I’ve been reading more of “Kathputhli” by Nazir Ali Jairazbhoy. There are some great sections on puppet manipulation and some of the descriptions on how the strings are held and used are particularly helpful. Now I need to practice this. It takes a process to go from concept art to execution of a design in its final form in such a way that it conveys what was intended.I’m looking at the rough backgrounds that I painted for the animatic (the moving storyboards) for “Risalo”. A couple of months ago, I did some sketches to narrow down how many backgrounds I would actually need based on that. For the two main stories, Sur Sorath and Sur Sohni, there are about 26 backgrounds. I may need to narrow that down further, but that’s what I have planned at this stage. My friend, courtesy of Imran Siddiqui, Umar came over. We have met some really fun and interesting friends here. Umar, Umair and Beenish dropped by.I took Umar through the animatic, some music recordings, puppetry videos from Multan that I had put together and then the puppets themselves. We brainstormed some ideas on how to take these backgrounds sketches and turn them into something that works for the film as well as staying grounded in the world of traditional puppetry with some artistic liberties. Traditionally, the stage is set with two charpoys (cots) stood up, with their legs facing each other. A bamboo rod is set between the ropes on both charpoys. Cloth is draped above the rod to hide the puppeteer from the audience and below the bamboo to form a backdrop for the puppetry stage. Often, there is an additional cloth with windows (jaali) draped at the front of the stage, behind which the performance takes place.I removed the jaali and will likely create a more modular framework, rather than actual charpoys to suspend cloth. I don’t need to hide the puppeteers as I can simply frame the camera as needed. What I do need, is a cloth on the background and on the floor of the stage that can indicate where a particular scene takes place in the story. I want to keep it abstract and simple enough to not be distracting. Umar and I worked on some ideas and will hopefully begin work on a prototype next week. He had some really good suggestions which makes the process a lot more fun as well.During this time, we had a stream of friends join us. Imran and a coworker friend of his dropped by, as well as Raza of the Awami Artist Collective. It was actually a lot of fun to figure out how I might approach technical aspects of lighting and camera work as well as securing equipment and help for these tasks. Without this community, I would be on my own, and quite unable to navigate or access the kinds of resources that I may be able to leverage.With independence day only hours away, we head out to Anarkali and ate a delicious meal over a lot of joking around with bits of deeper conversations weaving in and out. There were so many people out. Each of these friends is doing a lot of great work and I can’t even put into words how much I appreciate all of us being able to come together, share and enjoy our time. We walked over to get some kulfi faluda and ras malai afterwards. The friends from the other side of town left after that, and Imran, Kristeen and I walked over to Hafiz Juice Corner to watch the celebration along Mall Road. Lahore is a city that loves to go out and have delicious food. There were people everywhere, enjoying time out with their families, hanging out car windows or on motorcycles, waving the Pakistani flag and just having a good time. We had some juice, laughed with some funny children and then head back to our homes.