Faith was our first attempt towards a psychological thriller. It is about how our fear and presumptions about people is one of the key causes of the violence around us. We are scared of the unknown and that lack of knowledge about others makes people do things that are driven by hatred and increases the violence in the world. To add to all this, social media plays a mojor role in spreading mass hysteria and panic in individuals. Something similar happens when Diya gets on a cab driven by a muslim woman. After attending a party with her friends, where a viral photo of a mysterious cab driver is shared, she is wary of her driver and jumps to conclusions that are unforeseen and unfortunate. Faith is the story of how panic, fear and presumptions about people, community and religion makes us forget the reality and is the cause of hatred and violence.
The idea of Faith was conceived because we were tired and sick to our gut about the religious and racism related hatred and violence around us. We had to do something to prove a point. The point that at the end of the day we are all human. All the same. The thought was easy but the execution of it was something we never imagined we could pull off.
Shooting for Faith was very challenging! The car was stationary, but we had to create the sense of movement through four different moving lights, a projector and someone shaking the car to simulate uneven road conditions. The rain was created by the garden hose. All this was done in very cold temperatures !
We started to shoot this movie in the winter months. And St Louis Winter is not kind to people. Most of the movie was based on outdoor shoot and we had to stand in the bone freezing weather for hours. Being an independent production with absolutely no funding we had to find ways to execute our shots that will look realistic but wont cost us much money. Most of the story in Faith happens in a cab. A moving cab. But we did not have equipment to shoot on a real moving cab. So we found out the poor man’s technique of creating the effect of a moving car. To start with it, we needed to show city lights. We shot that separately and played it on loop on a projector on the driver’s side. Now we needed to show lights of the passing cars. So we had one person on the driver’s side who would move a yellow light in a circular motion to give the effect of passing cars. Another person was moving a blue light in the same motion to give an effect of passing city lights. Then came the brake lights. So another person was hunched down at the back of the car with red lights to give the effect of brake lights. The same person also used a wooden plank to shake the car a bit to give the effect of the moving car. We also had to create rain and to do that we used garden hose.
Faith is primarily an One actor movie and hence we needed a body double. We have watched such movies but have never executed one ourselves. This was another immense challenge because we had to shoot and reshoot the same scenes at least twice.
The actors did a phenomenal job! Debapriya, the lead actor, had to play the two conflicting characters. Baishakhi had to play her body double. Both did extremely well and were rightfully awarded as the best actor duo in Indie Short Fest
This was a very difficult movie for us to shoot and execute specially in the winter months. The actors and production had to be outdoor in the freezing weather for hours. At times we were shooting in 29 degree Fahrenheit temperatures, with freezing cold water pouring on top of us. It took us time and many retakes because we were new at this kind of a movie.
But all the hard work paid off when our movie was recognized by Independent shorts Award and Indie Shorts Awards. We won the Best Acting Duo award and was nominated in many other categories like Best Director, Best Thriller, Best Music.
It was a difficult project but a rewarding one. It was enlightening as to what we can do if we work together and win over our challenges. This was a learning experience and now we are confident that we can achieve much more and make movies that are far more complex.