Final Project Pitch

I spent a good part of this summer traveling and working in North-East India. Politically, this is a region that has been neglected for many years now. Geographically too, it is secluded (read as breathtakingly beautiful- untouched by industrialization - there are actually still many pristine forests, gorgeous rivers etc). The culture, the people, the food, the economics, the landscape... just about everything about this place is unique!
Right now, there is much political unrest in this region - they want their independence from India. The North East consists of seven states, Assam being the most famous one (for those of you who drink tea, Im sure this place sounds familiar!). So tea is one of the main sources of revenue/ employment/ (exploitation). For the most part, the rest of the North East is populated by small and large tribes, who have their own skills, trading practices etc.
I am working on a series of short documentary films about this region, and the people who live there. In most of the film, the focus is on their occupation - traditional handicrafts like cloth and basket weaving.
For my final project, I want to put together a series of stills along with audio that I recorded on location from these places (they have a rich tradition of music and dance) as an introduction to the short films. The media storm piece on Cuba really made an impact on me, and I want to use a similar style, but with a little more written/spoken information.
So I would use stills and animated masks/mattes for majority of the project. There will also be some time remapping (Im thinking of using some stop-motion sequences). My challenge in this will be to creatively use text within the project, and to make it look different from the media storm piece - more documentary than music video.

Particles

So, I tried to create a rain effect.
The whole thing is divided into three parts - the gray is a frontal view; the black is if you were looking up at the rain, and the brown is if you are looking down at the rain (maybe from a boat or standing on water, because the rain is falling on a very 'liquidy' surface).
the last effect was created by mixing together the cc drizzle and the particle world effects. if anyone has better/easier suggestion, do let me know.