Sifatnusrat

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Project 11

Course Code and Name: MSJ11332 Media Presentation and Performance

Project Name: Media Performance, Tulika

Title: : Tulika

Project Date: SSummer 2022

Project Description: Every movie must go through three stages of film production. While some duties will remain the same throughout the entire production, each step contains unique chores that must be finished before a movie is ready for viewers. The stages are 1) Pre-production, 2) Production and 3) Post- Production. While making Tulika, we went through all these three steps. It was a perfect experience. We went through good and bad times together while doing our project.

Project Justification: When we started thinking about Pathos-related ideas, I came up with the idea that a girl was raped, and her surroundings began to treat her differently as if it was her fault. And then, when she goes back to her house after so many eyes continuously judging her, she is bullied online too. So, then she digs her own grave little by little every day. And finally, when she is done with society and the traumatic life she was leading, she lays down on her grave.

Acknowledgement

Being relatively young and living in a media-focused region, movies and television have had and continue to impact almost every aspect of our lives significantly. For instance, when we were growing up, Jim Carey movies and Joey from “Friends” influenced our sense of humour. We were also unable to sleep soundly between the ages of 9 and 14 due to the awful teen horror movies that were popular at the time. But perhaps the most significant impact that films had on us came when we were around 16 years old and started acting out much of our life rather than being present and truly living in the moment. Without cinema, our thoughts would be useless. Nothing is adequate. We want to strive to excel. Our decision to pursue a degree in film and television is motivated by our desire to advance our technological knowledge, challenge our creativity, and learn at the most incredible level. So, here's to all the movies and faculties who taught us what film is and how to make one. Special thanks to Humayun Farid Sir. He gave us total freedom to make this short film.

Abstract

Our essay is separated into two sections. We went into great depth in the first section of the Tulika creation process, from pre-production to post-production. As a result, we have written a production report with some critical analysis in this area. The film is solely reviewed critically in the second section of our essay. There, we attempted to describe our movie from an artistic standpoint.

Tulika: The Steps of Making

Every movie must go through three stages of film production. While some duties will remain the same throughout the entire production, each step contains unique chores that must be finished before a movie is ready for viewers. The stages are 1) Pre-production, 2) Production and 3) Post- Production. While making Tulika, we went through all these three steps. It was a perfect experience. We went through good and bad times together while doing our project. We will express all of my experiences in detail in this paper.

Pre-Production Activities

Scriptwriting and Development

We think our creative imagination is my biggest asset. We have had the good fortune to develop new worlds and characters for novels from a young age. The wit and wordplay in Jasper Forde's “Literary Detective” and “Nursery Crime” books have greatly influenced us. However, developing an idea is always so tricky. It took us three months to establish Tulika. The concept of Tulika is inspired by our society and my surroundings, how girls in our community deal with harassment and how society treats them. Curriculum Integration (CI) is a chance for the students to showcase their creativity and ability through various projects based on the semester's theme. This semester's theme was Pathos. Pathos is audience manipulation, pure and simple. You're appealing to people's emotions by featuring material that will cause particular emotional reactions: fear, sadness, anger, etc. Using Pathos in content creation relies upon an audience's ability to empathize with your message, story, or ad. Filmmaking, especially advertising, frequently utilizes the power of emotion to compel the audience to take action. In some cases, filmmakers can incorporate enough persuasive rhetoric or appeal to the audience's feelings that they are overwhelmingly forced to take action, even if doing so would go against their logic or reasoning. Such deep persuasion is described using the term “pathos.” When we started thinking about Pathos-related ideas, Sifat Nusrat came up with the idea that a girl was raped, and her surroundings began to treat her differently as if it was her fault. And then, when she goes back to her house after so many eyes continuously judging her, she is bullied online too. So then she digs her own grave little by little every day. And finally, when she is done with society and the traumatic life she was leading, she lays down on her grave. After that, we discussed this idea with our course teacher. He gave us some feedback and corrections. Then we polished our initial vision and wrote a final script. It's a story about a girl named Tulika, our project's name. So the girl Tulika was forced to meet a guy she knew online and texted for a few days with him. The guy forced her to meet him; Tulika did not want him to get hurt and agreed to do so. Then the guy harassed her in a hotel room. Tulika could not share this story with anyone, killing her inside. Everywhere she goes, she feels uncomfortable and feels lost. She goes to a different dimension where she digs her grave little by little. And finally, when she could not bear it anymore, she lay down on the grave she dug for herself. Personally, this story creates Pathos in me. In the next step, we made a screenplay. We wrote every step in detail. I divided shots and sequences.

Location Hunting

Searching for a suitable location is equally crucial. It's easy to grasp in concept but difficult to execute correctly. More precisely, it's trying to find a good setting for a scene. Meeting with the director, production designers, and set designers, a location manager will go over the entire process step by step. The manager of said venues then dispatches scouts to explore potential sites. Ultimately, it's up to the site manager to oversee the search and secure the necessary shooting permits. However, as this was a school assignment, we didn't hire a location manager and handled everything independently. The most challenging task was identifying a suitable burial site. Because there is no way, we could find room to excavate a burial in Dhaka. Then Gopal suggested that we travel to Tangail in his stead to bury him there. The filming locations included the permanent ULAB campus in Dhaka and Sifat's house on Indira Road in Tangail.

Budget Fixing

As it is a student project, we did not have any producers. Therefore, all the members of the team equally bear the cost. The original budget is given below.

Item	Amount
Transportation	3000
Equipment	4500
Costumes and props	2000
Food and refreshment	3800
Music	200
Others	1500

Crew Selection

Every production needs a good crew. In our case, as it was a class project, we were a team of six. So we divided every job among us. But we have to mention two of our friends, Rakim and Adib, who were not in our team but helped us immensely in the process.

Casting

Our faculty instructed us that only our team members should participate in acting on the project. So the casting part was easy in our case, but it usually is a vast process; people come for screen testing to get a role in any movie. Our main character, Tulika, was played by Sifat Nusrat. And the rest of us played a minor role in the film.

Makeup, Costume and Set Design

Sifat Nusrat did makeup and costume as she has experience in this field. The set design was a team effort. As we were shooting outside Dhaka for some part, we had many outsiders helping us.

Rehearsal

We did not have so much time for rehearsal. But watching the film, you will be amazed to see our performance. Just that flawless our performance was. Everyone gave their best. We even improvised our roles while shooting. Some of us tried method acting in the process. Scheduling We made a proper shooting schedule as we had to leave Dhaka. But we could not maintain our adequate program. We had to stay in Tangail for more days than expected, so our Dhaka shooting schedule got delayed. In the end, we finished our project on time

Production Activities Shooting

For the shooting part, we all depended on Gopal because he is more experienced in this field than any of us. We used wide-angle shots and mid and close shots. We tried different shades of LED lights in our set. As a team, we love to experiment with different angles of shots and lighting. Post-Production Editing Gopal did a fantastic job in editing too. We got the help of other people outside our team in editing. After making many cuts to our short film, we finally got the perfect one.

Background Music

Choosing the perfect background music for our film was a tough job. We all thought about it and agreed that we would not use free music on YouTube. So we decided to buy music online.

Tulika: A Critical Evaluation

The story of Tulika was taken from a real-life experience. The two stories were not similar, but that horrible story inspired Tulika. Every scene Sifat Nusrat played in this film was so real; she was feeling the emotion, and she was in that state for real. I guess you could say she had done method acting the whole time. In the last part of our film, we discussed that Tulika would lie down in the grave and silently, tears would fall from her eyes. But to our surprise, Tulika cried out loud after lying in the grave. That was shocking for us. After that, we all were so numb that we could not talk to each other for a long time. This was the strength and achievement of this project—the story, the people and our emotions. Every production has some weaknesses. Our weakness was that we were too busy with our course work that we could not invest ourselves into this project, but we tried every one of us.

Film Link: Film

Learning and Outcome (Self-Reflection)

I have learned a lot about scriptwriting in this course, which has helped me strengthen my storytelling abilities and make engaging stories. Additionally, I'veI have got the chance to perform in a short film, which has really improved my acting abilities. Additionally, I have improved my abilities as a director, allowing me to successfully manage and lead a team toward a common objective. This experience has also shown me how important teamwork and collaboration are to success. Overall, my educational experience has given me priceless knowledge and abilities that I can use to further my personal and professional growth in the areas of writing, acting, directing, and teamwork.