NEWS

Oita Prefecture commissioned APU to create a video that would spread the charm of Oita to the world. For students who wanted to participate in this project, a lecture series entitled “Creating Viral Video: Promoting Oita using YouTube” was held. In the lecture, Ryotaro Sakurai, Lifebridge Inc. owner and star of “Ryotaro’s Japan,” a YouTube channel with over 100 thousand subscribers, taught the practicalities of planning, shooting, and editing YouTube videos. The course will continue until February 2023.

On Tuesday, August 23, 2022, the first lecture was held on "How to plan a video" and "How to shoot and edit videos." After listening to the lecture, the students used their creativity to make a video with the aim of promoting Oita Prefecture in a unique way. Then, on Thursday, September 29, 2022, the videos produced through the course were presented in front of the lecturers and Oita Prefecture officials.

Sakurai, the lecturer, said, "Every team presented wonderful work. I could feel what they had learned through the course. The most wonderful thing was that everyone enjoyed making videos. It was also good that we were able to learn about the charm of Oita through this project.”

In the future, the PR videos produced by the students will be re-edited by a professional company before being reviewed by related parties at the final lecture in February 2023. The winning team will be awarded the Tourism Bureau Director's Award as well as prize, and the PR videos will be released on Oita Prefecture's official YouTube channel, "Boiling Oita."