Mn Beijing series
Mn Beijing is an edutainment series about China targeting the Arab audience. The series triumphed with 130,000 views, 4580 likes, 1020 comments, and 1111 shares, with posts being saved 347 times solely on Instagram. In this project, I was the co-director, producer, DOP, gaffer, script writer, sound recordist and editor, colorist editor, and art director. This film is an independent project that I funded personally.
This project is a nonprofit project that I funded with around 10,000 $. It was filmed in a Blackbox studio, and we created an entire room that represented the Chinese culture through interior design. The furniture was brought from China. The presenter had several Chinese outfits that she used to change during each episode; she used to change her hairstyle as well. This way, the audience would assume that this show was filmed during several days while, in reality, it was filmed in one day. To be accurate, I filmed 15 episodes in less than 16 hours in one day.
To view the full Min Beijing series episodes, check my Instagram account. Below, you will find the process of the series making and some episodes.
The set was designed to be portable with custom-made wallpaper holder that I designed in the VCUQ woodshop with Dana Ladiki. In the scriptwriting process, I analyzed previous famous informative shows on social media to pick up their patterns. Also, every fact in this show is fact-checked with trusted resources and was reviewed by a history teacher in China. Below are some pictures from the studio setup.
The entire series and the crew credit are posted on my Instagram account, linked in the Instagram logo below.
The animation for this series was custom-made as I hired an animation team of 5 crew members located in Egypt and managed the team remotely to achieve my vision.
The art drawn on the wall paper was custom made for my series. Each animal in the drawing is a reference to one of the series episodes. Below are the wall paper drawings.
The section below contains the process of postproduction. It took me 25 days to complete the postproduction of this series.
The editing process was the most challenging creatively as I filmed some episodes over 20 times, and while editing, I had to pick one using two camera angle footage. I prioritized the presenter's performance and several editing rules in deciding which clips to cut. Also, during the sound process, I worked on matching the sound levels and finding sound effects and music that helped create the entire ambiance of sounds; sound effects and music were the critical rules of bringing life to the series, especially the animation clips.
Below are screenshots of the series editing timeline for some episodes.
Coloring process
In the coloring process, I worked on coloring RAW footage to become more vibrant and have a film look to match the authentic Chinese artwork on set. I have created over 25 coloring nodes and colored each clip manually without using LUTS.
Below are screenshots of the coloring timeline and pictures that show before and after coloring the clips.
