Before the Camera Rolls

Aaqilull Qhaeer’s journey from making the work to understanding why it needs to be made

For much of Aaqilull Qhaeer’s creative career, his instinct has been to make.

Coming from a hands-on production background, give him an idea and his mind naturally starts moving towards execution.

How are we going to shoot this?

What equipment will we need?

How can we make this particular scene work?

What would make the final product look good?

So when he began training towards creative direction, one of the first things he had to learn was something that sounds incredibly simple:

Don’t start there.

Before deciding how something should be made, there were much bigger questions waiting to be answered.

Why are we making it?

What does the client actually need?

Who are we speaking to?

What should someone understand or feel after seeing it?

For Aaqilull, learning creative direction has meant slowly moving backwards through the creative process—from someone accustomed to bringing ideas to life, to someone learning how to figure out what those ideas should be in the first place.

And he’ll be the first to say that he’s still figuring it out.

Slowing Down Before Making

Before his training, Aaqilull’s understanding of a Creative Director was largely shaped by the part of the process he knew best.

He assumed the role was primarily about coming up with the big idea and making sure the finished work looked good. Naturally, his production background meant he would think about cameras, equipment, locations, and execution almost immediately after receiving a brief.

That instinct hasn’t disappeared. What has changed is what happens before it.

One of the hardest habits Aaqilull has had to develop is simply slowing himself down. Instead of immediately imagining the shoot, he now tries to understand the problem first.

What is the client hoping to achieve?

Who needs to hear the message?

What does that audience need to take away from it?

It has also introduced a distinction that has become increasingly important to him: something can be executed beautifully and still be the wrong creative solution.

A good-looking video isn't automatically a good answer to a brief.

That realisation has changed the questions he asks himself. Rather than beginning with “What would look cool?”, he is learning to ask, “Why is this the right idea for this client and this audience?”

The Best Idea Isn't Always Your Favourite

That shift also means becoming less precious about ideas.

There have already been instances where Aaqilull has developed concepts he personally liked—ideas he thought would be visually interesting or enjoyable to execute. Only to return to the brief and realise they weren't necessarily what the client needed.

Earlier in his journey, the temptation might have been to figure out how to make the idea work anyway.

Now, he's learning to let it go.

Creative direction, as he is discovering, isn't about defending whichever idea you are most excited about. If an idea doesn't solve the problem, liking it isn't enough.

The better question is whether it works.

For someone coming from production, where so much attention naturally goes towards how an idea can be executed, learning to detach himself from an idea and return to its purpose has become an important part of his training.

Putting the Thinking Into Practice

The biggest opportunity Aaqilull has had to practise that thinking so far came through his work with UNN.

Unlike his usual production responsibilities, the project required him to look beyond how individual scenes would be made and consider the direction as a whole. He had to understand what the client wanted to communicate, think about how different ideas connected to that objective, and question whether each execution decision was actually serving the concept.

It changed the responsibility from “How do I make this happen?” to “What should happen in the first place, and why?”

There wasn't, however, a dramatic moment where everything suddenly clicked.

Aaqilull is quite clear about that.

UNN gave him a much better understanding of creative direction, but he doesn't consider himself to have figured it out. Instead, the project became another step in a gradual process of understanding just how much thinking happens before production begins.

Alongside that experience, developing creative briefs for projects such as First Emporium and T4 has given him another place to practise. There, the challenge has been learning how to take what a client says and translate it into something a creative team can actually use.

Because “the client wants this” isn't always enough.

A broad request has to be unpacked into an objective, an audience, a message, a tone, key information, and eventually a creative direction. Only then can the people executing the work understand not just what they are being asked to make, but what they are collectively trying to achieve.

Learning to Question the Idea

Aaqilull Qhaeer hasn't been making that transition alone.

Throughout his training, Amal Osmera has been guiding him through the process, often by doing something deceptively simple: asking him why.

Why this direction?

Why does this idea need to exist?

What is it actually trying to say?

Those questions have forced Aaqilull to examine ideas beyond whether they sound good or look interesting. If he can't explain why a creative choice exists or how it responds to the brief, there is probably more thinking to be done.

More importantly, it has taught him to question his own ideas without immediately becoming defensive about them.

The goal isn't to always have the right answer on the first try. Sometimes, getting closer to the right direction means allowing someone else to challenge the one you've already chosen.

Seeing the Work Differently

The training has even changed the way Aaqilull consumes creative work outside the office.

An advertisement that once might have caught his attention because of its cinematography, editing, or production value now prompts another layer of questions.

Why did they choose that?

Who is this supposed to speak to?

What are they trying to communicate?

Does the execution actually support the message?

His appreciation for production hasn't gone anywhere. If anything, understanding what comes before it has given him another reason to appreciate the finished work.

He is beginning to see not only what was made, but the thinking that may have led there.

And perhaps that is the clearest indication of where Aaqilull currently is in his journey.

He isn't leaving production behind to become a Creative Director. He's learning how to bring his production experience into a much wider way of thinking.

Still Becoming

Ask Aaqilull what kind of "Creative Director" he wants to become, and he doesn't have a perfectly packaged answer yet.

That's partly the point.

He knows he wants to become someone who understands both sides: someone capable of listening to a client's needs, developing ideas that genuinely respond to them, communicating a clear direction to the people responsible for bringing those ideas to life, while still understanding what execution actually demands from the team.

But the training has also taught him that creative direction isn't necessarily about becoming the person in the room who has all the answers.

For now, Aaqilull is learning to become the person who knows which questions need to be asked.

And for someone who spent much of his career asking how do we make this?, perhaps becoming a Creative Director starts with learning to ask something much simpler:

Why are we making it?