- For our video, we first chose Farewell as our topic. However, we found it hard to discuss such a big topic. Therefore we turned to explore a more specific one—about those from small cities who said farewell to their hometown and came to work in Shanghai, a bigger city. They are strangers to this new, modern city, just around us. We have great interest in their thoughts and feelings. Especially, we want to break the stereotypes of them to show more respect. In our video, the interviewees are not always in difficulty. They came to Shanghai because they don’t want to waste their lifetime. And in general they enjoy the time here.
We interviewed two people of this kind, an Ayi, the housekeeper, and a street cleaner. We asked them why they came to Shanghai, what difficulties they met, how they felt when staying in a bigger city, and some positive things they felt here.
To use visual metaphors to visualize these interviews, we include some scenes when they are working and daily routines. We also use things like the telephone booth to show their missing home. Most importantly, we want to use them as the two typical people who can represent thousands of people like them. Therefore, we use the juxtaposition to show many scenes we capture on the streets to reveal how common these scenes are.
In addition, we want to show how those people might be ignored by others. So, we use a juxtaposition where there’s a stream of cars below and a standing rubbish cart above, which is then pushed by a street cleaner. This scene demonstrates the contrast between a busy city and these quiet workers, showing that those strangers might be ignored by other busy people in the city to raise more people’s awareness of their quiet contributions.
The music we use is “five hundred miles”, whose lyrics show how a person leaves his or her hometown, in search of a brand-new life. This accords with our theme of those strangers adjusting to a new city.
Everyone in the city of Shanghai has his/her unknown past. We meet a variety of people in Shanghai every day and each of their stories deserves to be listened to. This time, we focus on the strangers in Shanghai, whose past is buried deep and far away. We want to be participants of social connection, hearing about what the strangers want to talk about. It turns out that their experience of leaving home to stay in Shanghai is like taking a new journey along the road, tough though colorful.
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