Vital Signs film
How can we feed 9.6 billion people and sustain the nature we need?
Feeding the growing world population will require a 70 to 100 percent increase in food production through agricultural intensification. But the reality is that no country can achieve this goal if it doesn’t also work to sustain nature – the healthy soils, pollinators, fresh water and forests on which both agriculture and farmers depend.
Vital Signs is a monitoring system for agriculture, nature and human well-being. The system is initially launching in six African countries – Tanzania, Ghana, Uganda, Mozambique, Rwanda and Ethiopia – with plans for expansion to other parts of Africa and the globe. Conservation International, along with CSIR and Columbia University, is leading the initiative with support from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
Last summer, we joined their technicians in Tanzania to document the first field work, add to CI’s image library and produce a short introductory film.
The challenge was to show the project in action, even though protocols were still under development and on-the-ground data collection had yet to start. However, the training activities offered us the opportunity to capture visuals that both showcase the methods and illustrate how lots of leg work in the field can lead to globally significant data. In the film we also utilized food and farming photographs from an earlier trip to the region.
We are grateful for the talented team of collaborators we brought together for post-production. To visualize the geographic and remote-sensing data we worked with Félix Pharand-Deschênes and Rémi Lortie of Globaïa. They are experts at creating beautiful renders of large data sets and satellite imagery. The Vital Signs icons were drawn by Hyperakt, and our frequent collaborator in all things music, Nick Drummond, wrote and recorded the score. All motion graphics were done in-house.
In December, the Vital Signs film premiered at the World Economic Forum’s Summit on the Global Agenda in Dubai.