Eid Mubarak to our wonderful teammate Farhana and everyone who's celebrating it!
This week was a tough one for all of us. At the same time, it was also a testimonial to our team’s strength and made our bonds stronger than ever before. With countless hours of working on our final deliverables, we successfully produced the first glances of our works (losing some hours of sleep was worth it)
On Tuesday, our team decided not to meet since we had discussed so much in the prior weeks, and did not need to meet again. Everyone knew what they needed to do, and we got started on it. Kaitlyn and Jamie took advantage of their brief day off from other schoolwork. They dedicated the day to drinking boba, but also to working on our comic book strip. They began at the first location, discussing and finalizing our draft, as they continued to question… What exactly are we doing (for the comic)? And what are we talking about?
They stuck to their plan of introducing Humaira as our protagonist, and a child provoking the story of where her neighbours go. After catching Jamie up on the interview with Humaira, the duo started creating our comic's final scene-by-scene draft. The duo finalized on the cartoon styles, illustration details and settled on a simpler drawing style for the characters, to better promote the accessibility of the story (aiming to be readable for both kids and adults), and also making our illustration process more efficient.
At 9 pm, as they finished our draft, the boba shop simultaneously closed, and the duo adventured to a new place to work on the comic book together. They found another boba tea place, bought another tea, and started their work on the comic again. After finishing the storyboard, they moved on to creating details of each scene. Jamie was tasked to develop Humaira in the comic, with her character in different scenes. Kaitlyn is in charge of the other supporting characters in the book. At 2 am, Kaitlyn, who was not prone to late-night study sessions and those many boba drinks, called it a night for the duo, and the team ended the night with late-night dim sum nearby, and talked the night away. We wished it were the end of our team having late-night study sessions, but it was not.
A picture of Kaitlyn and Jamie’s finalized comic draft.
While we would share the details of the plots with the blog, we wanted to keep it a surprise until the presentation! The story touches on Humaira’s childhood, the things she missed and cherished from that time, her struggles with displacement, her teen years with Daniel's cooperation and involvement, and her and Helima’s journey in creating the carousel cafe.
On Wednesday, Jamie and Kaitlyn, joined by Eric, did it again and worked together until 5 am! What was supposed to be a brief study turned into a turmoil. Eric was free from his gruelling statistics assignment, right as Jamie and Kaitlyn had committed to other due dates just as urgent as the draft. Thus, with Jamie and Kaitlyn's consultation and moral support, Eric brought himself up to speed on the very informative interview with Humaira and the comic book session from the night before, and began working on the podcast. Tentative production of the podcast was done by 10 pm. Unfortunately, writing the script for narration took long enough for the trio to be evicted to Robarts Commons, putting Eric on the hunt for a quiet area to record the narration… in one of the least quiet places in UofT. With some tinkering on the audio recorder settings, he finally recorded decent audio by midnight at the cafeteria. The podcast was polished by 2 am… with the journalism draft yet to be started.
Picture on the left: Selfie of the trio at Robarts Library at midnight. Picture on the right: Jamie’s shot of Kaitlyn on the floor at 4 am after knowing a surprise due date for her other courses
Picture on the right: Jamie’s shot of Kaitlyn on the floor at 4 am after knowing a surprise due date for her other courses
With 42 minutes and 38 seconds, Eric produced a podcast filled with concise narration and informative insights inserted during key moments in the interview, from expanding on Humaira’s speech with other neighbourhood stories to providing listeners with an academic context. Eric truly does it all. At the end of the night (or morning) at 4 am, the trio felt the effects of twelve continuous hours spent in the library, but we managed to work out an outline of the long-form journalism piece. When it looked like all of us had finished the work needed for the night, Eric, already packed up, asked, “Have we escaped our demons yet?” On cue, a tired Kaitlyn and Jamie closed their laptops in perfect sync, ready to go home.
Listen to a sneak peek of how we incorporate Eric’s narration with our interview with Humaria here:
On Thursday, Farhana got to present her dissertation! With his group’s Uber arriving early, Eric exploited a free 10 minutes before class to dash over to 260 Sumach and grab final reference photos for one of the introductory comic slides. The rest of us were exhausted from the night before, so we salvaged enough energy to bring Farhana up to speed about the comic book and the podcast and do some of the last interviews for the course documentary before we all went home to catch up on sleep.
One of the photos Eric grabbed during Farhana’s presentation to hopefully fluff up her Linkedin Page! Go, Farhana, we are so proud of you.
This week's beautiful weather finally allowed for some sunny photos of Regent Park, allowing for a shot of one of the remaining examples of social housing homes near the area where Humaira’s old home used to stand.
Plan for next week
Amid the team's hectic school and work schedules, with numerous plans in motion, next week will be our dedicated "go week." Jamie and Kaitlyn will focus on advancing the comic strip, while Eric will finalize the podcast. We'll collaborate to complete and refine our long-form journalism project as a team.
Talk to you next week, we are super excited for the presentation!
The team members of Where did my neighbours go? are Eric, Farhana, Jamie, and Kaitlyn