Captain Abu Raed update

So I'm getting ready to head to Amman at the end of the month to start prepping for Captain Abu Raed. I can't believe we're this close to finally making this movie. We've been doing a lot of prep work between LA, Morocco, and Jordan.

Here in LA, I've gone through the script with Ray, my cinematographer, designing the visual concepts of the film. This includes camera moves and angles, color temperatures, and lens choices to tell the story. This discussion also extends to Gerry Sullivan, our production designer. We'll be walking through all our locations discovering the possibilities once we get to Amman. One of the fun things I would like to share is that the original title of the movie when I first wrote it was "Under the Tree, Over the Ocean". Yes, it was quite cheesy! The story had Abu Raed telling the neighborhood kids stories while sitting in the shade of a tree. Well, in December 2005, Laith and I spent a day scouting locations, looking for a place that could look good for Abu Raed's apartment. We found ourselves on top of the citadel hill. And there they were, the six columns of the citadel screaming at me, "Look look, I'm the location you've been looking for!!!". And so I took out the tree, and set Abu Raed's stories under the columns. Much more epic and appropriate for the adventures he will share with the kids. And of course, that left me with no choice but to change my cheesy title.

Just the same, when I was in Salt, seeing the beautiful long sets of stairs made me hungry to put the stairs in my story. To use the character of the city in the movie. So I went back to the script and wrote little moments such as "Abu Raed walks up the stairs..." and used the stairs as a metaphore for people connecting across boundaries. That's what the film is about.

So what I'm getting at is that it's a lot of fun to organically layer your story with elements from the environment where you will film it.

More on Abu Raed soon. I promise to keep updating my blog with new information. I don't want to jinx the movie with my excitement. So forgive me if I don't publicise too much detail yet.