Chek and Hava
Trailer
CHEK AND HAVA
Hava brings home a boyfriend her parents will disapprove of as rebellion against them. Instead they shape him into what they can accept. It's a bizarre, questionable power struggle elevated by the surreal world they all live in.
Welcome to the abstracted South Asian family!
In early adulthood, you already aren't sure who you are. What happens when all your choices are dictated to you?
It's hard to navigate personal choices while living in an enforced dependence on your parents.
The film finds comedy in some of my belief systems through visual abstraction. I'm trying to heightens the insanity of the mental concepts I'm expected to digest, by contrasting it with the weird Addams family-like visuals.
When the problems of the characters seem more unreasonable than the fever dreams, the sparkly blue man, and the ball of light that is your mother, then you have a bit of a problem.
Where is your suspension of belief more difficult?
The film is permeated with art objects and handmade details, including paintings, props and animated segments.
The visuals of the film play on the ludicrousness of social norms, and the values we place on beauty and money.
Visual Motifs
The Eye
Hava is followed by the evil eye in every scene she is in. Ubiquitously now, the evil eye symbol is meant to ward off envious thoughts that can cause you harm. However, it is also a symbol of constant watchfulness.
The Holy Light
Hava’s mother is a violent ray of light, echoing the divine role of motherhood in Abrahamic and South Asian religious practice. She also functions as an unopposable force, able to filter in through spaces. Like light, she is also immaterial and inherently formless because the role of mother is often at the expense of being an individual in traditional families.
A World without Sustenance
Hava's home and the world of her parents is filled with artificial splendor. Symbolic of the surface-level quality of it all is that the food in the lavish dining room is junk and processed meals. Chek is served a microwave meal still packaged.
The center of this world is hollow, without nutrition and without true support for Chek or Hava.
Storyboard and Key Visuals
Original art objects
Paintings
Animated segments
Set Design
Sculpture
Paintings
Below please see some of the originally created sketches, paintings and portraits I created as part of the set design. It was a tremendous quantity of work!
Animated segments- 2D
Below please see work in process on a 2D animated segment for one of Hava's nightmares/visions. A storyboard video is attached
Animated segments- Stop Motion
A physical set will be constructed and sequentially photographed to create a stop motion nightmare sequence. The scene will be a Pakistani wedding. The stage will include real and artificial flowers, miniature pillars, a wedding stage, a hand-crafted dress inset with rhinestones, and a hanging evil eye.
Scene description: A paper cutout of Hava in bridal clothes, next to a paper cutout of Chek in traditional South Asian wedding garb appears. The cutouts begin to distort. Chek's neck elongates and twists and his face ages and features fade until a mask-like fleshiness remains. Hava's bridal dress grows and grows, its floral motifs climbing upwards. Then her face falls into her lap, leaving a black void.
Storyboard video for stopmotion scene
Paper cutouts for stop motion set
For the neck elongation animation, I used a shoelace to create organic-feeling movement. The shoelace animation will then be used as a blueprint for the hand-drawn frames of Chek's neck. I will draw 50 frames worth of images, combined with the actor's photographs. The 50 frames will then be printed out on paper, and shot via frame by frame stop motion on a handmade physical dioramma.
Here is a rough size test for the wedding stage, intended to assist in layout, measurement, placement and composition. The white boxes will be replaced by hand-made scaled Indian furniture, the vase will be replaced by pillars, and the figures will be paper cutouts. The floral arrangements will mimic South Asian weddings. A sky with rhinestones stars will be created and the ground will be covered in gold foil and dry moss.
Credits
Hava- Mahima Saigal
Chek- Will Jarrett
Father- Jamie Burrows
Mother- Davida Brown/Jahan Ara
Barista- Rosie Sirk
Mourner- Selma Pena
Interviewer- Shaun Huff
Writer/director - Komal Ashfaq
Producer- Selma Pena
Director of Photography- Teng Chen
1st AC- Rylie Field
2nd AC- Brandon Granby
2nd AC- Lidmercy Marrero
2nd AC- Wen Tong
Boom op- Robert Stokes
Boom op- Jordan Williams
Sound Mixer- Addison Farrell
Grip/Gaff- Rosie Sirk
Grip/Gaff- Sam Nix
VFX- Komal Ashfaq