Movie Magic
Putting together a movie is kind of a big deal—especially when the movie you are putting together is for Apple and a national organization promoting the American College & University Presidents Climate Commitment (ACUCCP).
That’s what five Furman students were challenged with this spring. In the midst of classes, studying and all the other things we’re involved in, we had four weeks to create a short movie illustrating why Furman signed the Presidents Climate Commitment.
The Presidents Climate Commitment
The Presidents Climate Commitment is a document signed by colleges and universities around the globe who pledge to eliminate their campuses’ greenhouse gas emissions over time. This is not a simple thing. It involves completing an emissions inventory, setting a target date, choosing interim milestones for becoming climate neutral, and taking immediate steps to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. It also involves making sustainability a part of the educational experience.
Furman President David Shi was one of the first signatories of the commitment. At Furman, sustainability is a part of the strategic plan; what that means to students is that through courses, speakers, events, and even simple things like the presence of recycling containers, we’re encouraged to think about what it means to live sustainably.
Our mission
The ACUPCC Steering Committee, in collaboration with Apple, asked for student teams from only four schools in the country to interview their college’s or university’s president and create a video explaining why that president signed the PCC. The video would then be posted on the Chronicle of Higher Education’s website and on iTunes for the world to see. The goal was to inspire other institutions to become involved with the PCC.
Associate Professor Angela Halfacre, director of Furman’s Center for Sustainability, approached the five of us: Jenni Asman ’11 (Mauldin, S.C.—neuroscience major), David Bruggink ’09 (Ozark, Ala.—communication studies major), Lauren Farrar ’09 (Atlanta, Ga.—communication studies major), Andrea Triplitt ’11 (Greenville, S.C.—earth and environmental science major), and me (Grant Allard ’12, Maryville, Tenn.—individualized curriculum—sustainability) For working on this production, Apple gave us new MacBook Pros and Final Cut Pro editing software.
The process
We began our project with the due date looming only a few weeks away, but nonetheless we all felt confident that we could do it. On the first weekend in a late-night meeting we laid out a strategic plan for the project and hammered out a production schedule. Everyone gave something to the plan—David and Lauren helped those of us less technically knowledgeable to understand what needed to happen for video production, and Andrea, Jenni and I brainstormed concepts that we thought should be included. Together we hatched a plan.
We started our production the day after our planning meeting by filming the Environmental Action Group’s launching of the water-bottle swan onto Furman Lake, an activity celebrating World Water Awareness Week. After this, Jenni began organizing interviews while Andrea and I helped form interview questions.
When we were done with filming most of our footage and interviews, we transcribed the interviews and began to construct a script. We took shifts of watching video and writing down rough transcripts of what was said. From those transcripts, we put together a script to emphasize where Furman had come from, what the state of sustainability is in the present, and where sustainability will lead Furman in the future. David and Lauren then spent an overwhelming amount of time making our rough visions come to fruition in order to produce a “rough” version to show Apple and our own Sustainability Planning Council, the university body that is responsible with planning for sustainability, in order to get advice and comments.
David and Lauren had done a great job of producing the rough version in a couple of days, but still we had work to do, including filming more background footage and finalizing a soundtrack, as well as doing some additional planning about points that we felt needed to be expanded.
After these final interviews, David and Lauren crafted a final version of the video and we turned it in. We all received personal emails from President Shi and felt a great sense of achievement at what we had done. We had spent four weeks working on little else but this video—a month of our lives staying up late and getting up early to meet, share, discuss, edit and film, and now we were done. We felt almost a sense of jubilation come over us: our hard work and determination had paid off.
And now?
Our team of students is excited to have our story out on iTunes. But making this movie affected each of us in different ways. We met people all over campus and learned a tremendous amount about sustainability and the Presidents Climate Commitment. Lauren’s video experience led her to a job with the university’s Marketing & Public Relations office doing videography. Andrea, Jenni and I are now working with the Center for Sustainability on campus as Mellon Sustainability Fellows (a funded program for students involved with sustainability efforts on campus).
And despite all the late nights, the frantic emails and struggles to keep all the balls in the air, we’ve all gotten more
interested in sustainability and are finding ways to apply what we are learning at home, at school
and in our community. And isn’t that really what education is all about?