Five years in 3 scenes, where reflecting different places, different languages and different feelings. 40 seconds tell my story from Syria, Turkey to my final home in The UK. My story starts in Syria, which is my place of birth and where I lived for 21 years. Everything was normal and life was going well until the war started and everything changed. At this point, we were living under siege conditions in a state of terror everyday fearing for our lives.

In 2013 we made the hardest choice, should we leave or should we stay? Making this choice wasn’t easy as to leave we could not take anything with us or even tell anyone we were leaving. Although we made the decision to leave there was still a very long journey ahead with many choices to make.

As part of my series of scenes I was aiming to show my journey by using the same frame and changing only the elements, the only element that was consistent is the glasses to represent the individual’s journey. To try and show an understanding of the life in Syria, I placed out a setting of how in Syrian culture tea is taken. This was alongside Alwatan newspaper from Syria which means “Home” in English. I then used creative sound to give more depth to the situation. The idea was to engage the viewer to understand the seriousness of the situation in more detail and how the situation can change in just a second.

Once the choice was made to leave the journey had begun and as depicted in the scenes through the glasses, I now moved onto the next step of my new life in Turkey. Once there again cultural differences were found and adapted to. In my second scene, the setting for how a drink is taken in Turkey differs from Syria, to also reflect the change in my life the newspaper changed to a Turkish one, and the sounds of many people talking is to reflect the feeling of being lost in my own thoughts with no place to call home.

The journey was not over for me yet as Turkey was not a place to call home, so the next big decision was made. This was an even bigger choice and another cultural change and this was to move to the U.K. While thinking about this scene I chose to use a more calming sound to reflect that I now felt that I had a place to call home. Again, the way the British take their tea has changed and the setting on the table is displayed in this. I used a specific newspaper in this scene which is the one published on the same date I arrived to the U.K. and the main title was FREEDOM which was a good representation of how I felt.

During my studies, I have been spending more time researching the different types of videos and different techniques used to make them. One of the videos I have watched in particular, stood out to me and influenced my dissension on how to tell my story. The video was a short film called “Life is simple why complicate it” by Vignesh Venugopal, where he used the same main frame and told the story by only changing elements. I thought this was a great idea and excellent way to express my story without having to be in each country mentioned as I could use one set frame for each scene.

The main element in this video was the TEA, which although has culture differences in the way it’s served, there is also a familiarity in each country. How do you take yours?!