Behind the Scenes
Cast and crew relaxing
3 point "revolving" light set up
PA Sohini Das and I getting a finicky light to work
Behind the Story
I made this experimental, photo-narrative to encapsulate a sensation. I wanted to capture what its like to feel a "sensed presence". In the initial drafts for Fever Dream, there was an added cosmic, existential crisis to round out the story that I unfortunately never captured. This wouldn't be too much of an issue aside from the fact that there are artifacts from that story leftover in this edit. For instance, the camera clicks/effects were initially going to have more of a diegetic presence: the doll would have a camera, photos of Mohammad would fall throughout the studio scene, etc. While they're not distracting in its current iteration, some of these artifacts would've had more thematic weight and importance.
Behind the Edit
This was certainly a longer process to edit but, also one of the most fun and rewarding. Since the film is compiled from individual photos, I first combed through hundreds of photographs for the ones that I liked the most. Then, I imported each of them into photoshop and adjusted levels and color accordingly. After I was happy with those edits, I would import the .psd files into Premiere and assemble my cut from there. This film in particular went through two official drafts and, in the second, the doll took on a much larger presence. This was done in order to evoke a notion of person vs. persona (a manifestation of existential crisis).
