Everyday Media Making - Cultural Diversity

Hi! I am Farah and I am currently doing a project on inter-culture or inter-racial relationships for my university project. Everything on this blog is for educational purposes and I do not mean to copy anyone but to use whatever I find as reference :) Hope you guys enjoy looking through my documentation of my work and by the end of my final term, I would be uploading my finished product here :)

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I stumbled across this amazing stop motion animation that uses mini rubik’s cube! I find this very creative and inspirational since it takes long hours just to solve it and to put it altogether. It tells you how much hard work and effort the team has to contribute in order to create an amazing and successful stop motion animation. By watching this, I learn that you should not give up in any obstacles or challenges that may come in your way when you try to achieve something that you are passionate about. Very encouraging! 

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Mock-up Pictures

I have taken a series of pictures that helps me to do a little mock-up video for this project. At the time, I was thinking that it would be great to see a physical thing in hand in order for me to work my way around my project. I’m posting a few pictures (unedited)  from the shoot day I did few weeks ago. 

Of course I will be editing the pictures into more something like this:

And that will be put onto a nice background that would end up being in the stop motion animation. I will be using Final Cut Pro X to do the video editing in order to get the product that I want. The reason why I chose Final Cut Pro X is because I am more used to this program in comparison to Adobe Premiere Pro which I haven’t used or learnt it yet but definitely I’ll get cracking at it once I am free!

The sad thing is that I have been sick the whole week and I missed the chance to show my classmates and tutor my progression of the work :/ hopefully everything will turn out great.

So far, so good! Gotta keep this up! 

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This is the teaser of the web series called “This Is Why” by TheMingThing.

Check out their YouTube channel for more!

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First episode of “Away We Happened”

Check out for more on their YouTube channel!

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Episodes

I have decided to split the story by episodes since it is easier for me to structure the story one by one. So I planned to do it in total of 5 episodes for this project and I am really excited how it is turning out! 

The reason why I’m doing this is because it is exciting to see different episode of the story at different time instead of watching it in one shot which, in a way, gives that suspense to the audience to watch more of the story. It is similar to what Wong Fu Productions did 2 years ago on their story on “Away We Happened”. When I first watched it, it really made me want to watch more of their episodes because it was structured accordingly plus they take comments and feedback from their viewers to tailor the story according to what the viewers want to see. Another youtuber called TheMingThing (Malaysian based) did something similar as well on their story, “This Is Why” and again, it is very interesting to see how it develops to the end. I’ll post one of their videos for you guys to see what I mean.

In the meantime, this is the first episode that I have came up with:

Episode titles:

Episode 1: First Encounter

Episode 2: Second Encounter

Episode 3: Relationship + First Date

Episode 4: Struggle

Episode 5 (finale): Proposal

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One day as I was searching through YouTube on Malaysia, I came across this music video by this famous Malaysian artist called Maya Karin. The storyline is somewhat I’m trying to aim for where the two characters met by chance and love develops between both of them. I also like the style of stop motion animation in this video which shows the cuteness and quirkiness of stop motion animation.

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I like the message behind this stop motion animation which is something similar to what I’m trying to show to my audience but with real people as the main characters. A good reference and source!

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I couldn’t agree more of what she’s saying in this TEDx talk :) very interesting how she learns and tries to learn the Chinese culture in order to have a better understanding of business communications with the Westerners and Asians. This does shows how a certain aspect of behaviour or communication skills differs in the Western and Asian cultures.

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He is a very interesting guy who explains cross cultural communication in a very amusing way. A good listen or watch!

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Few more research on cross cultural communication from TEDx talks. Fairly interesting to listen or watch.

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The style of the stop motion animation is fairly interesting in this video plus the definition of culture is somewhat explained here. 

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PROJECT: Inter-culture Relationship

At the beginning of this term, I was given a task/assignment to come up with a project that I want to pursue that will further my skills and learning outcome of the module I’m currently taking which is Everyday Media Making. 

So the first thing that came up in my head was:

STOP MOTION ANIMATION!

In my opinion, it is something that I wanted to do ever since I was a kid! It’s fascinating to see objects or people to move in a “weird” way that manipulates the content of the animation which relays a greater message to the world. Which in this case would be a great starting point since I want to showcase the cultural differences that people encounter everyday or once in a while. 

What got me started was basically the fact that I’m from Malaysia and currently living and studying in England for my degree in Creative Media Practice.

I want people to know what it is like to meet people with different cultural backgrounds since culture itself is something profound and amazing. Therefore, basing the fact that I’m a foreigner, I thought to myself ‘what could be the best thing to show to people about cultural differences’ and that’s where it hit me: INTER-CULTURAL RELATIONSHIPS.

Nowadays, having an inter-cultural/inter-racial relationships are fairly common within the society/community since we are more open and diverse with these things. There are many projects and awareness such as  “Love Has No Labels” that shows that you can love anyone regardless of their race, size, sexuality and age. Well, that’s on another level since I’m only focusing on the cultural aspect of it.

Here’s the video link of the project that they are doing:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PnDgZuGIhHs

After doing some research on this, I have decided to do a story-like stop motion animation about a girl and a boy with different cultures and ethnicity, falling in love at first sight which in the middle of the story, both of the characters encountered a problem with their families that disapproves their relationship. In the end, they worked things out and continue to be together. What a nice ending! For now, I am developing an outline of the story to fit the whole story in 1 minute preferably in order to keep the entertainment going for the audience. 

Wish me luck!