I sent some money to the puppeteers for their time, waiting to be called to Lahore for “Risalo”. It is interesting. I look back at how I had planned to shoot the film on my little Canon Rebel T4i with it’s minimal 720p resolution for raw recording with Magic Lantern. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to shoot on a nice professional grade camera, with a proper crew. I really did want that, but there was no way for me to afford it.I understood the limitations of my budget and tried to make a plan within that. Yet when I came to Lahore, I was told by so many well meaning production related friends that I was foolish to do that. Surely they would help me to gain the resources I needed to shoot the film with a cinema quality camera and crew. This is not a huge project and my planning is quite meticulous as far as what we need to shoot, so it was well within the realm of possibility. However, for that to happen depended on a few variables beyond my control.Contacts who knew the people that could provide crew and equipment. I had that.People to state what they wished to help with honesty.People who actually felt connected to the purpose and the film to work with me rather than getting people just trying to size you up and see what they can take you for.Two and three were my downfall. It took so much energy to set things up properly and get the key people and equipment in place that when the promises and reassurances all turned out to be lies, I had neither funds nor energy to continue with a shoot. Certainly I tried, but that endless sizing you up to squeeze you as hard as possible is what forced me to stop the production right here. This is not how I can make this film.The biggest casualties here are the puppeteers, who will go back to their menial labor jobs. Thankfully there are opportunities for them to begin making puppets again which can lead to performances and a more sustainable life for them. This depends now on them putting in the effort to do this, with the support that friends and I can provide. We’ll see how this goes. Being open and looking out for the puppeteers was appreciated by them, when it came to production people I met, that same attitude was seen as weakness and they sharpened their knives that much more. So the far more educated and wealthy people were the dirtiest and nastiest of the bunch. The puppeteers called me as Khurshid visited them to distribute the funds I sent. Jamil thanked me for not forgetting them and for treating them with respect and care. It is so necessary to work with people with whom you can create a bond like that, rather than these production people that I came across.I texted the DP that dropped out and told him, that I wished he had told me he had no interest in doing this film before I went to Multan. I had visited him and shown him the animatics for both stories, reconfirmed that he was on board, gave him the option of splitting the production into a week in November and a week or less in December according to his schedule. Yet here he was intent on telling me he would do the work, only to begrudgingly say he was out, once I had raised the hopes of the puppeteers and trained with them. Even his admission followed another attempt to delay telling me for another ten days?!So what does this tell me? It does not matter how good their friends are and how good they are to their friends in a non professional space. As I have made my decision to rearrange the schedule for the film, by going home to my family and hopefully a job, while working on the animation and audio portions of the film, I find myself having to explain to so many people. People tell me that I should have planned better to get an Indian Visa and go there to work, or I should have magically had more money, or I should have hired more production people at the beginning to help record the music, or I should have been better, smarter and more capable at everything. Sure, I wish I was, and that more things came easily, but no. This has been my struggle and my effort. Having seen the video folks that same friend recommended, I don’t see how I would have fared better with his audio friends. People have all the answers when they are not actually doing the work. It all sounds great as an idea, but once you try those resources, you realize the painful process of bringing each piece to life.There is a lot of learning from this process, but unfortunately, it consists largely of making more money and staying away from Pakistani production specialists. I had this lesson regarding music folks when I came to record music for “Gul", then actors when I came to record voices for another project and now video production people and arts institutions on “Risalo”. These are not just my experiences, for along the way I have heard so many horror stories regarding other friends’ dealings with arts institutions run by corrupt appointees. Now I must leave, to create this work and survive these challenges, but in an entirely different place and with a different set of circumstances to be determined.I would leave tomorrow if Umar was not still working on backgrounds. I might as well finish that so I do not have to return in case I end up shooting the film elsewhere. The suitcases are heavy and I will likely pay a great deal to take it all back. That does not make it seem likely that I will return to shoot in Pakistan.