Author: Chloe Chan

For our project, we are focusing on an ambiguous definition of what freedom really means to each individual. We are hoping to create an interactive platform that will allow users to further explore what freedom might mean to different individuals, instead of setting boundaries or any clear definitions as to what it might mean. We start off with a few clips of what freedom might mean to different people and by putting them together in a montage, we hope to set the tone for the user, showing them how freedom presents itself in multiple forms. 

Scene 1

Scene 2

Scene 2 demonstrates the interactivity, and how users would be able to view the videos that will be shot by my teammates and I. I think that we are attempting to use a variety of different angles and shots.

Scene 3

The last scene shows a compilation of present-day issues pertaining to freedom, as a closing scene following the montage at the beginning of our interactive video project.

Project Idea: 

The five obstructions film inspired us to explore varying ideas of Freedom using our video project. We will interview different people to explore what freedom means to different people, why it is important to them, and to juxtapose contrasting views. We also want to show the audience what Freedom has meant to people throughout history, and will compile a montage of videos depicting that. 

Execution: 

When users access our page, we will automatically play a montage of videos showing what freedom has meant to different people throughout history. Afterward, we will lead users to a second page where users are supposed to click on moving balloons, that are floating past the screen. Users can opt to click on different balloons, in order to view videos of interviews we conduct with students around NYU Shanghai as they describe what freedom really means to them and why it is important to them. 

Novelist, Chimamanda Adiche describes multiple situations in which a single story can misconstrue a person, a situation, a country heavily. She mentions that humans are easily “impressionable and vulnerable [in] the face of a story, particularly as children” we are easily swayed by stereotypes and perspectives that are offered to us by other members of our in-group. For example, she described her own childhood, and how she believed that books could only contain characters who were foreign and distinct from who she was. Her entire perspective on literature changed when she discovered books that wrote about people that were just like her. Her discovery of African literature allowed her to have multiple stories on books. These stories exist for everything on earth, and they have become the basis for many stereotypes that we create. 

Adiche continues to elaborate on the importance of Power in tandem with stories. Adiche determines that “power is the ability not just to tell the story of another person, but to make it the definitive story of the person”. The way that we frame an individual’s story, can entirely change the way that others receive the story, just like how the medium can change the message of the story.

Throughout the TED Talk Adiche uses her home country, Nigeria as a prime example of how a country can be misconstrued with just one story, how people can have a different perspective of her home country because of what they hear in the news, not what she personally experienced having grown up there. Stories are important because “[they] can be used to empower and to humanize. [They] can break the dignity of a people but [they] can also repair that broken dignity.” She encourages us to challenge each story that we encounter about a specific entity, and to look at it from different perspectives in order to gain a more holistic understanding of different aspects of our world.  

Link: https://imanas.shanghai.nyu.edu/~ys3041/audio/story.html

This project was definitely the biggest challenge because it was a bit out of my comfort zone. I think that the biggest challenge that my group faced in this project was coming up with the initial idea for the project. However, we settled with the idea of a long distance relationship which involved a series of calls between two people. 

While Susie was in charge of coding the website and designing the website, Vincent and I were in charge of audio recording and audio production. The most time-consuming part of the project was definitely coming up with a storyline and producing the script that we had to use for when recording. Once we put together a very comprehensive script and collectively agreed on the direction of the storyline, we started recording. I think that because the script was very detailed, and because it was so well put together it was really easy to record, and we did so without a lot of issues. Most of the recording was completed in the first or second attempt. 

Vincent and I were also in charge of post-production of the audio files. I found most of the other audio files required for the recordings with websites that we were provided in class, but if I couldn’t find background noises, I went on youtube to source those sounds. I think that putting together the audios was also a bit of a challenge that I overcame quite quickly. I think initially, it was just figuring out the best way to move sounds to the left or right output, but eventually, I figured out the method of putting together audio files that suited me the best.