We hopped on the crowded metro and head to CheckPost, where Sohail sahib had a DVR sent from Islamabad. I had the power cables I needed, so we were going to test it. Mansoor sahib helped me out as we tried to get the DVR going. I had a test tape that I had already successfully digitized. After hours of trying, we ended up learning a few things. The DVR, like many I have seen, is long past usage. The tape got stuck in it.Mansoor sahib took the trouble of going all the way home and picking up his own DV camera to bring in and test. It works great, but not with my cables. This means there is additionally an issue with the multiple adapter, jury rigged firewire cable setup I have too or my laptop. That little frankenstein of a cable setup had got me through digitizing several tapes in Jamshoro, but after a while, one DVR stopped working, another camera just kept skipping and a DVR at Sindhology would not show up in the software. So part of the problem ends up being the cable or adapters. There are so many things that can and do go wrong. I am extremely grateful for this cable, for it allowed me to digitize enough material to get my entire workflow going. As with most steps in the process of this film, each bit only gets me so far, before I have to start over again.So, we head to Hafeez Center, only to find it was closed due to an ongoing strike against a government tax on all transactions. Once again, we face the norm of Pakistan, that all small steps hit huge obstacles. So, we head back, hung out for a bit, then took the metro back. It is tough to go out in the heat in qing qis, rickshaws and the extremely packed metro and to then hit so many obstacles that it becomes exhausting to think about how to keep my mind focused on making progress and being relatively ok with the way things are going so I can push forth the next day. I am grateful to all these kind people who do their bit to help me at each ridiculous step of the way.It is quite humbling to sit at a nice studio and see people color timing footage shot with professional crews on equipment and budgets that I can’t even fathom. I glance back at my 7 year old computer and the limitations of my gear, inexperience as a live action cinematographer, and the way I have completely disconnected from that “sophisticated” world of huge productions with impeccable (at least technically) work and resources. Here I struggle equally to get the daily groceries, as I do to find a particular cable or figure out a piece of software, an artistic challenge or all manner of other logistics. I am reminded at how ridiculously small this production is and just how much of a miracle it will be to pull this off.I had spent some time looking at test footage I shot with the lights. Each time I learn new things and make notes on what to try next. Now that I have enough light and a good raw video workflow, I can push things further. I shot some more tests, focusing on two lenses and alternating between shooting raw and in the default compressed form. As I tinker with Davinci Resolve, I find that there are all kinds of tools that don’t show up because of the low screen resolution of my laptop. I find this out as I look at various tutorials and see buttons that don’t show up on my screen. Though I can’t resize these windows, I have figured out 3 or so things to do to get those buttons.I took my test footage from tonight and began figuring out some more fine tuning controls as I have “discovered” these additional buttons in Davinci Resolve. These results are quite promising, for using an entry level DSLR camera. I have a bunch more to experiment and figure out, but the footage and my ability to control it are getting better with each test.