10. Props: Household Items Hunt

PROPS:

This is a checklist to ensure that we do not miss anything.

Costumes and Makeup:

The costumes needed the most are for Haseeb. He requires two shalwar kameez, one black and one white, along with a black t-shirt for the hospital scene. The black shalwar kameez is for the scene where he kills his son, while the white one is for when he explains how he protected his son. At this point, rather than the audience seeing him as psychotic, they are meant to sympathize with him and possibly realize they may have misunderstood him, so we deliberately chose white.

Abu Bakr is killed and only appears in one other scene, so he does not require any additional outfits. To act as the son, a sweater and jeans are sufficient, preferably a lighter-colored sweater.

The two doctors will wear normal clothing with white overalls on top and ID cards hanging from their necks to show that they work in the hospital.

For the therapist, I told Meniha to pin her hair up to age her slightly and wear a normal sweater that does not draw attention, reflecting how most therapists would dress.

Regarding makeup, Abu Bakr will require blood on his head and Haseeb on his fists for the first sequence.

To make the blood, I asked my sister for

help since she does a lot of arts and crafts for fun. I watched YouTube tutorials on how to make fake blood at home, but they all required corn syrup, which was not readily available. Instead, I used Rooh Afza, which was already red, and added cornstarch to thicken it, along with extra red food coloring to make it darker. I made three different consistencies since I was unsure which would look best.

For the hospital scene, Abu Bakr will have darker-colored blood makeup dried to look realistic, and Haseeb will have eye bags to emphasize the toll on him. No one else requires makeup and can appear as usual.

Budget:

The locations do not require any cost or rental fees. The costumes are normal household outfits that both Abu Bakr and Haseeb already own. For makeup, our friend Fatima, who kindly offered her kitchen, also offered to do the makeup for free. She has a lot of makeup, so that is fully covered.

The props are all household items, so we did not need to purchase anything. However, for the murder weapon (vase), we decided to buy two in case one breaks and we need to reshoot. The total cost came to around Rs. 5000, which is expensive, but we split it between the two of us so it was not a burden on either of us.

Moreover, to make the blood, I used household items like Rooh Afza, cornstarch, and food coloring, which were already available, so the cost was zero (girl math) ;>