> cat ./story.txt

Behind the Scenes

Appointment is the first entry in a challenge Muthanna and I set for ourselves: one short film every month for a year. Minimal crew, minimal equipment — deliberately. The whole point is to stop letting big productions and expensive gear stand between us and the craft. Twelve films, twelve months, just to get better at making them.

Written Together

We wrote it as a duo. I brought the story beats — the goal of each scene, the shape of the arc — and Muthanna improvised and owned the dialogue, because his Arabic is stronger than mine. The structure was a real back-and-forth: he added beats, I added beats. I insisted on the final dance and the opening. He insisted on the mid-film hiccup where the phone dies. The film is the sum of both of us.

Two Lights, One City

I shot it, and I kept the lighting deliberately simple — two lights, inspired by neo-noir. Tungsten and purple, because that is what the Middle Eastern city already gives you: neon and tungsten everywhere. We let the environment do the work and framed around it. Simple on set, but in-camera it reads as fully lit and cinematic, because the street was already lit for us.

A Guerrilla Shoot That Grew

We previsualized a few weekends earlier — a three-hour walk with the actor, just working the blocking. Then we returned to the same locations with two extra hands to hold lighting and reshot everything more cinematically. Because it was guerrilla, we shot at places we already frequent, so permits were never a problem. One of them was a café where the whole actor-and-filmmaker community hangs out. They saw us shooting, and friends — and friends of friends — started jumping in to help. A crew of four became something like ten, all volunteering and hanging out. That was the best part.