Tucked inside a lane that, according to bamboozled Google Maps, is neither PECHS nor Sharae Faisal, sits a quiet, unexceptional-looking house with a moat of mud and rain guarding its entrance. A dozen or so bikes propped on a neighbour’s doorstep, two sedans and a silver vanity van parked over a ditch by the gate, gives it away as a shooting location.

Inside this quiet unassuming house, it’s show business as usual, but without the usual clang and clatter of a production set.

A dozen or so assistants saunter around the halls. A few carelessly tossed paper cups litter a patch of soil and garden. An imposing light, illuminating a huge chunk of house, stands at the other end of the house, turning evening into day.

In a corridor, an Arri Alexa Mini with an Atlas Orion 65mm anamorphic lens (the two together cost a little less than a hundred thousand dollars), suspended by elastic cables and hooks, dangles in the air. The lens peeks into a kitchen where Mahira Khan finishes a shot.

Prince Charming seems to have all the right ingredients for a well-made short: major A-list actors, Sheheryar Munawar debuting as a director, a relevant issue at the core of the story and a lot of visual flair

Minutes later, sapped, she plops down on the sofa inside a small room tucked away on the side. “I thought this was going to be easy,” Mahira says. She might as well be jinxed, she supposes. “If I think that something is going to be fun and easy, then chances are, it won’t be.” While fun it may be, easy it definitely isn’t.

Technically, this is Mahira’s debut short film as an actress for a streaming platform. She didn’t have the time, but she couldn’t say no either.

Prince Charming — the title of the short — is her director’s debut in narrative filmmaking as well. The helmer, with unblinking eyes searing into a big monitor by the sofa, is Sheheryar Munawar Siddiqui, Mahira’s lead from Ho Mann Jahaan, 7 Din Mohabbat Inn and Parey Hut Love.

Sheheryar, people may not know, has directed commercials before; however, this is different. Prince Charming commemorates the first anniversary of the YouTube-based short film channel SeePrime — perhaps the only channel with a near weekly commitment to release shorts.

“Within the year, the channel has released 33 shorts,” says Seemeen Naveed, the always-chill, always-smiling executive producer, sitting in a chair by the monitor. While they always plan well in advance, Prince Charming turned out to be a last-minute addition to the line-up. “Sheheryar came over with an idea just two weeks back, and here we are, on set,” she says, shrugging her shoulders.

Setting up expensive productions on the fly is Seemeen and husband Naveed Arshad’s day job. Their production banner belts out over a hundred commercials in a year.

In an hour’s time, Mahira has finished three more shots (they have to do over a hundred in two days, Sheheryar tells me). In the first one, she walks the hallway and looks at a clock on the wall; in another, a Steadicam operator follows her and her on-screen daughter to the front door (the little girl, probably on her way to school in the scene, gives Mahira an impromptu hug that adds naturalness to the shot); another shot circles around Zahid Ahmed, the other lead of Prince Charming, as the two pull into an embrace.

Apparently, there is a lot of hugging in Prince Charming.

An hour later, Sheheryar politely kicks out Seemeen, this writer and two others from the room. Mahira’s next shot has Zahid — the most natural and effortless actor on set — yanking the actress by the arm, in a filmi fashion.

The scene may seem filmi, but the story, I’m led to believe, is not. Without giving too much away, Prince Charming is a story about post-marriage depression — a very real issue no one is talking about — made with cinematic flair.

The screenplay by Sheheryar is more about texture and emotion, and less about dialogues, Seemeen says. There are cutaways to interview-like moments, a couplet or two from the poet Ahmed Faraz, and a lot of subtext in scenes, I’m told.

One can see why Seemeen chose to push Prince Charming to the front of the queue. The project seems to have the right ingredients for a well-made story: major A-list actors, a well-known actor debuting as a director, a relevant issue at the core of the story, cinematic subtext, and a lot of visual flair.

All it needs now is a few hundred million hits on YouTube.

Prince Charming will stream on SeePrime’s YouTube channel on August 6

Published in Dawn, ICON, August 1st, 2021