Students make big strides with Diff

Dubai: More than 16,000 international viewers tuned into this year's official Dubai International Film Festival (Diff) YouTube Channel online.

It was produced entirely by a group of Zayed University (ZU) female Emirati students.

On Monday, a day after DIFF wrapped up, the official number of hits on the internet channel was 16,444; a significant rise from last year's trial run, which received only 2,500 hits.

As the festival's educational partner, ZU signed an agreement to provide full online festival coverage — a task involving 30 students from ZU's college of media and communications.

"This was not a news channel we didn't want to provide the conventional media coverage of the festival," said Giorgio Ungania, Executive Director of ZU's media initiative and brainchild of the Diff YouTube Channel.

"The students were banned from asking actors like, Colin Firth about their latest projects and focused more on asking about their social media and technology usage."

Different angle

The idea behind the angle of coverage was to cater to a youthful online audience who, Ungania said, statistics show are the main viewers of online content.

Viewers mainly tuned in from France, US, UK, South Africa, Australia and Japan extending the international reaches of Diff.

The group was thrown in at the deep end, in charge of independently generating content, filming, editing and uploading it onto the channel under Ungania's virtually invisible supervision.

As official staff members of Diff, students were granted access to all areas of the festival and spent a big portion of their time on the red carpet interviewing celebrities.

Noora Bawazir, 20, the channel's team leader got a taste of the media world as she fought for a place on the red carpet amongst the UAE's photographers, camera crews and reporters.

Yet, it seems she put up a good fight as she managed to interview the likes of Hollywood actor Ed Harris and Peter Weir, Director of the movie The Way Back and French actor Jean Reno.

Noora called the experience "nerve wracking" but said it has helped her self esteem.

Ungania said there would be a dedicated link for next year's festival and would be watched almost in real time.

To watch student coverage of DIFF log onto www.youtube.com/user/DubaiFilmFestival