Culture & Education | Monday 24 April, 2017 5:19 am |

The Organising Committee of the Abdee Award, organised by Sharjah Media Corporation (SMC), has shortlisted 70 applications from the original 125 submissions for the best visual report, with the winners due to be announced on May 14.

Aiming to develop their creative talents, encourage their spirit of competition and enhance their methods of visual reporting production, both technically and artistically, the Abdee award has allotted cash prizes of AED 150,000 spanning five categories. Best Idea, Best Performance, Best Introduction, Best Videography and Best Direction will each receive a prize of AED 10,000, while the winner of the Most Integrated Artwork Award will be given a cash prize of AED 50,000, with the runner up awarded AED 30,000 and third-place winning AED 20,000.

The award's Organising Committee has also introduced a new ‘Jury Award’ where the judges choose one of the reports based on their independent preferences. Najm Al Deen Hashem, President of the Abdee Award, believes the quality of the entries has confirmed the passion of Sharjah’s young production teams.

"The colleges and universities have nurtured some truly creative and innovative talents in reporting. These entries are most relevant to television, online and especially social media and with this in mind, they have been well planned and superbly executed with a variety of ideas and a wealth of technical expertise. We can see already that the award has realised many of its goals by unlocking the potential of young people in developing local and Arab media content."

Najm Al Deen added: "This award has never been a contest where participants compete just for the title or the cash prize, it has also been an inspiration and an opportunity for them to show the quality of their work and be recognised for their achievements."

The Abdee Award jury, which includes media experts specialising in videography, writing and direction, is chaired by: Dr Ali Qassim Al Shuaibi, Emirati Media Expert, Ahmed Al Bairaq, Emirati Journalist, Nahla Al Fahad, Emirati Filmmaker, Mohammed Saeed Harib, Emirati TV Director, and Ebtisam Al Shayeb, Emirati TV Production Director.

Dr Ali Qassim Al Shuaibi said: "The Abdee award 2017 has revealed a high spirit of competition and creativity from students of various nationalities who have put forward innovative visions and demonstrated a high degree of professionalism."

He continued: "So many entries have been outstanding and it has been a difficult task to select which ones should progress to the next stage. We have had to look primarily at the techniques used in preparing the report, its artistic vision and the uniqueness of its idea to benchmark one entry against another and that hasn’t been easy.”

The award criteria include that the entrant must be a student at one of Sharjah’s universities or educational institutions, the report should not exceed more than three minutes and should be Full-HD and 24 Bit-Rate for sound. Students entering the award are not permitted to participate in more than one report.

Other conditions are that the visual reports should not have been submitted for other previous award schemes, entrants should write the names of all participants preparing the report, including writers, directors, photographers, videographers, graphic artists and producers.

All team members involved in compiling the report are required to be full-time students and should not cooperate with outside art production companies or third party experts in its preparation.