The MidSweden Summer University 2019 took place in the city called Sundsvall in Sweden. Students from different countries, which were Sweden, Germany, the Netherlands, Switzerland and Ireland, had the opportunity to participate nature-based projects. The projects were mainly about helping people to live with a more sustainable awareness. The group Sustainable Storytelling and Design had the task to develop an explainer video for social media that should inform about global challenges through visual and interactive media. Therefore we, the group, had to decide which other group, we will accompany and film to emphasize the topic.

At the beginning we were discussing about which group we would film. Finally, we decided to pick the group ‘Fine Dust Measurements’, as we thought it would be a great visualization for talking about air pollution in our world and how we can improve the air quality. This decision was made because all people are concerned by air quality, as we simply need it to live further on this planet. The group of ‘Fine Dust Measurements’ was programming several devices for recording the amount of fine dust in different areas of Sundsvall. As an instance they visited the mountain “Norra Berget” for measurements. The values were surprisingly higher than on the streets even though the regular emissions of driving cars. Possibly this result was caused by a cloud of pollen passing by.

After the decision, we were making a timetable to schedule our work. We were setting milestones and planning the next “to-do’s”. It’s so important to structure everything, especially when your splitting tasks to work in a team. Then we were introduced to the “camera-room” and the camera, we will use the during the project, itself. For this we were setting up a first interview scenario, just to look up all the different functions of the camera and learning on what we should pay attention to while interviewing people.

After getting to know the technical aspects we were heading to do some research about our topic of air pollution. We searched for facts concerning the whole world to have some background knowledge. While educating ourselves we found out that according to the WHO 3.8 million people died prematurely because of air pollution in 2019.[1] Thereof about 18.200 deaths only in the European Union were accounted by coal power. Depending on the source, the number of dead people can even be higher.[2] Due to the impact of fine particles, the population’s life expectancy of Germany is in average reduced by 8 to 10 months.[3] The smallest dust particles are the most dangerous one, as it can get into the bloodstream.[4] The sources of fine durst are forest fires, road dust, coal industry, industrial processes and cars. That’s why its concentration is the highest at rush hour times.[5] After a rainfall the air is generally cleaner. Therefore, the government of China, where the nation suffers heavily from air pollution since the past 30 years, is working besides of other measures on artificial rain.[6] By this geoengineering method, water is sprayed into the atmosphere to reduce the pollution efficiently and fast.[7] A very uncommon way of counteracting air pollution in China is the trend of “Bottled Air”. What started as a joke ended in “Vitality Air”, a company that sells canned and expensive air.[8] Now people stop every 10 minutes just to take a short breath from the bottled air, just because the air can be so full of pollutants. In accordance to that we visited the group of, how we called them, the dusty guys, to get their point of view and to inform us of their planned next steps. With their information we were able to slowly start thinking about what we were going to show of the other group in our video.

Afterwards we got some journalistic advices and learned what we must pay attention to for good storytelling. Therefore, we learned that it’s better to visualize your thoughts instead of telling them. That’s why you must draw the attention of the audience in by an emotional storyline and meaningful visuals. To achieve that we decided to let our video begin with affective footage of people having fun and beautiful nature shots.  Another reason for this was to irritate the viewer and not to confront him directly with the terrible truth of everyone breathing “dirt”.  After that the audience gets surprised by the plot twist of footage that visualizes the impact of air pollution. Storytellers must translate information into something that humans react to an emotional level. For this giving the story a hero is a perfect possibility, as the audience can sympathize with him and follow his journey. A narrative way of telling helps to expound all the important elements of a story. For this there is the rule of the “5 W’s” – who, where, when what and why. A good storytelling contains an answer to all these questions, just to give the audience an overview at the beginning. The hook of the story should be the question “why”, where the interest of the viewer gets aroused. Our hook was the turnaround of the story with the question to the audience “Do you know how much dirt You breathe in?”. But after all the story should be handled in the way of “KIS(S)S” – “keep it short, (stupid), simple”. To refer to our audience in the right way, we had to pick a special target group. For this reason, we made up a character called Nils. He’s a 24-year old popular business student and not environmentally aware. Nils is a rich kid, loves his lifestyle and shares his whole life on social media. That’s why the best way to reach and inspire him is through social media. We thought that it could be a challenge for us to convince him in changing his lifestyle. Because of that we took him, just to make it more challenging for us and to achieve the greatest results in convincing people. In my opinion another good advice was as well “Be in the right place at the right time”.  I realized this when we were going to the fine dust group to make an appointment to film them and they were sitting just the right way for us to start filming them immediately.  So good management is great but being spontaneous could bring even better results than one might think.

With all this information we were able to make a storyboard. We were putting post-it’s, with each of the planned shots, in an order to have an outline to keep our story straight. Simultaneously, we build up a mood board with inspirational quotes, which we thought about using at the end of the video but also used them to inspire us for better ideas concerning the storyboard. Examples for these quotes are” Take a breath and think again” or “Be smart, be sustainable, help save the world!”. We were planning the filming of the group and the interview with our expert Paul van de Brink. Thus, we thought about what we are going to show and what the expert can say. We thought about phrases like “Everyone is able to help to decrease fine dust” or “we only have this planet”. Finally, we got an unexpected quote from him, which was “[..] in a normal big city more people die from bad air quality than car accidents […]” and that air pollution is the biggest and most costly problem of our society.[9] After filming everything, we started cutting the material and designing graphics, which illustrates the in our video presented facts and gives the advice of contributing to a better air quality. For this everyone had his own task like different parts of the video.

Finally, we showed our video to get some feedback from people, who weren’t aware of what we had planned but were specialists in journalism and video editing. With this feedback we could finalize our explainer video, so that it was ready to get presented in front of the other students and teachers. It was very important to hear opinions from other people, to look at some things from another perspective or maybe find mistakes, which our group didn’t see. At the end we were very happy about our work and learned many things during these past two weeks. We hope, that we can at least get a couple of humans to respect the environment and live a more sustainable. Our video is currently online on Youtube[10] and Facebook, where it already got some reactions, comments and shares. But the Summer University was more than just work contributing to sustainable living. It was meeting new people, making intercultural friends and gaining new experiences. Learning things from different people and getting an insight of the way other people from different nations think. This point is the most meaningful for me, as I was very interested in how different teachers and universities can be compared to Germany. Besides of our project we had a couple of time to get to know the Swedish culture and Sundsvall. But also, for taking some time to breathe, live and making fika.

[1]https://www.who.int/airpollution/en/ (24.09.19).
[2]http://transitioninaction.org/public-health/ (24.09.19).
[3]https://ec.europa.eu/jrc/en/news/air-quality-atlas-europe-mapping-sources-fine-particulate-matter (24.09.19).
[4]https://www.epa.gov/pm-pollution/particulate-matter-pm-basics> (24.09.19).
[5]https://www.airgo2.com/air-pollution/ (24.09.19).
[6]http://www.koreaherald.com/view.php?ud=20190214000358 (24.09.19).
[7]https://www.researchgate.net/publication/260528222_Water_spray_geoengineering_to_clean_air_pollution_for_mitigating_haze_in_China’s_cities (24.09.19).
[8]https://thehustle.co/the-dystopian-business-of-bottled-air/ (24.09.19).
[9] Van de Brink, Paul. Interview by Klara Juhl and Helen Wehrheim. (20.08.2019).
[10]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SEMN_3lpMTg (24.09.19).

The MidSweden Summer University 2019 took place in the city called Sundsvall in Sweden. Students from different countries, which were Sweden, Germany, the Netherlands, Switzerland and Ireland, had the opportunity to participate nature-based projects. The projects were mainly about helping people to live with a more sustainable awareness. The group Sustainable Storytelling and Design had the task to develop an explainer video for social media that should inform about global challenges through visual and interactive media. Therefore we, the group, had to decide which other group, we will accompany and film to emphasize the topic.

At the beginning we were discussing about which group we would film. Finally, we decided to pick the group ‘Fine Dust Measurements’, as we thought it would be a great visualization for talking about air pollution in our world and how we can improve the air quality. This decision was made because all people are concerned by air quality, as we simply need it to live further on this planet. The group of ‘Fine Dust Measurements’ was programming several devices for recording the amount of fine dust in different areas of Sundsvall. As an instance they visited the mountain “Norra Berget” for measurements. The values were surprisingly higher than on the streets even though the regular emissions of driving cars. Possibly this result was caused by a cloud of pollen passing by.

After the decision, we were making a timetable to schedule our work. We were setting milestones and planning the next “to-do’s”. It’s so important to structure everything, especially when your splitting tasks to work in a team. Then we were introduced to the “camera-room” and the camera, we will use the during the project, itself. For this we were setting up a first interview scenario, just to look up all the different functions of the camera and learning on what we should pay attention to while interviewing people.

After getting to know the technical aspects we were heading to do some research about our topic of air pollution. We searched for facts concerning the whole world to have some background knowledge. While educating ourselves we found out that according to the WHO 3.8 million people died prematurely because of air pollution in 2019.[1] Thereof about 18.200 deaths only in the European Union were accounted by coal power. Depending on the source, the number of dead people can even be higher.[2] Due to the impact of fine particles, the population’s life expectancy of Germany is in average reduced by 8 to 10 months.[3] The smallest dust particles are the most dangerous one, as it can get into the bloodstream.[4] The sources of fine durst are forest fires, road dust, coal industry, industrial processes and cars. That’s why its concentration is the highest at rush hour times.[5] After a rainfall the air is generally cleaner. Therefore, the government of China, where the nation suffers heavily from air pollution since the past 30 years, is working besides of other measures on artificial rain.[6] By this geoengineering method, water is sprayed into the atmosphere to reduce the pollution efficiently and fast.[7] A very uncommon way of counteracting air pollution in China is the trend of “Bottled Air”. What started as a joke ended in “Vitality Air”, a company that sells canned and expensive air.[8] Now people stop every 10 minutes just to take a short breath from the bottled air, just because the air can be so full of pollutants. In accordance to that we visited the group of, how we called them, the dusty guys, to get their point of view and to inform us of their planned next steps. With their information we were able to slowly start thinking about what we were going to show of the other group in our video.

Afterwards we got some journalistic advices and learned what we must pay attention to for good storytelling. Therefore, we learned that it’s better to visualize your thoughts instead of telling them. That’s why you must draw the attention of the audience in by an emotional storyline and meaningful visuals. To achieve that we decided to let our video begin with affective footage of people having fun and beautiful nature shots.  Another reason for this was to irritate the viewer and not to confront him directly with the terrible truth of everyone breathing “dirt”.  After that the audience gets surprised by the plot twist of footage that visualizes the impact of air pollution. Storytellers must translate information into something that humans react to an emotional level. For this giving the story a hero is a perfect possibility, as the audience can sympathize with him and follow his journey. A narrative way of telling helps to expound all the important elements of a story. For this there is the rule of the “5 W’s” – who, where, when what and why. A good storytelling contains an answer to all these questions, just to give the audience an overview at the beginning. The hook of the story should be the question “why”, where the interest of the viewer gets aroused. Our hook was the turnaround of the story with the question to the audience “Do you know how much dirt You breathe in?”. But after all the story should be handled in the way of “KIS(S)S” – “keep it short, (stupid), simple”. To refer to our audience in the right way, we had to pick a special target group. For this reason, we made up a character called Nils. He’s a 24-year old popular business student and not environmentally aware. Nils is a rich kid, loves his lifestyle and shares his whole life on social media. That’s why the best way to reach and inspire him is through social media. We thought that it could be a challenge for us to convince him in changing his lifestyle. Because of that we took him, just to make it more challenging for us and to achieve the greatest results in convincing people. In my opinion another good advice was as well “Be in the right place at the right time”.  I realized this when we were going to the fine dust group to make an appointment to film them and they were sitting just the right way for us to start filming them immediately.  So good management is great but being spontaneous could bring even better results than one might think.

With all this information we were able to make a storyboard. We were putting post-it’s, with each of the planned shots, in an order to have an outline to keep our story straight. Simultaneously, we build up a mood board with inspirational quotes, which we thought about using at the end of the video but also used them to inspire us for better ideas concerning the storyboard. Examples for these quotes are” Take a breath and think again” or “Be smart, be sustainable, help save the world!”. We were planning the filming of the group and the interview with our expert Paul van de Brink. Thus, we thought about what we are going to show and what the expert can say. We thought about phrases like “Everyone is able to help to decrease fine dust” or “we only have this planet”. Finally, we got an unexpected quote from him, which was “[..] in a normal big city more people die from bad air quality than car accidents […]” and that air pollution is the biggest and most costly problem of our society.[9] After filming everything, we started cutting the material and designing graphics, which illustrates the in our video presented facts and gives the advice of contributing to a better air quality. For this everyone had his own task like different parts of the video.

Finally, we showed our video to get some feedback from people, who weren’t aware of what we had planned but were specialists in journalism and video editing. With this feedback we could finalize our explainer video, so that it was ready to get presented in front of the other students and teachers. It was very important to hear opinions from other people, to look at some things from another perspective or maybe find mistakes, which our group didn’t see. At the end we were very happy about our work and learned many things during these past two weeks. We hope, that we can at least get a couple of humans to respect the environment and live a more sustainable. Our video is currently online on Youtube[10] and Facebook, where it already got some reactions, comments and shares. But the Summer University was more than just work contributing to sustainable living. It was meeting new people, making intercultural friends and gaining new experiences. Learning things from different people and getting an insight of the way other people from different nations think. This point is the most meaningful for me, as I was very interested in how different teachers and universities can be compared to Germany. Besides of our project we had a couple of time to get to know the Swedish culture and Sundsvall. But also, for taking some time to breathe, live and making fika.

[1]https://www.who.int/airpollution/en/ (24.09.19).
[2]http://transitioninaction.org/public-health/ (24.09.19).
[3]https://ec.europa.eu/jrc/en/news/air-quality-atlas-europe-mapping-sources-fine-particulate-matter (24.09.19).
[4]https://www.epa.gov/pm-pollution/particulate-matter-pm-basics> (24.09.19).
[5]https://www.airgo2.com/air-pollution/ (24.09.19).
[6]http://www.koreaherald.com/view.php?ud=20190214000358 (24.09.19).
[7]https://www.researchgate.net/publication/260528222_Water_spray_geoengineering_to_clean_air_pollution_for_mitigating_haze_in_China’s_cities (24.09.19).
[8]https://thehustle.co/the-dystopian-business-of-bottled-air/ (24.09.19).
[9] Van de Brink, Paul. Interview by Klara Juhl and Helen Wehrheim. (20.08.2019).
[10]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SEMN_3lpMTg (24.09.19).

Das Cinderella-Schloss von Disney als ein imposantes und umfangreiches Modell ist Idee und Grundlage für das Projekt. Die Animation soll eine Kombination aus dem tatsächlichen Disney-Intro und einer eigenen Kreation darstellen. Originell gibt es unterschiedliche Intros, welche unterschiedliche Schlösser beinhalten, die Variationen sind also sehr breit aufgestellt und bieten ein großes Spektrum an Möglichkeiten. Der Fokus liegt jedoch auf dem Cinderella Schloss, da dieses Bauwerk das meistvorkommende in den Disney-Intros ist und als Grundlage für alle anderen Schlösser dient.

Um das Schloss proportional und inhaltlich korrekt zu modellieren, werden die Intros von Disney und unterschiedliche Modellierungen als Inspiration und Orientierung hinzugezogen. Auch hier wird der Freiraum individueller Abweichungen eingeräumt, um eine Einzigartigkeit herzustellen und die in den Intros nicht sichtbaren Bereiche des Schlosses zu modellieren. Das Schloss steht in einer flachen, leicht hügeligen Landschaft auf einem Fluss. Dieser Fluss durchläuft das Schloss in einem Tunnel, welcher durch Tore auf beiden Seiten eingeleitet wird. Seitlich verlassen durch zwei kleinere Eingänge, zwei Straßen das Schloss und verschwinden in der Ferne.

Es sollen entsprechend dem Intro einige Objekte animiert werden. Der Fluss soll typische Wasseraktivitäten, wie Bewegungen durch Umgebungswind, aufweisen. Außerdem soll Feuerwerk animiert werden, welches über dem Schloss zu bestimmten Zeitpunkten explodiert. Zudem soll es einen animierten leuchtenden Bogen und einen glitzernden Schriftzug geben, welche auch an der Darstellung von Disney angelehnt sind.