Category: Making of RUVIVAL

This article was first published in German on Insights.

This is the beginning of a series of Making of publications on the RUVIVAL simulation game. Every year, the participants have 7 weeks to plan eco-villages. 2020 makes this the fifth round. The aim of the series is not only to share our experiences and invite participation, but also to enable others to reproduce or adapt this simulation game according to their needs.

Currently, it is still possible to enter this year’s game. You can still take on the role of a fictitious person who intends to settle in the community later.

Registration for the RUVIVAL Simulation Game

The imagination can be given free rein and can be brought into the planning process.

Making Of Simulation Game Part 1 – The Locations

This first part deals with giving an overview of the concept. Furthermore, the objective of the game is explained: plan an ecological settlement with the mission to reduce the ecological footprint and increase biocapacity.

The english version of the slides are soon available:

Making of RUVIVAL Simulation Game by Ruth Schaldach is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

This will be followed by deeper insights into the technical implementation and didactic aspects of the current round, as well as an overall summary.

This article was at first published in German on Insights.

The Community Project is a partnership between RUVIVAL and Global Water Dances. Global Water Dances began in 2011, with the goal to use dance to raise awareness on water issues and to encourage the creation of solutions for water preservation and conservation through community engagement. Each year they organise a worldwide event to achieve this goal. In 2019, RUVIVAL decided partner with Global Water Dances to promote 8 sites and to report about them in more detail on the RUVIVAL website.

A call for scholarships for groups from Africa and India was part of this project. The goal was to increase participation in this global event from these countries and we reached this aim. On the 15th of June in 2019 RUVIVAL cooperated with 7 sites in Africa and one in India: Ganvie (Benin), Johannesburg (South Africa), Durban (South Africa), Bwaise and Beach House in Kampala (Uganda), Diani (Kenya), Kilifi (Kenya), and Motakondur (India). On June 15, 2019, each of these eight dance troupes partook in the Global Water Dances event, successfully raising awareness and encouraging their neighbors to action.

Afterwards, RUVIVAL’s work began. Our objective after the event was to publicise the hard work of each site. We collected photos, videos, music, and photo and video release forms from the sites. For each site we published a post. The process of creating these posts is discussed below.

Video Editing

Using raw footage of the event from each site leader, nine videos were made. One was an overview of all eight sites. (This can be found at our Community Project page.) The others were three minute videos, specific to each event. (These can be found at their respective posts: Johannesburg, Durban, Kilifi, Diani, Ganvie, Beach House, Bwaise, Motakondur.)

First, we analysed the footage that each of the sites sent and then used Final Cut Pro to edit them. While editing, we cut out the parts that were unusable. A section was unsuitable if it was not of sufficient quality or if an audience member was in the frame. (We did not get consent from the audience members to use their images in our videos.)

After this initial editing, some of the videos were already about three minutes long; so, further editing was not required. For those that were longer, we had another look and whittled the video down to its most interesting and important scenes until the video was three minutes long. Once the videos were the required length, we added the intros and outros, including credits.

Intro and Outro Slides for Kilifi Video by RUVIVAL Team is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Post Creation

We wanted each post to have some unity. Each post had at least a video (see above for more information), an event summary, photos, and a background on the dance group. Additional sections were added depending on the information gathered by our contact person from each sites.

Creating the summaries of the events took quite a bit of communication with the groups. We focused on collecting the following information:

• the motivation of the artistic director and/or site leader in joining the Global Water Dances event,
• the meaning behind the choreography,
• and the water issues explored and ‘discussed’ at the event.

After the initial draft, the posts were reviewed by the respective contact person of each site, edited and finally approved for publication. This ensures that the message they were trying to convey was accurate and that no misunderstandings occurred.

All material was published at the end of 2019 and distributed through several social media channels in order to rise awareness on water issues.

To see more about these sites, please visit our Community Project page.

This article was at first published in German on Insights.

Stop motion is a visual storytelling technique that has been present in film-making for over a century. In fact, it is the first ever animation technique. It creates an illusion of movement by playing a series of individual frames in a fast sequence. In stop motion, ideas are often conveyed by combining art, motion and metaphor.

In RUVIVAL, we use the stop motion technique to explain complex topics in a simple and descriptive visual manner, where language is not in the foreground. The particular style of our videos is called cut-out animation. This technique utilises flat materials, such as paper and fabrics, producing a 2D animation as a result. We focus on using small-scale handmade scenes and we have learned a few things along the way about creating a makeshift stop motion studio. All images used in the RUVIVAL stop motion videos are hand drawn by our collaborators, just as all sound effects are available in the public domain.

Something very important to us is that our videos reach a worldwide audience. Part of our concept is to choose an iconography speaking to an audience of diverse backgrounds by being abstract. Therefore, to use an imagery and symbol language as general as possible. This can be seen especially in the people characters in our videos, which we make in a universal way, without representing and reproducing gender, ethnical or even racial stereotypes making it also easier for the viewer to identity themselves with the situations. An example of our images can be seen below.

Stop Motion Images by RUVIVAL Team are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

In these past years, we have also learned that it is not only people characters which make a video universal. For example, in our first videos, houses and farms were drawn resembling a U.S. farm house architecture, a detail we corrected for the newer videos by using more abstract forms as it can be seen in the images below.

Stop Motion Images by RUVIVAL Team are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

What is the production process like?

We have come a long way since we started making videos in 2016 and since then we have improved our production process. Each production consists of three steps: pre-production, studio production and post-production. Here you can see an overview of the process:

Making of RUVIVAL Stop Motion Videos by RUVIVAL Team is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Part 1. Pre-production

It all starts with a pre-production phase, where all the planning is done and storyboards are reviewed several times before the video is actually filmed. This is done in order to improve the quality of the video and to avoid having to re-shoot scenes as they did not work out like we wanted them to. The first step consists of the student writing a script, which is then reviewed by the supervisors. Afterwards, the script is divided into scenes to create a storyboard. The storyboard is first made in a tabular form, in which it is described what will happen in each scene, what elements will be used and what the narration will be. This is then also reviewed by the supervisors. A template of our tabular storyboard can be downloaded here.

Once the tabular storyboard is approved, an animated storyboard is made on PowerPoint, in which the student uses images taken from our database and/or the Internet and his/her own voice as narration. This animated storyboard is very important for our production process, as it helps us to visualise how the final video will look like and to see if it is made in a way that catches the viewers’ attention. We have learned a few important guidelines that we now follow when creating our videos and these are included in our step-by-step guide below.

2D Stop Motion Step-by-Step Guide by RUVIVAL Team is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

The most important points to remember when creating a scene are:

• Follow composition rules used in photography, like the ‘golden ratio’ or the ‘rule of thirds’. The ‘golden ratio’ is based on the ratio of 1 to 1.618, which has been found to create a sense of harmony and balance and can be found everywhere in nature, making it appealing to the human eye. In photography, it can be applied by using the Phi Grid or the Fibonacci Spiral. The Phi Grid is created by dividing the frame into nine sections, resulting in a grid that is 1:0.618:1, and it is applied by placing important elements along these lines and/or intersections; whereas the Fibonacci Spiral is based on the Fibonacci number sequence and it is applied by placing elements with the greatest detail in the smallest quadrangle and the rest of the object along the spiral. The ‘rule of thirds’ is similar to the Phi Grid; however, here the frame is divided into nine equal parts and important elements are placed along the dividing lines and/or their intersections.
• Make the scenes as simple as possible, as having too many elements may confuse the viewers or draw the attention away from important elements.
• Define order of events so there is only one focus point at a time and objects do not have to compete for the viewers’ attention.
• Follow the same style for all drawings used in the video and be consistent, that is, use the same style to depict people, environment, etc.
• Avoid text as much as possible.

After the animated storyboard has been perfected, the images to be used in the video can finally be drawn. We try to use the same style for all the drawings and, as all of the images are hand-drawn by the students, we have developed a style that is simple and easy for everyone. Since the beginning, we have collected all the drawings made for the videos and we now have a database of over 400 images; therefore, the number of new images that need to be drawn for a new video is now very small. When all the images have been drawn, they are printed, cut out and organized into envelopes according to each scene. After this, we are ready to go to the studio.

Part 2. Studio production

The studio production consists of 2 parts: filming the video and recording the audio. Filming is done at a studio at Multimedia Kontor Hamburg (MMKH). This studio has a fixed camera that is set over a table where we arrange each scene and record it. The filming of each stop motion video, with a length of approximately 3 minutes, usually takes 5 to 8 hours. We have seen that by having the images for each scene organised into separate envelopes, we are able to film the video much faster, as each video has dozens of images and sometimes it can take a long time to look for some of the very small images. The audio is also recorded at a studio, but in this case, it is done at a recording studio and by a professional narrator who is a native speaker.

Part 3. Post-production

The last part of the process is the post-production. This is done at the editing room in the Institute of Technical Education and University Didactics (iTBH), where a computer with professional editing software is available. Here, the video images are put together with the audio recorded by a professional narrator. Additionally, sound effects are added to make the video more entertaining. After this, the video is ready to be enjoyed!

As we would like to reach as many people in as many languages as possible, we have made all our videos open to contributions on YouTube, where you can easily add subtitles in any language here. We are very happy to get feedback on our videos, which you can do by sending us a message through our Contact form.

If you would like to see how this production process actually looks like, take a look at the images below.

Video Production Images by RUVIVAL Team are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

To watch RUVIVAL stop motion videos, click here. Also, don’t forget to subscribe to our YouTube and Vimeo channels to never miss any RUVIVAL videos!