Gawara Nahi is a Qawwali song and therefore shooting it wasn't easy, says director Nitin FCP

His recently directed music video, Gawara Nahi, featuring Asim Riaz and Himanshi Khurana, is taking over the internet. And we got a chance to connect with Nitin and ask him a few questions. He had, after all, helmed this piece with great excellence.

How was your experience working on this new project as well as with the famous duo, Asim Riaz and Himanshi Khurana?' It was a very wonderful experience to work with the entire team. Each person was supportive and put their best foot forward to bring this project to life. Speaking of Asim, he is very dedicated and professional. So, we had to shoot in a very unfavourable climate. It was -4°C and doing outdoor shoots at locations like Kashmir is particularly tougher because there are no facilities available. So, both the actors cooperated greatly. Moreover, the ideas shared by Asim and Himanshi were good too. They take the scenes to another level, and it was a great experience to work with this power couple.

Don't you think that narrating a story in a few minutes of a music video is tough?' Unquestionably, it is! We encountered a series of challenges. However, we do follow a perfect format. What we always adhere to is narrating a story that is on point and is understood by the audience. So, it was a very long process. We drafted a script of 5-10 minutes and then we edited it, covering only the necessary parts and leaving the excesses.

What difficulties did you encounter while filming the song?' Gawara Nahi is a Qawwali song and therefore shooting it wasn't easy. They are different from your normal romantic songs. So showing the story in a Qawwali song is complicated. While in regular romantic songs, you can take inspiration from their lyrics, in these, we have to highlight the Qawwali elements and also blend them with the story. So, we worked on more than ten stories before we could settle on this one.

Talking about the creative process behind music videos. How do you interact with the actors to define the story?' As soon as we locked the story, we narrated it to Asim, and he was already very excited to work on this music video as it was a unique role. He has always played very glamorous characters, but in this video, he had to essay the role of a Kashmiri boy who is a servant, and Himanshi portrayed a Kashmiri girl from an affluent family. So both the actors were enthusiastic about doing the music video, and they did their best job.

Can you tell us more about your future collaborations or projects?

Currently, I am working on one of my big projects, and I'm very excited about it.