Faizan Haq

I have always had the good fortune, and the intellectual honesty, to live by my passions. And my work in Television (former MTV VJ/Creative Head), Advertising (Creative - Ogilvy/BBDO) and Voice Acting (they call me the Voice of Pakistan) has allowed the expression of those passions. Those have chiefly been music, film, history, food, cars, travel, mountaineering, Formula 1, Hi-fi audio, filmmaking and content creation. Over the past twenty-six years I have recorded voice-overs for almost every major national and international brand doing business in Pakistan. I remained a VJ for over a decade and was in charge of all programming and packaging at MTV Pakistan, and then at Style 360 (HUM TV Network) before deciding to work on a freelance basis as Writer, Voice Actor, Presenter - in many forms - from awards ceremonies (LuxStyleAwards) and cricket series (PSL/Pepsi World Cup Deewane) to reviewing cars (Pakwheels/Ferrari factory tour/Horacio Pagani interview), hosting smartphone launches (Huawei/Samsung) and concerts (Red Bull Soundclash), film festivals (Goethe Institute), racing events (Omni Racing and Mountain Dew) and advertising awards (PAS Awards) as Master of Ceremony. I have had an active studio at home, from which I record many ads and documentaries almost every day. Over the past few years I have been able to pursue passions that had previously evaded me. I devoted myself to writing a six-part documentary series about World History with the Indus Valley, today's Pakistan, at its centre. Script written, it awaits funding. I have also made a number of other, smaller documentaries (Alibaba/Huawei/China National Gene Bank), corporate films and personal documentaries about mountaineering and motorcycling as well as hosting my favourite genre: Travelogues - that took me from Europe to South America and many parts of the Middle-East, India, South-East Asia and China, allowing me to fully explore and bring my fascinations to the screen. I am actively reviewing cars for Pakwheels - Pakistan's most watched Youtube channel and look forward to creating more interesting, intellectually challenging and fulfilling content, in both English and Urdu/Hindi - with the hope for it to be translated and shared in many languages. My other great passion is to spread love and give everyone the chance to be their best. I look forward to working on meaningful projects that demand my faculties and challenge me to go new places, document what's worth transmitting, to write about the human experience whilst continuing to serve and be affected by music. I love home. But I have warmed up to Dubai lately. 

I wanted to learn how to make films and did not have the money to study in America. So I began working in television, radio, advertising and film as a teenager. My career began as a DJ on Radio Pakistan in 1996. My second professional commitment was on the sets of Jamil Dehlavi's film Jinnah (1997) as 2nd Assistant to the Director. There was an opportunity on the state run PTV and I soon became a VJ on the legendary Music Channel Charts (Pakistan's equivalent of Top of the Pops) for two years in 1996 until Pepsi signed me up for four consecutive years in 1998 - as their host and presenter - for everything from music programs (Pepsi Generation Next/Ask For More) to shows about cricket (World Cup Deewane 99/Cricket Next). During the same four year period, I worked for BBDO-Manhattan as Copywriter for a year before being snapped up by Ogilvy&Mather-Interflow as Creative Manager for almost four years - until the dawn of private television channels in 2001-2, when I switched from Advertising to work full-time as a VJ and Director of Programmes on Indus Music (lovingly known as IM) Pakistan's first TV music channel. It was a renaissance period, that saw Pakistani music and video chart new heights.  I remained, for the majority of the period from 2001 to 2006, the male face of Indus Music - gradually transitioning from hosting countdown shows to reviewing films and hosting/producing travelogues. In 2006 Viacom bought out IM and rebranded it MTV Pakistan. I remained the travelling VJ and became Creative Head in 2009, until terrorism and the War on Terror left little room for music and concerts to thrive and led to the rise of mega news channels. MTV packed up in 2011. I joined Style 360, Pakistan's only Fashion and Lifestyle channel - part of the giant HUM TV Network that year - as Creative Head, and repackaged the entire channel including its logo - before deciding to get out of network television altogether and work freelance, without channel loyalty issues to bar me from doing the projects that interest me. I regularly host LSA, Pakistan's equivalent of the Oscars, review cars for PakWheels and host many ceremonies of corporate, social, cultural, national and military significance. I record voice-overs for any number of ads and documentaries in my home studio every day. That is my daily bread and butter, come rain or Covid! Now I want to make richer, more satisfying content than ever, hoping to share the full spectrum of my engagement with life and the world I view with affection, be it with Paradox, Netflix, BBC, even on YouTube. 

I did my GCSE O and A-Level from The City School (Darakshan Campus) in Karachi and decided to work in my chosen profession when I realised my family wouldn't be able to afford sending me to USC or NYU. I did apply for and received admission (and financial aid) from a number of good liberal arts colleges (Colby, Bennington, Beloit and Hampshire) but it wasn't enough to allow me to pursue my education abroad at the time. No major in film was offered in Pakistan at the time. So I decided to learn everything by working in the field and by reading, experiencing, being. And creating.