tips. The other team then has to guess how big/small the lie/truth you’re telling is. Illuminate beat my team, the girls, as they picked up 2 points but it wasn’t without some moaning on our behalf :D

 

After warming up and playing games we started with our story. At first we forgot the title Romeo and Juliet and we thought about what we wanted to see in a film or what were in films that we’d seen that made us like a film or not. Many things came up such as issues faced by a young Muslim, humour, action and other things.

We then looked at the different jobs needed to make any film or TV programme and what their jobs consisted of. We listed roles such as Producer, Director, Hair and Make up, Sound, Location, Script writing and more. Everyone then said what they were interested in doing and the good thing about this project is everyone got to have a say in what they wanted to take part in and everyone, even if they didn’t say that was what they were interested in doing, will have an input in the whole film.

After this we started working on the actual basis of our story. After lunch of some delicious chicken cottage, we decided that our story was based on a girl looking for marriage however as she was Pakistani and the guy was Bangladeshi, the cultural differences of the family meant this marriage was a very unlikely thing to happen. We started discussing possible endings and scenes and techniques and how they could be shot. So far the main idea of the film is about the girl in her room on her wedding day getting ready to either marry the suitor her parent would like her to marry or the guy she would like to marry instead. The ending is almost definitely going to be a cliff hanger for the audience to decide on what she should do.

When we started discussing ways of shooting different scene, it was very interesting hearing from Belal different ways to shoot different scenes and it really helped to picture what we were trying to create. With Belal’s help the group managed to bounce ideas off each other to create a slight frame work of our scenes that we were happy with.

Then we started to decide on character names. Our title of the film, which in my opinion is just genius, is Rami and Jamela – like Romeo and Juliet, geddit?! We then decided on other characters which would be Laila and more friends and Faris – like Paris- good eh!! The role of Rami – or Romeo – is extremely small in our film as Ijaz didn’t want to have a massive acting role. Therefore we have manoeuvred our film in a way were communication with Rami is done through msn chat or on the phone where only the profile of a boy is needed.

 

 

 

To the end the day we were discussing location and we worked out as most of it was based in Jamela’s bedroom that we would need an actual house to film in. When Musab kindly offered his flat to film in, Belal then became extremely excited.

Next week we’ll be centred on the script writing, I’m very happy with the project so far and can’t wait to see what future weeks will bring iA.