Information
AIU International Students Produce TV Documentary
AIU International Students Produce TV Documentary
Members of the winter JPL 453, Japanese Language in Film class, didn’t just study Japanese language videos: they made one. The students worked with Cable Network Akita to produce a 10 minute Japanese documentary about international perspective on Akita’s Kamakura Festival, held in Kidogorobe-mura. Their video will air on Cable Network Akita CNA Channel 12 (Sport & Culture) daily from March 20 – 26, according to the schedule below.
| Date | March 20 | March 21 – 22 | March 23 | March 24 – 26 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Broadcast Time 1 *Will be broadcast as a segment of a longer program |
09:45 – 12:30 Student Video Start Time: 11:50 |
06:15 – 09:00 Student Video Start Time: 8:20 |
||
| Broadcast Time 2 *Will be broadcast as a segment of a longer program |
17:45 – 20:30 Student Video Start Time: 19:50 |
17:45 – 20:30 Student Video Start Time: 18:05 |
17:45 – 20:30 Student Video Start Time: 19:50 |
14:15 – 17:00 Student Video Start Time: 16:20 |
View the Video Now!
You can view the students’ final product on YouTube at the link below. The film is entirely in Japanese, but even without understanding the language, it is an excellent reference for rural life in Akita and the interaction between Akita International University students and the local community.
Non-Japanese speakers are exempt from the quiz at the end.
Kamakura Festival
The Kamakura Festival is an Akita tradition dating back 400 years to honor the water gods and pray for ample water in the coming growing season.
Kamakura are snow structures, roughly 4 meters (13.3 feet) around and 3 meters (10 feet) high. They are built as a mound of packed snow then hollowed out inside to make room for sitting, cooking, and enjoying both grilled mochi rice cakes and amazake, or sweet rice wine. Many kamakura are equipped with electric lighting as well, so they can be used during the nighttime festival.
Documentary Planning
The video project was planned as part of the course, as in previous years, but this was special since it was the first time the Cable Network was involved. Austien Lee, an AIU graduate working at CNA came to the university to teach the students the elements of videography and production, from instructions on the video creation process and camera angles to rules about what footage could and could not be broadcast.
After that lecture, the class worked together to develop their plan, then the students took on different roles, including filming, editing, interviewing, and outreach. Everyone in the class had their own part to play. Although the students checked in with Austien between filming visits and had support in case they had questions, they conducted the rest of the production themselves.
Site Visits
“We planned all of our questions and the flow of the program in advance, then went down to shoot. We interviewed both festival organizers and the kamakura craftsmen, as well as tourists from the US and Taiwan who had come for the event,” explained Yun-Hsuan Chen and Ting-Hsuan Chiang, both on exchange from Yuan Ze University in Taiwan.
“The best part was meeting people from different places and talking with the local grandmothers and grandfathers. They were very kind and welcomed us into their activities.
“Sometimes their Akita-ben dialect was so strong that even native Japanese speakers couldn’t understand them, but it was a lot of fun to participate in the festival. We were fortunate that for both of our visits, we had very good weather.”
The Japanese 453 class is available only to the most advanced Japanese language students at AIU, but while only the one class was available in making the video, other classes, including Japanese 307, participated in the site visits and helping to set up the festival and build the kamakura.
Ching-Yun Liao, also from Yuan Ze University, was a camerawoman for the production.
“I’d never done any filming before, but for this event we had the prior training and cameras from Cable Network Akita, then we had to go off to do the shooting for ourselves. I was surprised how small the cameras were, though they still had so many features.”
Challenges and Highlights from the Visit
“We faced some challenges in the process and had to make adjustments,” Ching-Yun explained. “For example, we had planned to interview 4 local organizers, but we didn’t have prior contact with them so when we went to the site, we could only do 2 interviews. Because of the dialect, sometimes our interviewers couldn’t understand what the interviewees were saying. In the end, I think I took 2 hours of footage for the 10-minute final product.
“Despite the challenges, my favorite part was communicating and working with the locals. It was my first time to try to build a kamakura and even though they looked simple, it was not easy to build them right!
“I also got to help serve lunch to the volunteers at the community center, which was a first for me. I got to practice my formal Japanese by being a waitress.”
Editing and Production
All of the students agreed that the hardest job was editing, which fell to Yin-Hsien Yu of Kainan University, Taiwan.
“I probably spent 15 hours editing this 10-minute video, but I’d never worked with this kind of equipment before, and we didn’t have any experience as a crew, so it took longer. During the first site visit, our video crew didn’t have an external microphone, so editing the sound was very challenging. And there were cultural differences between Japan and our home countries that impacted the video.
“For example, we had some footage of children playing at the festival that we wanted to include, but since we had not gotten written permission from their parents, we could not use it. Japan is very strict about personal image rights.”
As the editor, Yin-Hsien was the last person in the class to work with the material, so he felt particular pressure to make sure that everything was in line with the initial plan and image.
“In some cases, we just didn’t have the footage that we needed for our initial image plan. We learned as we went along that we should have had more coordination between the editing and video staff from the beginning. I ended up learning a lot about leadership and project management in addition to Japanese and film editing!”
Learning Experience: Japanese Language, Culture, Teamwork, and Video Skills
Despite the challenges they faced, the students in the project want to continue working on their new skills in the future.
“I had worked on video editing before, but never on this level. It was much harder than I expected,” said Yin-Hsien Yu. “There were times when I wanted to give up, but I’m glad I didn’t. I want to do more editing work in the future, too.”
“There was a classroom component to the course too, of course. Since it’s Japanese Language in Films, we used TV dramas as our source material and studied applied Japanese,” said Ching-Yun Liao. “My favorite part of the class was that we were able to learn Japanese not just in the classroom, but outside as well. After this experience, I want to do more work in the future. Next time, I think I would like to try editing video as well.”
AIU International Students Produce TV Documentary
Members of the winter JPL 453, Japanese Language in Film class, didn’t just study Japanese language videos: they made one. The students worked with Cable Network Akita to produce a 10 minute Japanese documentary about international perspective on Akita’s Kamakura Festival, held in Kidogorobe-mura. Their video will air on Cable Network Akita CNA Channel 12 (Sport & Culture) daily from March 20 – 26, according to the schedule below.
| Date | March 20 | March 21 – 22 | March 23 | March 24 – 26 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Broadcast Time 1 *Will be broadcast as a segment of a longer program |
09:45 – 12:30 Student Video Start Time: 11:50 |
06:15 – 09:00 Student Video Start Time: 8:20 |
||
| Broadcast Time 2 *Will be broadcast as a segment of a longer program |
17:45 – 20:30 Student Video Start Time: 19:50 |
17:45 – 20:30 Student Video Start Time: 18:05 |
17:45 – 20:30 Student Video Start Time: 19:50 |
14:15 – 17:00 Student Video Start Time: 16:20 |
View the Video Now!
You can view the students’ final product on YouTube at the link below. The film is entirely in Japanese, but even without understanding the language, it is an excellent reference for rural life in Akita and the interaction between Akita International University students and the local community.
Non-Japanese speakers are exempt from the quiz at the end.
Kamakura Festival
The Kamakura Festival is an Akita tradition dating back 400 years to honor the water gods and pray for ample water in the coming growing season.
Kamakura are snow structures, roughly 4 meters (13.3 feet) around and 3 meters (10 feet) high. They are built as a mound of packed snow then hollowed out inside to make room for sitting, cooking, and enjoying both grilled mochi rice cakes and amazake, or sweet rice wine. Many kamakura are equipped with electric lighting as well, so they can be used during the nighttime festival.
Documentary Planning
The video project was planned as part of the course, as in previous years, but this was special since it was the first time the Cable Network was involved. Austien Lee, an AIU graduate working at CNA came to the university to teach the students the elements of videography and production, from instructions on the video creation process and camera angles to rules about what footage could and could not be broadcast.
After that lecture, the class worked together to develop their plan, then the students took on different roles, including filming, editing, interviewing, and outreach. Everyone in the class had their own part to play. Although the students checked in with Austien between filming visits and had support in case they had questions, they conducted the rest of the production themselves.
Site Visits
“We planned all of our questions and the flow of the program in advance, then went down to shoot. We interviewed both festival organizers and the kamakura craftsmen, as well as tourists from the US and Taiwan who had come for the event,” explained Yun-Hsuan Chen and Ting-Hsuan Chiang, both on exchange from Yuan Ze University in Taiwan.
“The best part was meeting people from different places and talking with the local grandmothers and grandfathers. They were very kind and welcomed us into their activities.
“Sometimes their Akita-ben dialect was so strong that even native Japanese speakers couldn’t understand them, but it was a lot of fun to participate in the festival. We were fortunate that for both of our visits, we had very good weather.”
The Japanese 453 class is available only to the most advanced Japanese language students at AIU, but while only the one class was available in making the video, other classes, including Japanese 307, participated in the site visits and helping to set up the festival and build the kamakura.
Ching-Yun Liao, also from Yuan Ze University, was a camerawoman for the production.
“I’d never done any filming before, but for this event we had the prior training and cameras from Cable Network Akita, then we had to go off to do the shooting for ourselves. I was surprised how small the cameras were, though they still had so many features.”
Challenges and Highlights from the Visit
“We faced some challenges in the process and had to make adjustments,” Ching-Yun explained. “For example, we had planned to interview 4 local organizers, but we didn’t have prior contact with them so when we went to the site, we could only do 2 interviews. Because of the dialect, sometimes our interviewers couldn’t understand what the interviewees were saying. In the end, I think I took 2 hours of footage for the 10-minute final product.
“Despite the challenges, my favorite part was communicating and working with the locals. It was my first time to try to build a kamakura and even though they looked simple, it was not easy to build them right!
“I also got to help serve lunch to the volunteers at the community center, which was a first for me. I got to practice my formal Japanese by being a waitress.”
Editing and Production
All of the students agreed that the hardest job was editing, which fell to Yin-Hsien Yu of Kainan University, Taiwan.
“I probably spent 15 hours editing this 10-minute video, but I’d never worked with this kind of equipment before, and we didn’t have any experience as a crew, so it took longer. During the first site visit, our video crew didn’t have an external microphone, so editing the sound was very challenging. And there were cultural differences between Japan and our home countries that impacted the video.
“For example, we had some footage of children playing at the festival that we wanted to include, but since we had not gotten written permission from their parents, we could not use it. Japan is very strict about personal image rights.”
As the editor, Yin-Hsien was the last person in the class to work with the material, so he felt particular pressure to make sure that everything was in line with the initial plan and image.
“In some cases, we just didn’t have the footage that we needed for our initial image plan. We learned as we went along that we should have had more coordination between the editing and video staff from the beginning. I ended up learning a lot about leadership and project management in addition to Japanese and film editing!”
Learning Experience: Japanese Language, Culture, Teamwork, and Video Skills
Despite the challenges they faced, the students in the project want to continue working on their new skills in the future.
“I had worked on video editing before, but never on this level. It was much harder than I expected,” said Yin-Hsien Yu. “There were times when I wanted to give up, but I’m glad I didn’t. I want to do more editing work in the future, too.”
“There was a classroom component to the course too, of course. Since it’s Japanese Language in Films, we used TV dramas as our source material and studied applied Japanese,” said Ching-Yun Liao. “My favorite part of the class was that we were able to learn Japanese not just in the classroom, but outside as well. After this experience, I want to do more work in the future. Next time, I think I would like to try editing video as well.”