PRE-PRODUCTION.
Our first formal day of pre-production was spent visiting the production offices of Montfleuri, a mere 5 mins (in theory) from our flat.
We took our case of lenses to the office and we very quickly got lost!
I recall the night before, once we touched down at Casablanca airport and had exited Arrivals, a young woman was offering free SIM cards. I declined the offer thinking there must be a catch. For anyone reading this, take up the offer! There is no catch and you don’t want to find yourself in the position we found ourselves in, wandering the streets of Casablanca with no reception! In our case, I had a heavy case of lenses which I thrust onto my shoulder to lighten the burden as we walked in circles.
We finally arrived at the production office; I was so soaked with perspiration that anyone would have been forgiven for thinking it had been raining outside. Admittedly, it doesn’t take much for me to sweat!
Once I cooled off, I helped myself to coffee, and we ran through a plan of action with Ranya, our 1st AD, and Hajar, our line producer. The week would entail location recces, refining our schedule, meeting with some of our key HODs, finalising our casting selections, doing a formal tech recce, and hopefully squeezing a much-needed rehearsal with our main actress who had very limited availability.
The location options we had were even better than I had imagined from the photographs. The main house was an old Jewish riad-style property in Central Casablanca. Twin sisters lived in the part we would be filming in. For a long time the crew hadn’t realised the residents were twin sisters as we never saw them together at the same time - another film, perhaps!
The one concern the production had was filming in the markets - we had an indoor market which was somewhat manageable, but the outdoor street market was unpredictable. As the shot in the street market would essentially be a wide static shot of our protagonist walking away from us, we thought of ways of making our presence as inconspicuous as possible. Will suggested he leave the camera in the possession of our 1st AC, Fatima, once he had composed the shot. Hajar also kindly loaned Will and me some djellabas to wear to help us to blend in, although I’m not sure how effective this would be, lol!
Soufiane, our production designer, took Will and me to several flea markets - Derb Ghallef I felt like a kid in a toy shop - so many beautiful things, particularly original artwork. Will was in awe of the many vintage lamps. I wanted to find some artefacts to fill a box that our central protagonist, Wedad, finds hidden in a storage cupboard: Books from her past, photographs, small toys, and perhaps some medals. I spent possibly an hour or more in a bookshop rifling through their second-hand Arabic-language books and magazines. I wanted something by Driss Chraibi or Fatima Mernissi, but I discovered these writers tended to write in French. In the end, I found some alternative Arabic language books by Moroccan authors which seemed to speak to the themes of my own story.
I am so happy that we have managed to pull together such a brilliant team. I really could not have wished for more.
x
