Emirate’s heritage in 4 minutes

The UAE Travelogue Web series is a 7-part web video series that looks to explore the different Emirates in an attempt to show its culture, heritage and landmarks – and hear it from the perspective and thoughts of those individuals who enjoy taking that journey. It is a passion project from Hello Project Space, a growing collective of artists, designers and filmmakers based in Dubai, UAE.

From the set of Al Fujairah. Episode 1
Photo courtesy UAE travelogue

UAE Travelogue web series Idea’s Birth

We (Kamil and the team) came up with the idea a few months back while they were shooting a different project which it filming in different parts of the UAE for two straight months. We found ourselves in many different towns where you normally wouldn’t go and visit – and they were beautiful places, and the atmosphere always friendly. The idea to do a travelogue series around the UAE was sparked by that experience.

The web Series’ Objective:

The aim of the web series is to invite people to go out there and explore the place they live in, celebrate its culture – we all know this is a very young country and its exciting to be a part of how it has developed and adapted itself into having a global spotlight. It would be good to see why and how it all started.

Kamil while shooting the first episode.
Photo courtesy: UAE travelogue

Seasons and episodes of the UAE Travelogue

We (Kamil and the team)  intend to do a series for every Emirates, so that should be 7 videos in total. We would then like to explore the opportunity of perhaps doing ‘site specific’ video content after we have done all 7 episodes. There’s a lot that we can’t accommodate for the 3 to 4 minutes videos that we want to produce. So the next approach would be to do a feature on specific places like Wadi Wurayah in Fujairah, and so on.

The Emirates heritage and culture Only.

We really care about our message and what we have to say, so we will try and up the production every time – we’ve started with little steps, and we are just starting to let people know about the series, once we get enough traction we’d start collaborating with other people who would like to get involved in the project.  If people start going out more, explore the UAE more rather than doing the usual Friday brunch – then that would tell us that we have done something special.

Our target audience is for people living in the Emirates, and most of the population is made up of expatriates, people who came here and have chosen to stay here for various reasons. We remember the growing excitement that we had every time we had to film somewhere remote in the UAE, and this is the same experience that we would like to share – discovering more the country’s heritage beyond the bigger metropolitan areas of Dubai and Abu Dhabi.

From the set of Ras el Khaimah.
Photo courtesy: UAE travelogue

The message behind each episode of The UAE travelogue Web series

Discovery!

Not all people who explore the UAE explore it to discover the country’s history. A few in part travel outside of metro Dubai and Abu Dhabi but only to spend their time away in beach-side resorts, and these are all good options to spend your holidays or the weekends, but it would also do you good to embrace more the culture of the place you live in

We believe that social video can be a very effective medium, and we would like to share this content to as much people as we can, and that is why we chose English for the narration. However, we wouldn’t want to limit the exploration of these series, so it wouldn’t be a surprise at all if we end up with an episode of Arabic narration, or both English and Arabic.

Team’s Expectations.

The UAE travelogue web series will always involve a lot of traveling and narrating from someone’s perspective. If by chance people can relate their own personal experience with an episode that we have crafted, then that would make us feel that we have succeeded halfway through – the other half would be if people start going out more, there’s a lot of really good open roads in the UAE and its great if you head out there and create your own stories.

UAE travelogue social networks.

You can follow UAE Travelogue on Facebook , Twitter , Instagram

You can also watch the episodes on Vimeo

UAE travelogue web series Episode 1: Fujairah