Todays day 1. I received an email and sms with the change of venue from cultural village to W hotel (http://www.whoteldoha.com/). Wow!! As I park and walk into the residence side of the hotel, I am filled up with a lot of anxiety and excitement. I hope I will walk out feeling satisfied of a great job done. When the lift stops on floor 22, I enter the room with some one else, selected as same as me, and meet Robb. Claude joins in and tells us that we r d early birds. While I take a look around the plush living room and d open kitchen adjoining it, claude gets into small talks as to break the ice. Robb and claude looked like nice persons to work with. Within few minutes, everyone else poured in. Ahmed, looked determined and serious. Abdulla was kind of a shy qatari. Nada and jawhar wer the ladies in the group of six with usman, a pakistani guy whose been into tv productions and ad films and finally me. We ve been chosen to make a commercial to promote a viral ad for DFI!! My holy whatnot!! They chose us from the applications they recvd. We were all from diffrnt background but we all loved either advertising or directing. So they teach us how to direct an ad film, from a to z and beyond it. Well... What started as a workshop to making ad films will end up making an ad that will b seen on the web in a few weeks. I am all excited to b among the chosen 6. Coz DFI(http://www.dohafilminstitute.com) isn't something small. It's young but it's gigantic. Its the root of a much bigger tree. And Claude, who will act as our creative director in d first half of the workshop isn't nothing less than an expert either. As we talk, we discover more about each other. I felt proud to b part of a team. Claude (http://www.claudeelkhal.com/) is one person to b with. He's been in the industry and worked for the giants. He's a giant himself with all those ads and short films under his credit.(http://claudeelkhal.blogspot.com/) Well.. After we had tea and some bicuits, the client walks in to give the brief about their requirement. She's this tall lady (robb said some one from DFI, strong and tough enough to be a client will come for the client briefing), contrary to what all robb said..Robb, I bet you havent seen tough ladies ;)
With a one hour session of Q&As , we get a picture of what the client needs. well this pictures, we are gonna color up, add some spices, pour our brain into it, think ideas out of our asses and make it into a viral/commercial.. wow!! the thought that i will go thru all the process of creating an ad makes me feel so good.
once we were done for the day, i went jogging down the corniche. i always have a pair of jogging shoes, tees and tracksuites in my car. (Coz i always come up with reasons not to jog. so i dont want this one to be a reason). And if you ever see in newspaper that i was caught by police nude in car, alone, please understand that i had this urge to jog and I was changing to jogging dress. ;)
