I reviewed Muslims in Gainesville During Ramadan.
I enjoyed viewing it. The information was interesting and informative. The sound was clear.
I don’t find the classic elements of a story here — a conflict and a resolution. It seems more like an explanation of the experience of Ramadan, followed by a description of how it happens. This is interesting, but I don’t know if there is a moment of reflection, or conflict needing resolution. There is one nice quote that seems close to a moment of reflection, something along the lines of “Gives a chance to remember that Allah is with you throughout the day.”
I missed a main character. The soundslides was more a description of what the group did, and I felt I would have liked more about the voice and the voice’s personal interaction with the religious holiday.
The beginning, with the call to prayer and the early images of prayer, were very engaging. I thought the title page was clear, though the title might have been crafted to be less literal.
The last third of the soundslides through to the end when the character describes his experience with Ramadan in a few sentences (mentioned above) resonated with me the most.
In the narrative there was only one mention of students, and no connection as to how this experience connects with students or campus life. I cheated to see if this was explained in the captions, but didn’t see it there either. I would have to say this story is about 1 percent student life, and 99 percent a explanation of Ramadan for the uninformed. I must say that it succeed very well in this mission, which to me has a lot of value.
The single best thing about the story is the quote about how Ramadan allows time to recognize God in your life and how you would never forget to fast because you become so attuned to the presence of god and why you are doing this. I would recommend starting the story with this line.
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October 28, 2007 at 12:57 am
ealnashmi
Yeah, I knew I was missing the UF aspect of the story, especially with the audio, which was basically juts information about Ramadan. I tried fixing that problem by using pictures of UF students, but I guess it didn’t work. I also agree with you that the main character was missing in the pictures—I only used four pictures of him—but I got to be honest with you: I think I took more than 100 pictures of my main subject and all but a few were blurry.
Thank you for your comments
November 1, 2007 at 12:52 am
ratikumar
The reason I wanted to watch this slide was because I reviewed a slide by Sanam on the same festival, but with a female subject. I was interested in knowing if and what differences there were.
Getting back to Denise’s critique, I don’t necessarily disagree/ agree with her comment about “missing a main character”. I am just a little intrigued.
It seems like this balance between a profile and an on campus activity is really difficult to bridge. I know that mine went overboard with the profile aspect, so it was interesting to see what Denise thought was too little of one person. I am sure there is no magic number of formula to saying this is either a profile or on campus activity. It just seems to me sometimes, that in this soundslides attempt, like all else in life, nothing succeeds like success.
November 3, 2007 at 3:36 pm
Mindy McAdams
Hey, Rati, the Soundslides you critiqued was by Saman. It is true we have a student in our class whose name is Sanam. Very confusing, I know. But Sanam did the Turkish family in UF Family Housing, and Saman did the women at Ramadan story.