I was so excited when I was introduced to the Life=H2O project, I was thinking how could this have any impact? Do people take it seriously? Who shall I contact for the filming? The least thing I was worried about was where should the filming be done. The Gang was the first to contact. A group of young talented people who are seriously working on their transformation and are always ready to create something GOOD. At our first meeting the idea of mixing film and animation came on the board, so I contacted Aidin, a talented friend of mine, and he was in our meeting 20 seconds later unshaven and without any clue what the meeting is about! After the idea was finalized, we had to find people to participate in the film and find the place to record our film. Here is a flash back…. 2-3 decades ago before the age of smartphones when people would literally going out and have fun, going to picnic by a river was a usual part of life of the most of the families in Tehran. A river which you can sit by its riverside was maximum 30 minutes driving away from you and you had many choices. But now it was so different! Now those peaceful places are either a flood risk area or they are almost completely dried out!! So it took us 2 weeks to find a river which we saw a video of it taken last year with enough water. After driving for 2 hours to reach the destination we saw that this river was also almost dried out in it took the group another hour to find an almost suitable place for recording the film. Filming was done, the animation part had more than 300 individual frames and includes so many details that you have to rewatch it a few times to get them all and the music was produces by Aidin himself without any instrument rather than his own voice! Beside all those mentioned above working remotely with two completely different characters (a very perfectionist Aidin and a very joyful and naughty Gang) was a new challenging and interesting task for me which I’ve learnt a lot during the process. P.-Iran – currently in Sweden
