The Making of Amal: Behind the Scenes of our Award Winning Short. Development

Hello fellow Indie Filmmaker, or reader. Hope you are having a wonderful day. Today we are going to be talking about Pre-production and how that process looked like when making our Award Winning Short, Amal. Ill walk you through the steps that I took, so that you can take these steps and do them better. This will be apart of a overall series in which we will delve into Pre-production, Production and Post Production. So…lets begin with Pre-Production.

Scriptwriting/Development:

This film was written in 2019 of my Freshman year of college. It was a story written from the heart, inspired by the story of Abudullah Al Mohammad, a name that filled the internet during the year of 2019. A video of him making a game out of Bombs dropping in Aleppo, Syria appeared on my phone screen. After seeing it I knew I had to write something to honor my people. They say write what you know, and though I do not know what it is like to be in a war zone, I do know what its like to want to protect something you love. This was an aspect of the story that I found to be truly beautiful and compelling. Thus, I wrote the script.

How I knew it was a good script

It connected people to the characters in the story, and they felt drawn to that. At that time, I did not intend for anything to happen with it.Then again though, everything happens for a reason. My recommendation to you is do a people test. See if it strikes a cord in there heart, that is what matters. Dont listen to every single piece of feedback, but if the response is generally good do It. Listen to the feedback that makes the most sense to you. Let the story unfold naturally.

Reflections on Scriptwriting

Part of me just wishes that I took a little bit more time to go over the script and make sure everything was top-notch. The thing is though, from every production you do you learn. The only thing left to do is just keep doing more!

How It Started

In 2023, I decided that I wanted to make my own short film, and so thus the journey began. This script stood out to me because it was about a subject that was important. It addressed humanity as a whole, not just Syria (where the script took place). It spook to the heart of humans and thus, this was the one. Now that there was the script, the next step was Pre-Production, which we will be exploring in the next blog post.

Thank you for reading!

Links to Abdullah Al Mohammads video/story:

Video of him and his daughter, Salwa

News Stories:

Syrian father teaches daughter to laugh at bomb explosions to make her less afraid

Syrian Girl who went viral laughing at bombs in Idlib makes it to safety in Turkey

Girl who coped by laughing off bombs in Syria on brink of homelessness in Turkey

You can read a few pages of the script HERE.