The project involves creating a website around a short film that was made in our Communications Lab class in the first week. The concept of my website is based on the video being a part of a film festival (30 Minute Film Festival) and actually winning the best movie award in the festival. The experience of the website is supposed to be that of a film festival’s website. The user lands on the home page where they have the option of learning more about this year’s festival or about next year’s festival if they wish to participate. For this year's festival, the website has the winning film that can also be viewed by the user. It also has information about the team behind the film. Though I am aware that there could have been a lot more that could have been done to make the website look more like that of a film festival website, I wasn’t able to execute all my ideas due to my lack of experience with development and the programming languages.

I started out with a completely different concept in mind. I wanted to create a website specifically for NYUAD freshmen who were feeling lost and needed some motivation to be able to ask others for help while navigating the campus. However, when I started the project, I felt that this idea would have a very limited audience and therefore there cannot be a lot of content on the website. Therefore, I decided to wireframe a website with the concept of a film festival in mind. But the wireframe also ended up changing quite a bit once I started the actual coding part of the process. For instance, the home page was not a part of the initial idea but when I started designing my 2018 festival page, I thought that instead of introducing people to the festival just through this page, it would be nice to create a separate page with just the title so that it provides more clarity to the viewer. Also, the addition of next year’s festival option gives it the feel of an annual event which contributes to the idea of a film festival.

As I mentioned in the previous section, I started out with a completely different idea in mind and ended up creating a website around a completely new idea and concept. Since this was the first time I was working with website development, I was not very sure of what to expect when I started. The initial idea (for the film festival website) was very simple on paper however it started getting very complicated when I started coding it. I believe this happened because I was not very familiar with how much experience with coding would be needed to create something that looked very simple. Because of that I had to remove a lot of elements that I had initially planned to include. Therefore, my final product is much simpler than the idea that I had started out with initially but I feel that it did help me get an idea of how to set goals and what types of concepts I should work more on for further development.

The comic strip that Lichen and I made is about a person who physically ages back. So even though he is mentally a kid when born, he moves like an old person and has very wrinkly skin. At the same time his two other friends (the only other people shown in the comic) are ‘normal’. As time goes by, his friends age normally however he starts aging backwards. Even though he grows mentally and in height, his physical abilities and skin quality age down. This has been shown in the comic very explicitly through the graphics. We have also shown where the three characters stand mentally through the background colours of the page. The comic starts with a black background when they are kids to signify the ‘blank slate’ that their minds are right now. The next two panels are more colourful as the friends have become more accepting of their friend’s special features and also because those two panels have some sort of celebration. The last two panels have very subtle backgrounds to show the peace and calmness that they experience when they are old and finally after their death. So we have tried showing the mental similarities and physical dis-similarities simultaneously in each panel (though the physical dissimilarities are obviously more explicit as they are in the real world as well).

The general theme of the comic is that of showing how people who do not look like us physically are actually just like us and they are looking for a friend in everyone just like we do. As a society we should be accepting of them and treat them like we treat others. This is why we have shown the two friends (Pam and Jim) always being there for Michael from childhood till death. However, the reader represents the relation of Michael with the rest of the world. All characters reveal their speech bubbles after being hovered over. However only Michael loses the speech bubble after the cursor moves away from him while the other two retain their speech bubbles. This represents how society only listens to people like Michael only when they make the conscious choice to pay special attention to people like him and they end up paying more attention to more ‘normal’ people as it requires less effort.

In order to execute the idea that both me and Lichen came up with collectively, we divided the whole project into two parts- illustrations and coding and then decided both of these equally amongst the two of us. In illustrations, I was responsible for the characters in every panel and Lichen was responsible for the background. In coding, I was responsible for all the animations (movement of people, speech bubbles appearing on hovering), positioning of the people on top of the background image and the background colours. Lichen was responsible for the sliding effect of the panels which was extremely essential for the timeline-like feel of our comic. I essentially used Illustrator to make the characters. Both me and Lichen were constantly sharing our work with each other to make sure that we have a similar theme. At the end, both me and Lichen came together and helped each other out with the starting and ending pages of the comic.

I feel that our final comic did end up being very similar to what we had in mind. In terms of the graphics I feel that we both met our initial expectations. In fact, for some panels (like the graduation panels) we both thought that the final panel ended up being much better than what we had anticipated. However, in terms of coding the timeline we were not able to achieve (in the first two and last two panels) what we had initially aimed for. Our initial idea for the first and last two panels was for them to be connected to each other and when the user scrolls, the second panel/last panel comes in as the first panel/fifth panel is sliding out. The final outcome would be that it would look like it is one scene and picture and that the view is just sliding from the first half of the scene to the second half. However, Lichen spent a lot of time trying to figure it out but could only find paid libraries that would help us do it. I also spent some time on it trying to help but we were not able to figure out the code therefore we had to go ahead with what we have now. But I feel that even with the current transition, the reader gets a good idea of what is happening.

Our audio project, "In Her Shoes" is an auditory experience of the story of a Syrian refugee who is fleeing from her country. The theme of the story is letting people step into the refugee's shoes and walk with her as she tries to find a home away from home. The journey is divided into four parts based on the locations that the protagonists passes through. Her journey starts in Syria. Here everyone and everything is in a state of panick and destruction. From here, she moves on to Egypt whereshe finds a boat to cross the Meditarannean Sea and land in a refugee camp in Egypt. From there she flees to London where she finally gets proper refuge and her journey ends here. The user is given a chance to step into her shoes by following her footsteps throughout the journey.

We implemented the audio part of the project by recording some sounds and finding others online. We wanted to play with foley for the project and therefore decided to record as many sounds as we could using foley. In fact, the sound experience of the boat is created completely using foley- we moved a bucket of water on the table to create the waves, dipped a cloth into water for the boat-paddle sound and squeaky sandals to create the creaking of the boat. Apart from that, we recorded all the footsteps in different areas on campus to get the sounds of the protagonist walking in different environments. We also asked a few friends from the UK, Greece and Syria to help us with the voices of the refugee, volunteer in the Greek refugee camp and the British immigration officer. Apart from that, we searched for various sounds from the internet that would be relevant to the theme. After this, Gabi was in charge of the sound editing and I was incharge of the main page of the website. However, we both were working together and helping each other out and giving each other feedback throughout the process.

I feel that our major expectations were met in the final version of the project. There was a point where I could not get the audio to play when the user clicked on the markers on the map and we were thinking of changing our whole concept. However, with some help we were able to figure out the minor mistake we were making in the code and ultimately ended up having what we wanted. I believe the only thing from our wireframe that we were not able to include was dotted lines running between every location as the audio played. However, I think we were able to achieve the major theme even without that feature and I feel pretty good about the project.

For this project, Araz and I wanted to create a three part video to showcase the problem that students at NYUAD who do not know how to cook face and how to resolve it. We did this by depicting a student (Araz) in our video who does not know how to cook and is guided through the process of cooking a very simple 3-course meal in our dorms. The video is focused mostly on NYUAD students since we are using ingredients only from the Convenience Store and have shot everything at different locations on the campus. We also chose to include only the voice of the narrator since we wanted the viewers to feel like they are, in a way, standing alongside the narrator.

The first video shows Araz not being able to find good food in the dining hall. This is where she meets our narrator's voice. After this they both go to the Convenience Store to buy everything that is listed out by the narrator. The second video focuses more on the cooking process where the narrator takes Araz through the whole process step by step. To showcase that Araz does not know how to cook at all we have small little moments such as putting in a whole egg into the bowl instead of cracking it, eating raw cookie mix, not having any utensils to cook the food in, typing in "cooking stuff" instead of utensils, etc. that highlight her cluelessness. The final video is her eating the food and enjoying it. This is the most important part of the process and we wholeheartedly believe that one needs to be fully involved in the process of eating which is why the narrator leaves Araz alone to enjoy her food and does not say much in the final video. Through the music we have tried to create a less-serious atmosphere. We wanted the video series to be lighthearted and funny which is exxagerated by the music. For example, Italian music playing in the background when Araz is eating her super basic pasta adds to the humor of the video series that we were striving for.

All the pre-production work was done together by me and Araz. We designed the storyboard and wrote the basic script together to start off the project. From here we moved on to filming. Since we were only two people in our team, we decided to have one person behind and one in front of the camera- Araz was acting and I was shooting the whole video. In post production, I worked on editing the video, recording the audio and putting it all together. Araz worked on the website that was essential to completing the entire presentation of the video.

I had a lot of fun while working on this project. I learnt a lot about filming properly and framing shots effectively through this project as well as about editing to make the viewer understand what is happening without overdoing it. I feel that we were able to achieve all that we had decided on the first day. I feel that we could have done a better job if we had a stable way to hold the camera in situations where the tripod was not usable but apart from that I am satisfied with our final product and thoroughly enjoyed making it!