CCR 1 - Codes and Conventions

1. How does your product use or challenge conventions and how does it represent social groups or issues?

CCR 1 - Radio Script.pdf

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Original Script

One of the most important genre conventions I explored was narrative structure, especially how it aligns with postmodern and psychological thriller tropes. From the beginning, I was clear that my film would not follow a traditional linear structure. Instead, I leaned into a fragmented, emotionally driven narrative that prioritized subjective truth over realism. The film opens in the middle of emotional unrest, offering no clear exposition. Instead, it invites interpretation through visual storytelling, gestures, atmosphere, performance, and mise en scène, echoing Barthes' enigma code. The viewer is made to ask: Who is this character? What has he done? Why is he doing it? What is he feeling?

Flashbacks are used throughout the film to construct memory and history, but they are stylized in a way that intentionally defies realism. Shot at 3 to 4 frames per second with halation, glowing highlights, and subtle motion blur, these scenes create an almost stop motion effect. Rather than a literal memory, the flashbacks feel like fractured impressions, something emotionally remembered, not visually recalled. This design not only reflects the protagonist’s disoriented state of mind but also plays into psychological thriller conventions where memory is unreliable and identity is unstable.

I also put immense thought into mise en scene, knowing that every item in the frame needed to carry visual and emotional weight. The rooftop stakeout scene, filmed handheld in one continuous take, uses costume to code both anonymity and psychological intent. Raahim, masked and dressed in black cargos and a hoodie, evokes the sense of someone both trying to hide and perform menace. Indoors, however, characters wear casual clothing in muted tones, visually cueing tp the audience to a more domestic, conflicted self, torn between mission and morality.

Props were placed with care to build character through subtext. A motorcycle helmet and grocery bags indicate travel and routine, while a mask, protein powder, and brass knuckles build into the character’s constructed masculinity and suppressed aggression. Even minor elements like a baseball cap slipping from the bag or a bottle resting nearby were placed with intention. They added to the illusion of an interrupted daily life colliding with violence.

The setting also contributed to the psychological tone. All locations were selected for their realism, rooftops and domestic apartments. Rather than relying on grand visuals, I leaned into grounded, everyday spaces that make the suspense feel more intimate. The confined interior of the apartment, tight doorways and narrow corridors, mirrors the emotional entrapment of the main character. This subtle claustrophobia in the environment adds to the slow-burning tension I wanted to create.

Lighting and colour were used strategically to support this. All scenes were filmed in S-Log3, giving me full control during grading. Cooler tones dominated tense moments, creating a sterile and uncomfortable detachment, while warmer lighting emerged only in quieter scenes to suggest vulnerability or emotional access. My chosen colour palette of green and orange was deliberate. Green reflected sickness and deception, while orange was used to bring in fleeting warmth and intimacy. This visual duality and dichotomy added layers to the protagonist’s fractured emotional state whilst creating a sense of false security / comfort for the audience.

When it came to sound, I was meticulous. Every element of the soundscape was custom designed. I created layered synth pads for emotional intensity, used heavy bass and unsettling tones for psychological discomfort, and implemented ambient recordings for realism. Sound was not just a background tool, it shaped the emotional rhythm of the film. In scenes of urgency, fast-paced ambient instrumentals underscored paranoia. In quiet moments, low-frequency drones maintained an undercurrent of unease. Even the silence was calculated.

Dialogues were minimal by design. In line with the genre, much of the storytelling relied on expression and action rather than speech. Where dialogue did occur, I made sure it was grounded in the characters' world, spoken naturally in Urdu, reflecting the setting and keeping performances authentic. Dialogue was occasionally muffled or suppressed in moments of dissociation, further reinforcing the protagonist’s unstable mental state.

My camera work followed both aesthetic and narrative logic. I made use of wide shots to show isolation, close-ups for emotional detail, and over-the-shoulder framing to guide perspective. In the rooftop sequence, the 180 degree rule and shot reverse shot techniques were maintained to keep orientation clear during conversation. However, in flashbacks or moments of instability, I intentionally disrupted this with sudden angle changes and shaky handheld movements.

Editing was also crafted to mirror the protagonist’s mental state. The present-day scenes followed a steady rhythm with longer takes, drawing the viewer into a more grounded reality. In contrast, the flashbacks had a jarring, stop start pacing. The reduced frame rate, overlay effects, and visual distortion signaled psychological fragmentation, reminiscent of genre conventions where editing itself becomes a reflection of internal chaos. Even subtle vignette edges were used to guide focus and create unease.

What makes this project especially significant to me is not just how it fits into the psychological thriller genre, but how it challenges it and everything around it. While the genre often explores identity, trauma, and morality, it tends to do so within Western frameworks, with familiar tropes and familiar faces. My narrative does something different. It places a South Asian character at the center of an internal, psychological war. One that's quiet, slow-burning, and disturbingly real.

The story I told is, at its core, about a kind of violence that doesn’t get talked about. It’s not sensationalized, and it doesn’t need blood to be brutal. It’s about how a person’s reality can break without anyone noticing. It's about emotional neglect, about carrying guilt, about cycles of masculinity that reward silence over vulnerability. These themes are rarely explored in our film industry where psychological thrillers are almost non-existent, and narratives that prioritize mental health, internal breakdowns, or emotional trauma are brushed off as melodramatic or too niche.

This genre allowed me to frame a conversation that society constantly avoids. In our culture, discussions about male mental health, childhood trauma, or psychological instability are either swept under the rug or met with suspicion. People think it can’t happen to them, or that someone "seems normal." There’s denial. There’s an unspoken pressure to cope, to bottle things up, to never falter. That’s precisely why I wanted to make this film. It doesn’t give easy answers. It doesn’t give catharsis. It just stares directly into a feeling most people would rather pretend doesn’t exist.

The character I wrote was meant to be a contradiction. Someone who looks composed but is disintegrating internally. Someone who performs masculinity but feels nothing like it. I deliberately avoided the clichéd image of the broken man who is loud, violent, or visibly dysfunctional. Instead, I created a protagonist who is emotionally numbed, quietly haunted, and disoriented by his own reality. That’s a far more terrifying version of psychological instability. The kind that hides in plain sight.

By telling this story through the lens of a Pakistani man, in Urdu, with real spaces and local references, I brought that discomfort home. I made it feel close. Not like something that only exists in Hollywood or on Netflix. I made it something that could be happening to someone down the street, or to the viewer themselves. And by choosing not to explain everything, by leaving pieces missing and letting memory be fragmented, I forced the audience to sit with uncertainty. Something our culture deeply resists.

One of the most important aspects of my film is how it represents social groups often excluded from complex emotional narratives, particularly young South Asian men. In both our mainstream and indie media, male characters from this region are either hyper-masculinised, comic relief, or exist in the shadow of female trauma. I wanted to subvert that. Especially in cultures like ours where vulnerability is stigmatised and mental health is either denied or ridiculed. This is where my film directly engages with social issues like mental health awareness, toxic masculinity, and the generational silence around childhood trauma.

By centering a male character in a psychological thriller who never explains himself and isn’t given a clear backstory, I’m challenging the audience to consider how often we ignore emotional instability when it doesn’t look cinematic or dramatic. My choice to use Urdu and English, shoot in real locations, and reflect lived realities of repression and guilt helps ground these abstract issues in a familiar cultural space, making the uncomfortable feel personal.

In that sense, the film isn’t just entertainment. It’s a representation of a social group (men, particularly from South Asian backgrounds) dealing with invisible emotional violence, and it interrogates a society that expects them to remain functional, emotionless, and silent.

Even the title of the film reflects this. It’s about illusion, about not trusting what you see or feel. That uncertainty is the heart of the genre, yes, but here it becomes something else. A commentary on how easy it is to not notice psychological collapse, especially when it’s happening to someone who is expected to be fine.

So while the film sits within the boundaries of the psychological thriller, it constantly pushes at the edges. It questions how we define normal. It refuses to offer resolution. And most of all, it dares to speak aloud about something that most people don’t even have the language for.