Ragged 2wice - Story

Story: It is Kamran’s first day at college. He is being dropped off by his mother near the college gates. The history he has read about past ragging in the college and made him nervous and vulnerable. He isn't happy about the first day at college unlike the other newcomers. He has a strange feeling that something very bad is about to happen. Kamran enters the college and after a huge hurdle amongst the students , gets to know his class and section. He walks through the corridor where he sees seniors standing in the batch with spray cans in their hands. He feels scared and rushes towards the bathroom to wash his face and to shake the fear off. As he washes his face and leads himself to believe that ragging isn’t a big deal , three seniors(probably second years) trap him in the washroom. His instincts kick in , telling him to flee , but it is too late. One of the members asks him if he is a newcomer. He replies yes. He tries to flee , but his departure is interrupted by one of the seniors. They then rag them , put black paint on his face and tell him to dance with a tutu on , so they can make a video. Firstly, he refuses, but after being threatened he decides that it is best if he just shuts up and do as the seniors tell him to.

He is taking to the back alley where students are scarce. One of the seniors positions himself to make the video and Kamran dances. It is clear that he does not know how to dance judging by the way he is dancing. They leave after they are satisfied. Kamran feels humiliated and goes into the washroom to wash up. After washing up , he swifts pass the corridor to enter into his class. The teacher is already teaching. He enters the class with the teachers permission. He sits down and tries to concentrate on the lecture but he is interrupted by the guy sitting behind him , who apparently slips in an item in his pocket. He slides his hand in to check, it is a pack of cigarettes. The teacher , unknowing of the actual event, takes him to the principal’s office. Kamran becomes startled and is in shock. The principals explains that the college does not allow such behavior and disobedience of the rules and since he broke them on his very first day , he will be expelled. Kamran panics and begs the principal to forgive him. The principal pulls out his pen to sign the expulsion letter. However , to Kamran’s surprise, the principal looks him into the eye and tells him to wake up. He is confused, he is not able to understand what message the principal wants to convey. He scans through the principal’s secretary. He , also is stating the same dialogue. Wake up , wake up. The voice turns into his mother’s and  Kamran finds himself waking up after a horrible nightmare in his mother’s car. It seems that he had been sleeping on his way to school.

He gets out of his mother’s car and waves her goodbye. He enters the school gates and beams by the corridor to check his class and section. After hurdles with other newcomers , he finally comes to know and starts walking towards his class, where he is stopped by the “bully leader” which appeared in his dream. The apparent leader leans his arm on Kamran’s shoulder and asks if he is new to college. Kamran is frightened and screams from frustration.

Ragged 2wice - Plot

Working Title: “Ragged Twice”

Genre: Teen Drama

Plot: Karachi, August 2011, 7:45 a.m. Kamran was on his way to college. Being his first day of college he had come to know rumors about how newcomers were ragged in the college in the past, this had made him nervous. It was constantly on Kamran’s mind as his mother was driving him to college. He simply could not get this out of his mind. Kamran is an anxious and shy individual which is the main reason for him being worried too much about ragging. The car stopped, “Have a nice day now sweetie!!” his mom said as Kamran got out of the car to enter the college. Kamran nervously entered the school gates. He scanned the area for noticeboards, till he found one. Unfortunately, there was a whole batch of newcomers in line waiting to find out their schedule besides their names. Scanning the area, he become even more nervous since he had stopped a group of probable “seniors” gossiping and shaking cans of spray paints, almost as if waiting for their prey.

He rushed to the bathroom to wash his face and to have a little chat with his conscience. “There is nothing to worry about, it’s just a little bit of ragging” he self-explained while looking at himself in the mirror. He splashed some water on his face and hoped for a stable day, but to his surprise spotted three seniors behind him. They were all standing in different positions, almost as if to trap him. He felt this sudden urge to run; maybe his sixth sense was trying to convey a message to him. One of them, who apparently seemed to be their leader, started of the conversation. “You new here?” he asked. Kamran decided to flee, but was grasped by the shoulder. “Not so fast boy, you need to get what you are here for” he exclaimed while pulling out a bottle of black paint and rubbing it over Kamran’s face. The other two guys picked him up while one of them strapped a tutu around his waist. “Now you have to dance for us in this tutu”, Kamran was thinking at this threshold limit as to how he should react to this. “See, we have a bet, and you’re gonna help us win it by dancing, and we’re gonna make a video”. Kamran had always been shy, and so he shook his head in refusal and muttered “I won’t dance”. The “leader” took a deep breath and looked towards the other two seniors. It was clear that he was trying to make it clear for Kamran, the consequences of not doing what they say. “Look boy, you can either dance right now or get this over with, or we will ruin your whole year at college, the choice is yours”. Kamran realized what he had to do. He had to get it over with before this could go on any further”. “I’ll do it” he replied. The group stopped, the leader turned around and said “Good choice” with a witty grin on his face.

They decided to take Kamran to the back alley. A place which is almost always, deserted and where other students would most likely not show up. One of the seniors booted his cell phone camera and got into position to shoot Kamran dancing. “Come on boy, dance!” another shouted. Kamran started to dance, feeling foolish and dumbed down to his knees. It was clear that he did not know how to dance, judging by the way he was dancing. When they had captured the video, the seniors just left, leaving Kamran’s hopes for a good first day, shattered in the back alley.  He felt ashamed and humiliated and went once more to the washroom to clean up. After washing up, Kamran went to scan the timetable to find out his schedule for the day. Walking briskly, he reached his class, and found out that the teacher was already teaching. He entered the class with the teacher’s permission. He took out his stationary and started to concentrate on the teacher’s lecture. He suddenly noticed that the guy sitting behind him had slipped something in his pocket. He shoved in hand in his pocket and pulled it out. It was a cigarette pack. Now being aware of his unusual activity, the teacher stopped his lecture in the mist and said “Oh, so we have a smoker with us, let’s take a trip to the principal’s office, shall we?” The teacher then took him to the principal’s office.

Kamran was standing in the principal’s office, not being able to fully digest what had happened to him on his first day of college. He was in shock, his heart was beating fast and he was sweating. He took a deep breath and assured himself that he can deal with this situation. He then started to concentrate on what the principal was saying. “We do not tolerate students who break rules, and you have broken one on the first day. I am sorry, but I have no other option but you expel you from his college”. This came as a major shock to Kamran, who had always been excellent in his academics. He explained “Sir/Ma’am, the student sitting behind me slipped it into my pocket, I did not even know of it till I pulled it off from my pocket, I do not smoke!” “You had been found in possession of it, and you have no credible proof that the student sitting behind you had slipped it into your pocket” the principal replied and by the end of the sentence picked up his pen to sign on his expulsion letter. It seemed as if Kamran’s world had been stuck with lighting, his heartbeat was through the roof, and he could not concentrate. He started to plead the principal not to expel him but got interrupted in between because of shallow breathing. The principal looked at him straight in the eye and calmly explained “Wake up”. Confused and terrified at the same time, he scanned the principal’s assistant who also seemed to be explaining “Wake up, Kamran”. “Wake up, wake up, wake up”, he could listen to the voice from all directions of the room. They slowly transformed into his mother’s voice and Kamran woke up, only to find out that he had been in his car all along, dreaming. “College is here son, have a nice day!” his mother said as she drove off dropping Kamran near the college gates. “It was only just a dream, it wasn’t real, and everything is perfectly fine” he thought to himself. He entered the college gates and swept passed the corridor to have a look at his time table. At a huge hurdle, he found out his class and section and hurried towards his class. To his surprise he heard some voices which were to present in his dream. He shook his head, smiled nervously to himself and ignored the hint. Walking down the corridor he saw a glimpse of a familiar figure walking towards him. It was the same bully leader from his dream. He put his hand his Kamran’s shoulder and asked “Hey man , you new here?”. Kamran panics and screams from frustration.

THE END

"Ragged 2wice" - Synopsis

Working Title : Ragged 2wice

Genre: Teen Drama

Synopsis Kamran's first day in college turns into a disaster when he is ragged at the beginning of the day at college. The seniors rag him by painting his face black with some black paint and then demand that he wears a tutu and do a dance to it.Kamran wears the tutu, but when asked to dance , he refuses as he does not like to dance. He runs for his life when they tell him to dance , however , they catch and force him to do the dance or face the torture for the whole term. He agrees to dance and does so in a very miserable way. Furthermore , the day turns worse when Kamran's goes into his first class and gets called out because some guys in the class sneak in a  cigarette packet into his bagpack while his attention was away.The same guys call in the teacher and tell on him and the teacher takes Kamran to the Principal , who decides to expel him. As he begs his principal to forgive him , he wakes up in the back seat of his car with his mom telling him that they have reached school.It appears that he had been dreaming all the time.But as he enters the college gate , he starts seeing all the students that had previously been present in his dream.At this point , Kamran screams from frustration. The film ends.

"Ragged 2wice" - Concept

Working Title : Ragged 2wice

Genre: Teen Drama

Concept : Kamran is having a very bad first day at college. He was ragged at the start of his college day., had to dance in a pink tutu and then nearly got expelled from college because he was found in possession of a cigarette pack, till he wakes up in his car to find out that he was dreaming. However , as he enters the college gates, he finds that the people from his dream are actually in the school

Suggestions:
1)We are finding it hard to choose characters for the film.
2)We think that the story has some gaps that need to be filled. 

Change of Plans

There have been a few change of plans in the past week. Firstly , our media teacher has changed. The new teacher likes our work to be more organised and makes us keep our ideas always written down and filed properly. Since we have started to apply this in reality ,we have seen that it has helped us greatly. We have changed the genre of our short film to "Teen Drama" and we have selected the final name of our film to be "Ragged 2wice" (Ragged Twice).We have now started to work on our film as the teacher has told us to. I believe that organizing our work , this benefit us in keeping a more updated and organised work source , so we never forget an idea that we thought of. 

Focus Group (Edited Clip)

It took me about two days to edit the raw footage and add subtitles to it, finally it is ready. The video below this the Focus Group Clip which contains the feedback and our audience's reactions/comments etc.

This focus group helped us a bunch it our research and planning part of our short film. We came to know that our audience likes short films to be exciting and fast-paced. One of the members of audience complained that one of the short films was disjointed and the characters took gaps between dialogues which drawed them out of the experience. Similarly , some of the members of the group complained that some camera movements and shots were bad from a technical standpoint and thus felt unreal. Our audience does not wish to be bored while watching a film. We have taken the feedback into account and we have applied it to our current story. 

Focus Group

We did our focus group on the 3rd of Novemeber 2011. Our orignal plan was to complete it by 1st of November but due to certain reasons we weren't able to complete it by then. Unluckily , on the 3rd of November , i badly injured by ankle. I had to be rushed to the hospital. However , Andrew carried out the Focus Group , we both had previously planned. There were about 10 students who came to the focus group and it went alot better than we had expected it to be. The viewers gave us some good and honest feedback. Andrew had brought his HD camcorder to school. He shot some footage of the viewers while they watched the short films. This was mainly done to capture their reactions. The reactions were very clear , in some parts of the short films "Thats School , That's Life" and 'The Exam". Our focus group consisted of two main parts. Firstly , shooting the viewer's reactions , secondly asking them several relevant questions which we had previously prepared. Some of these questions included "Which film did you like the most?" , "Why didn't you like the others?" , "Do you like enigmatic or predictable films?"
We noticed that the audience like "The Exam" the most. It was funny and unexpected.The audience's feedback and comments on the films partially in Urdu and English. Andrew has given me the raw footage of focus group and i intend to edit , add subtitles and upload it soon.