Review: Yemen’s Skies of Terror
Yemen’s Skies of Terror opens with the title, and a drawn, yet serious looking depiction of Yemen, with women standing in the foreground and a few other figures running around and following in their daily lives among a brown and grey backdrop with a few simple buildings. I read a few facts about Yemen being in the center of a war on two sections of the screen, and then switches to video. It brings me into an actual city with a count running with the date March 26th 2015. It starts at 0, and counts up for each death. I first meet a boy, and he begins to talk about Yemen. As he talks, an English translation is spoken over him. He begins to talk about how a missile hit his neighbor, and how he can no longer play with that family’s son because the boy did not survive. He touches on how there is not enough water because of the war. Then the story switches to a new boy, who talks about his family. He explains that him and his family were staying with his aunt and when he went off to get meds, his family got hit by a missile, and he must now live alone. His narrative wraps up with him explaining that he prays for them every day. We meet a seven year old girl, who began to tell her own story. She explains how her friend’s house was hit with a missile, and how they found her friend in the rubble, but the family wasn’t as lucky. The story ends with the same drawings of people, and facts about how in these three years there were over 10,000 raids. The video cuts back to the kids and they talk about how they don’t know if people know what is happening in Yemen, but they want people to know and hear them. It wraps up with saying over 10,000 were killed and millions need assistance.
This media maker filmed everything in 360, and used music, graphics and a counter to supplement the piece. The 360 film immersed me in the setting, making me feel like I was part of the scene, and being guided around myself. At one point there was one person running on one section of the screen, and a man pushing a cart in another, and I was able to see both and glance in between them as I liked. It also allowed the boy to talk to me while I looked around at the world he lived in. The music was a transition in between the talkative shots to show more facts or transition between speakers. It was calm and seemed to fit the culture. The piece used the graphics to show the passing of time along with counting the number of raids by the given date, allowing things to stay chronological but also show how significant the raids were. Finally, the graphic of the women appeared to be the art they displayed information in front of and to introduce the piece. All of these aspects tied together the narrative being told in this film to immerse the user while still giving important information. This piece seemed like a very practical piece in which the creator was attempting to reach out to the public and get the word out about what is happening in Yemen. By using various aspects to communicate the numbers and significance as well as threeo stories to show a recurring problem, it attempted to demand the participants interest and immersion.At first I did not sense the storyteller’s emotions, and they were using brief factual sentences. However, it did eventually reach me because the facts that people were doing this to Yemen sunk in and I realized how horrible it was and how many people were affected. The visuals of showing the destruction, and the boy alone without his family, and graphics allowed me to imagine how hard it all must be, so it did eventually reach me. it was hard to turn around and see everything, I did not feel that it extended high or low enough around me, and that I could see distortion of the image (possibly because the seats weren’t quite centered). On top of that, I wasn’t able to interact, which made me feel less immersed. However, the second time I watched it in a VR headset and had nothing blocking me from looking everywhere, and the aspect ratios were better, making me feel significantly more immerse. Feeling like I was actually in the scene greatly helped, with only a few jump cuts throwing me off.
I believe that this media maker made this piece to show what exactly was going on in Yemen. This would mean covering the who, what, when, where and why of the work. The media maker clearly covered the who, what when and where for Yemen, but did not deeply cover why. They do not explain much about Yemen and Saudi Arabia fighting, other than a brief few sentences on the screen that one can miss entirely, so more information and better placed information would help. It appeared to become more of a sympathy piece to tell people what is happening specifically to Yemen, or show the effect it has on the people. It does not appear to be educating but more promoting people to sympathize with them and fight for change, either assuming everyone knows all about the war or that background details are practically irrelevant.
I do not think this piece is entirely successful ,given that it appears to be a sympathy piece without enough background. I think giving more of a background on the war would help me understand what was going on, and then moving onto the people would work better. To inspire sympathy and make people fight for change, relating to the people would be important. Showing more emotion or people struggling post crisis is essential, and 360 video may not be the perfect software to show facial emotion, so getting a missile hitting or the aftermath of people searching through rubble could help deeply. This may be hard to film on a short time frame and may require travel, but actually being immersed in the struggling and emotion that people are going through is essential to immersion in VR. With all this being said, I do feel think the piece was effective because it did make me feel sympathy and want change, but I do feel like it could’ve been much stronger and made me and other viewers care more.
Screened in the Alternative Realities Exhibition at the Sheffield Documentary Festival.
Recent Comments