‘In the land of beauty’ visits France

by Francesca

The documentary screening in the Laboratoire d’Astrophysique de Marseille was a success!

Even though I wasn’t part of the Uganda expedition, and only joined GalileoMobile a few months ago, I didn’t think that I would be nervous about whether people liked it or not – but actually I really was!  I was quite anxious about the reactions both the documentary and GalileoMobile would receive, but I needn’t have worried.

The feedback was extremely positive.

There were about 20 people and after the screening many later asked if the documentary is available online because they wanted to send it to other people! Even though many attendees didn’t know about GalileoMobile beforehand, they thought that the project is necessary and important!  Others asked if we would be showing it again, as they didn’t manage to go to the first screening in time, but would have really liked to watch it!

So, mission accomplished, and I’m glad to have been able to spread the message of “Under the same sky” to this corner of the Earth too!

In the land of beauty: First public screening!

By Fabio

GalileoMobile filmed a documentary and we are showing it on big screens in many cool locations. Nice, isn’t it? ‘In the Land of Beauty’ started its journey across the world as a big screen film in Yale on 4th February. A special date, since the 4th October marks the end of our Uganda expedition in 2013.

How did the screening go?
Well, I tell you the story, which, of course, is a story in the story, and many little stories within the bigger ones.

When I moved to Yale a few months ago, I saw this observatory, which sits on the highest point on Yale campus. There are two little domes hosting two telescopes, and a bigger one with a Planetarium, which hosts people who like to enjoy the wonders of the cosmos. So I thought: “Yes, this is a good starting point for the world to see our movie, a movie about a journey, the cosmos, about people, friendship, unity, and nature.”

So we organized this event for the 28 January, but here comes the story in the story. The biggest snowstorm in the history of U.S. Northeast hit many places, including New Haven, the day before the screening.

“Screw it, we’ll do it anyway”, I thought.

But what happened instead, was the closure of the whole University, a half deserted city, and everybody spending the day at home, possibly with a hot tea, coffee, or wine. “Drink whatever you want” – they seemed to say – “but don’t go to the premiere of ‘In the Land of Beauty’ “.
“Fair enough, the journey will start one week later, and I too will have a glass of wine at home”, I thought.

The terrible snowstorm, which should have brought about 1 meter of snow, delivered only 15cm. A week later, two days before the rescheduled premiere of the documentary, a less advertised snowstorm brought, instead, more than 50 cm of snow, which quietly fell covering all the city.

“Screw it, we’ll do it anyway”. And this time we did it!

I don’t know how many times I had already watched the documentary, but this time was totally different from before. About 15 people attended, and all of them enjoyed the movie and our work, our philosophy and ideas.For a bit more than one hour they have traveled with us to Uganda, Africa, around the planet and:

‘In the land of Beauty’.

Till next time!

Recipe for a photo-book

By María

So you have recently travelled somewhere exotic and have lots of adventures to share, or have done some activity that can be interesting to a particular community, or you simply want to remember a specific event with friends and family. In this case, a photo-book is ideal for you!

Almost two years ago GalileoMobile journeyed across the rural areas between Bangalore and Mysore, India. We spent all of our time in schools, working with primary and secondary students on topics about astronomy. Those who travelled had tons of stories and anecdotes and we did not want to forget them. We wanted these stories to feed and motivate as many people as possible!

To make a photo-book is easy, fun, and beautiful. Take a look at our recipe!

* Ingredients:

– loads of photographs

– friends with interesting, funny or surprising stories

– a tight team of at least 3 people

– a friendly graphic designer

– patience

The approximate preparation time is months, but serves an infinite number of people!

* Preparation method:

1. Choose your audience. Who will read your photo-book? Children, teenagers, young adults, adults? Or a mixture of these? In our case we chose a mixture of young adults and adults since we want people more or less our age to feel identified with the stories and to motivate them to pursue similar activities.

2. Decide how you want to tell the story. For example, will you narrate it in first or third person? In chronological order or some other order (e.g. if you travel to different locations it could be based on location)? Will you have all the text at the beginning followed by all the photos, or will you alternate between them? What is more interesting for your audience (children and adults are interested in different aspects of one same story)?

We chose to tell the story from the point of view of the travellers since our goal is to inspire others to do similar things. Our experiences will give you an idea of what it is like to work in rural schools!

We structured our photo-book following a typical day instead of chronologically (i.e. starting in day 1 and ending in day 15). All of our days followed the same schedule and therefore listing the events in order during 15 days would have been too long, repetitive and boring! The action happened during the day, so we condensed all of the experiences lived in each school in one typical day.

We also wanted to have short stories told by different people to have different perspectives and for that reason we alternated text with photos.

Tip: If your story is long, split it into chapters and decide the content of each chapter.

3. Write! Write your stories! Tell the people who travelled what type of stories you are looking for (e.g. funny, dramatic, inspiring) and ask them to write something as well.

4. Select photos. Easy to say but difficult to do! Especially if you have hundreds of photos. We had hundreds and this is the step that took us the longest (together with step 5). We selected photos that fit with the topic covered by each chapter and the stories written by the travellers.

5. Edit texts. When you get the stories back from your friends or colleagues read them and figure out how they fit with the structure of your photo-book. You will probably have to edit the texts slightly. For example, if they are too long you may need to shorten them or split them into two texts. Before publishing anything always check if the changes you did are O.K. with the authors!

Tip: We did steps 4 and 5 in parallel to save time 😉

6. Mock up! Make a rough sketch of the layout of your photo-book and discuss your idea with the graphic designer. Before sending our texts and photos to Kristine (our friendly graphic designer), we made a mock-up: a preliminary version of the photo-book done with Keynote or PowerPoint. This way it was easier for us to explain what type of layout we were looking for.

7. Discuss designs. The graphic designer will interact with you several times until you get a final product that you are all happy with. Kristine first prepared a mood board to chose colours, font style and the general feel of our book. Based on these she designed several backgrounds and layouts of the pages that we all discussed and picked together.

8. Review your texts! Proof read the texts (several times, by several people is better) to make sure they are perfect. This is not the designer’s task, so you need to provide her/him the final thing.

9. Final design. Once the texts and the layout are ready and final the designer will put everything together. We chose a pdf version with a screen size to upload our photo-book online and share it with everyone!

We printed a limited number of copies to keep as a memory, to gift it to our sponsors, and for you to help us reach more students and teachers around the world! Get in touch with us (contact@galileo-mobile.org) if you would like to contribute and get a copy.