Please tell us about the projects you worked on before making ‘LEVELED’. How did you start, and how did you learn to make films?
Making films is something I've dreamed of since I was a little kid. Storytelling is in my DNA and prior to Leveled I was writing quite a bit, enrolled in film classes and helping out on set, whenever and wherever I could.
My goal was to learn everything I could about the industry before I went to camera with Leveled. Of course, like all filmmakers, this is an ever-evolving career, with each film comes a new understanding of the craft.
But at the same time, there is an intuition that drives me, something inside that propels me to make films and have stories come to life. It's not something I ever doubt, in fact I lean into it and just trust my gut.
Tell us about ‘LEVELED’. How do you describe it?
Leveled is a story that I wrote when my maternal grandmother was passing away. We had such a great relationship and while she was passing, I wondered what would have happened if she was given a different set of parameters, raised in a different society at a different time, how would her life have turned out. Leveled was born from an idea of changing the narrative in how we see people of colour, in particular my community of girls, women. Too often we see muslim women portrayed on screen as the victim or caught in the stigma of what we're used to seeing the media tell us. With Leveled, I wanted the story to be a transitional period. A story that transcends ethnicity, gender and race - where our focus is on a girl who just wants to see her dreams come true all while her Mother is by her side.
Please tell us about your favorite filmmakers.
Greta Gerwig, Spike Lee, Christopher Nolan, John Huges, Ava Duvernay to name a few.
What I love about each of them collectively is their ability to tell their truths, their stories through a lens of hope and vulnerability.
They aren't afraid to push boundaries and take the audience on the journey with them.
If you were given a good budget, what would be your ideal project?
The making of my feature, Leveled - I am in the middle of working on the development.
Describe how you would ensure that production is on schedule. What steps would you take?
It takes a village but also a lot of time and preparation. Setting realistic goals, communication with your team, an understanding of what could potentially go wrong.
There are things that are usually in our control and at times, we have to also work with what we have and learn how to think on our feet and be active problem solvers.
What was the hardest part of making ‘LEVELED’.
I would say managing a 15 day script with 45+ cast, and an extremely intense dance scene was one of the hardest things of making Leveled.
Any unanticipated circumstances would really affect our time and whether or not we would have enough of it. At times, it was difficult to manage such a huge cast, but the silver lining was my team.
I had very experienced AD's, camera crew and just people who wanted to see this film come to life, just as much as I did. I was blessed in that way.
If possible, tell us about your next work. What plans do you have for your future work?
My slate of projects is my feature, Leveled, another two shorts I'm working on and a series (web).
Leveled, the feature is the big one that I'm working on and fingers crossed if we can find the funding we can go to camera and see it come to life.
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