Best of CASE District V Award
 

Institution: University of Minnesota - Duluth

Title of entry: Winter Greeting: Goodnight UMD

About this entry: To foster the University of Minnesota Duluth community, the Chancellor's office shares an end of semester greeting each December. For 2024, we created an homage to a popular children's book in the form of a video titled Goodnight UMD. This video speaks to the feelings of the season, and calls upon people's memories of times on campus, as well as memories of reading with family and loved ones. The UMPR team started by writing a script that would honor the original, while integrating unique qualities of campus, then planned out a detailed shot list and coordinated video shooting through a variety of spaces and settings, with carefully planned appearances by students and leadership. The film had to maintain a cohesive visual language throughout, while conveying a changing sense of time and day. Careful attention to lighting and composition helped to achieve these goals. The editing took a similar approach to help tie that theme together, while an internally produced voiceover and carefully curated soundtrack pulled the final piece together. To distribute, the video was shared in a message from leadership to those on campus, and the piece was shared with our strong network of alumni, as well as shared online via news sites and social media. We had immediate and tremendous response from our community, who resonated with the piece, and felt a strong upswell of pride and nostalgia for UMD.