Animation Students Help Raise Awareness in China
This past May, Animation Professor Kevin McNulty took his EMC 4900 class to Guiyang, China for the 2018 Wonderful World exhibition. At this annual event, students from around the world come together to share short films related to global causes.
Leading up to this experience, the animation students spent their spring semester coming up with the idea for their film and putting it together. They decided to go with an environment theme, and titled their film “The Green Touch.” The film depicts how just one person can make an impact on the environment. In order to prevent language barriers, they didn’t use dialogue but had sound effects created by a Recording Industry student. The names of the students who were involved in creating this film are Carson Kirkpatrick, Chi Nguyen, Colleen Green, Derrick Roe, Grace Roberts, Rachel Huttinger, Ryan Barry, Shaun Keefe, Yu-Ju Shih and RIM student Jake Henbest.
The task took a lot of work, but the students were committed and they completed the film just hours before their flight to China.
During the week long stay in China, the class attended a screening of the films. Only a select amount were shown, and theirs was one of them.
MTSU Animation’s film “The Green Touch” showing at the screening.
Twenty two schools from seven countries were in attendance. The attendees did an activity where they regrouped into diverse teams and then took a tour of nearby areas. Afterwards, they were assigned to work together to create a 30 second film that depicted something they learned during the tour. The teams only had 24 hours to create the film.
This event gave animation students the unique experience of engaging with other students from around the world that share a common interest. They were able to learn a lot about and from each other during their stay.
Previously the event has only taken place in China, though there is a possibility that it will take place in Malaysia next year. McNulty hopes that MTSU will be able to host the event one year, that way students from all over the world can come explore our campus and the local culture. Next year’s theme is animals, and McNulty is eager to see what his spring animation students will come up with.
Their film will be doing even more traveling, as the “The Green Touch,” just got accepted into its first film festival: “Green Fest” in Belgrade, Serbia. There were nearly 1,500 submissions and only around 50 were selected.