The 24 Solar Terms
The force of spring thunder ties together insects, birds and beasts, drum making and spring plowing, then rising bamboo shoots cut to a rocket launch, turning the “awakening” into action that moves forward.
01 / Background
The Awakening of Insects episode continues the landscapes and bright palette of Start of Spring and Rain Water, but had to deliver a stronger sense of jolt and vitality. It runs about as long as Rain Water, yet had to cover seasonal signs, drum making, eating pears and spring plowing without turning these points into a string of unrelated pictures.
The content starts with an astronomical instrument and spring thunder, moves through insects, peach blossoms, birds and beasts, then turns to courtyards and fields. Nature waking, people's lives and modern construction unfold in turn; the ending uses bamboo shoots, a rocket launch at Wenchang and Qinglan Port to match the script's line “every awakening brings endless possibilities.”
02 / Creative Highlights
The opening is a bronze armillary sphere, showing how the ancients observed the seasons; clouds, lightning and a surging waterfall drive the images to full power, then the film cuts to a tiny insect among rock crevices and moss. Grand scenery and tiny life alternate, so “when spring thunder stirs” has both impact and a visible act of waking.
The animal segment features golden takins wading through water, preceded by a snow leopard looking up at an eagle and followed by turtle doves flying in. Peach blossoms, orioles, the eagle and the doves each have their place in the frame, and their movements follow the narration, so “coming alive” becomes a chain of visible changes.
The drum-making segment shows a drumhead being laid out and men crouching to pull ropes, three people straining together, matching “stretching drumheads to answer the spring thunder.” The pear-eating scene puts the clay pot of pears and the stove in the foreground, with a mother and son beside them and a father and daughter coming back through the courtyard gate; props, steam and people are layered front to back, so both the pear-eating custom and the family atmosphere are clear.
Bamboo shoots grow taller from the ground bit by bit, and in the next shot a rocket rises into the sky. Both move straight up, so the cut works like a relay, extending the small change of “life breaking through the soil” into a new departure; the wide shot of the port that follows brings the vision of the future back to the city and to production and construction.
03 / Scene Breakdown
A bronze armillary sphere at the Ancient Observatory first establishes that “the ancients read the sky to set the seasons,” then the view moves to clouds gathering over the Summer Palace, a bolt of lightning strikes toward Hukou on the Yellow River, and finally lands on a small insect on moss in a rock crevice.
The camera slowly circles the armillary sphere as clouds race past behind it, and the narration announces the date: March 5, 2026.
Clouds over the Summer Palace converge from all sides; in the next shot, a bolt of lightning falls from a clear sky toward the surging Yellow River, matching “when spring thunder stirs.”
In a macro shot, a small orange-and-black insect crawls out of a rock crevice onto the moss and gives a little hop: “the insects hidden in the soil wake up.”
One shot for each seasonal sign in the narration: peach blossoms by the river in Nyingchi, orioles on a branch, a snow leopard looking up at an eagle, takins wading through water and turtle doves flying in.
An aerial shot sweeps over peach groves along the Yarlung Tsangpo, dives into the blossoming trees, and cuts to a peach branch in front of snowy mountains as two orioles fly onto it.
A snow leopard on a snowy rock raises its head as an eagle flies across the top of the frame, matching “fewer eagles in the sky.”
Golden takins of the Qinling Mountains wade forward through the shallows as flocks of turtle doves fly in from the valley: “nature suddenly comes alive.”
The camera moves from the wild back to people's homes: three men stretch a drumhead in a loess courtyard, and a family cooks rock-sugar pears in a small blue-brick courtyard.
Three men in red headscarves surround the drum body, sinking into horse stances and pulling the ropes back to tighten the drumhead, matching “stretching drumheads to answer the spring thunder.”
In the foreground, a clay pot steams on the stove, the pieces of pear clearly visible; the mother and son sit beside it, and the father walks in through the courtyard gate holding his daughter's hand.
From a high view over the whole wheat field down to the field's edge, where people check the soil and drones spray crops, “farm work gets busy from this day” takes the form of concrete tasks.
From above, the fields are half green and half waiting to be plowed, and several red tractors in a line turn over the brown soil.
In the foreground, a farmer crouches at the field's edge, pinching the soil and checking the seedlings; in the middle, a drone flies across spraying; in the distance, tractors are still plowing.
Bamboo shoots shoot up section by section from the forest floor, cutting to a rocket lifting off from the Wenchang launch site, and finally landing on a wide aerial of Qinglan Port, answering “every awakening brings endless possibilities.”
Low-angle time-lapse: a few shoot tips first poke out of the bamboo-forest floor, then grow into sturdy spring bamboo shoots, matching “spring thunder sounds, and all things grow.”
The upward momentum of the bamboo shoots cuts straight to a rocket igniting and lifting off, the same vertical climb.
An aerial of Qinglan Port in Wenchang, with rows of red ship-to-shore cranes and cargo ships coming and going; it shares Wenchang with the launch site, grounding the awakening in production and construction.
04 / Storyboards & Final Frames
The narration was broken into fifteen lines, each paired with one shot. Below, in the order of the finished film, each shot notes what it shows, followed by the final still used in the film.
Shot 1.1
The opening is the bronze armillary sphere at the Beijing Ancient Observatory, showing how the ancients read the sky to set the seasons.
Shot 1.2
Looking past the roof of the Hall of Benevolence and Longevity to Kunming Lake and the Tower of Buddhist Incense, clouds converge toward the center of the frame, building up for the lightning in the next shot.
Shot 1.3
Keeping to the series' sunny, bright palette with no looming dark clouds: a bolt of lightning falls from a clear sky toward Hukou on the Yellow River as the muddy yellow water plunges into the deep gorge.
Shot 1.4
A sunlit patch of moss beside a rock crevice, where a small orange-and-black insect crawls out and gives a little hop, matching the waking of “the insects hidden in the soil,” in clean, bright colors.
Shot 2.1
The Yarlung Tsangpo bends at the foot of snowy mountains, with pink wild peach blossoms along the bank, as the aerial camera glides smoothly over the river.
Shot 2.2
A peach branch reaches in from the lower left of the frame, and two orioles chase each other on it, with blue sky and snowy mountains behind.
Shot 2.3
On a snowy rock in the Qilian Mountains, a snow leopard looks up at the sky, and the camera follows its gaze to an eagle flying away, matching “fewer eagles in the sky.”
Shot 2.4
Golden takins of the Qinling Mountains wade through the water toward the left as turtle doves fly in front of the camera and away again; the splashing water and flying birds make “turtle doves grow active” feel lively.
Shot 3.1
In an open courtyard, three men spread the drumhead over the drum, sink into horse stances and pull the ropes back, big, powerful movements that match the force of spring thunder.
Shot 3.2
The stove and clay pot sit at the very front, the pears in the pot clearly visible; the mother and son are beside it, the father walks in through the courtyard gate holding his daughter's hand, and the pot keeps steaming.
Shot 4.1
An aerial of the North China Plain, with greening winter wheat on one side and brown land waiting to be plowed on the other, where a formation of red tractors turns the soil.
Shot 4.2
In the foreground, a farmer crouches at the edge of the wheat field to inspect the seedlings; in the middle ground, a drone sprays steadily; in the background, tractors plow: three farm tasks in one frame.
Shot 5.1
Bamboo shoots poke up from bare ground, then grow taller section by section. Three keyframes, bare ground, tips emerging and grown tall, are joined end to end to capture growth from nothing.
Shot 5.2
Following the bamboo shoots, a rocket ignites and lifts off from the Wenchang launch site, the same straight-up motion as the shoots.
Shot 5.3
The ending is a time-lapse aerial of Qinglan Port in Wenchang: a forest of ship-to-shore cranes, cargo ships coming and going, and the bay and a bridge in the distance (final still taken from the film).
05 / Script Excerpts
06 / Results
We completed an Awakening of Insects short of about 49 seconds, along with a matching vertical poster and banner, released on WeChat Channels.
Case Study
Awakening of Insects is the liveliest of the 24 solar terms: spring thunder rolls, and the insects wake.
This is one episode of the 24 Solar Terms series we made: a 49-second vertical short with matching posters and banners, released on WeChat Channels.
The first two episodes, Start of Spring and Rain Water, showed bright landscapes. Awakening of Insects had to add an upward surge within the same bright palette.
01
The first line of the script is “When spring thunder stirs, the insects hidden in the soil wake up.” Thunder is a sound and the insects are underground, so neither is easy to film.
The rule set for the series is sunny days, true blue skies and a bright palette, so the images couldn't go dark just because there was thunder. So we had the lightning strike from a clear sky: clouds first gather over the Summer Palace, then in the next shot a bolt of lightning strikes toward Hukou on the Yellow River as the muddy yellow water plunges into the deep gorge, its force visible in the water.
For the insect line, we didn't film black soil. Instead we used a sunlit patch of moss beside a rock crevice, where a small orange-and-black insect crawls out and gives a little hop. The colors are clean, and viewers see at a glance that it has “woken up.”
The opening also changed its subject. At first it was the bronze lions at the East Palace Gate of the Summer Palace: handsome, but unrelated to the solar term. We switched to the bronze armillary sphere at the Beijing Ancient Observatory, which shows from the very first shot how the ancients read the sky to set the seasons.
Clouds gather and lightning strikes, then a cut straight to a small insect on moss: the grand spectacle and the tiny life one right after the other.
02
“Peach blossoms open, orioles sing, eagles grow fewer, turtle doves grow active”: read out in a row, these four signs would make for monotonous images if all were shown as birds.
We added two large animals in the middle. A snow leopard lies on a rock in the Qilian Mountains and looks up as an eagle flies away overhead, matching “eagles grow fewer”; in the next shot, golden takins wade through shallows in the Qinling Mountains as turtle doves fly in from the valley.
The takin shot was originally a Siberian tiger standing in the snow, without much movement. We switched to golden takins of the Qinling Mountains, and the splashing water plus the incoming doves instantly made the scene lively.
03
The “eating pears to ease spring dryness” shot had to show both the food custom and the homey warmth of a family. The first version had the mother, two children, the father and a dog; with so many people, the pears got lost.
We pared it back: put the pears straight into the clay pot, and push the stove and pot to the very front of the frame, with the people further back. The details were settled one by one too: the family sits in the courtyard, not under the eaves; no fallen petals in the frame; and the rock-sugar pears in the pot must be visible. After several rounds of changes, the final version became a small blue-brick courtyard, the stove's fire, rising steam, and a father and daughter coming home through the courtyard gate.
The drum-making shot beside it was reworked the same way: from hammering drum studs to three men in horse stances pulling ropes to stretch the drumhead, a bigger movement that matches the force of spring thunder.
04
The last line is “Life breaks through the soil, and every awakening brings endless possibilities.” We wanted nature's growth to connect with the nation's development.
The bamboo shoots were the key shot. Animating a single image only made the shoots swell out of nowhere, with no sign of them poking through. We first generated three keyframes, bare ground, tips emerging and grown tall, then joined them end to end segment by segment to capture the shoots pushing up section by section.
Early on, this spot used the mirror field of the Dunhuang solar thermal power plant, but that image spreads out flat and couldn't pick up the upward momentum of the bamboo shoots. We switched to the Wenchang launch site: as the shoots reach their full height, the film cuts to a rocket igniting and lifting off, both shots moving straight up like a relay. The last shot is Qinglan Port, also in Wenchang: rows of ship-to-shore cranes, cargo ships coming and going. To capture the round-the-clock bustle of a time-lapse, we found time-lapse videos of ports for reference and remade this shot.
The shoots grow upward, the rocket flies upward, and the film lands on a busy port.
05
The difficulty with solar-term films is that each episode is 40-odd seconds of narration with one point of knowledge per line, which can easily end up as a series of unrelated landscape photos.
The approach for Awakening of Insects was to find a visible action for every line of narration: lightning strikes, a small insect hops, a snow leopard looks up, three men pull ropes, bamboo shoots push up, a rocket lifts off. Viewers follow the actions, and the points of knowledge link together.
The series' unified bright palette and sweeping aerials make every episode look like part of one set; each episode then adjusts its content to the character of its own solar term. The same approach works for festival, solar-term and theme campaigns on government accounts.
FAQ
From Start of Spring onward, we set sunny days, true blue skies, a bright palette and mostly sweeping aerials, and every episode uses the same image descriptions and generation templates. Awakening of Insects added more powerful images such as lightning, a waterfall and spaceflight on top of that, without darkening the palette.
No, the whole film is AI-generated: final stills are generated shot by shot, then turned into motion shots. Locations and details are checked against reality; for example, the cranes at Qinglan Port are fixed to the quayside, and only the spreaders move up and down to handle containers.
Awakening of Insects took about 8 days from final script to final delivery: the narration was first broken into a 15-shot script, then stills, motion, editing were done shot by shot, with adjustments along the way to the opening, the animals, the drum making and the ending.
This episode delivered a 9:16 vertical 1080 × 1920 film with a matching vertical poster and banner. The drum-making shot was made in two versions, stretching the drumhead and beating the drum, and the film uses the more powerful drumhead-stretching version.
Approach
In pre-production we gathered references on climate, landscapes, customs, animals and plants, and farm work, then broke the narration into fifteen shots. Then we set the subject of each shot: the opening is the armillary sphere at the Ancient Observatory, the animal segment features the snow leopard and takins, the drum making shows the ropes being pulled to stretch the drumhead, and the final segment lands on the Wenchang rocket and the port.
The key to the pear-eating image was a clear hierarchy: the pears sit in the clay pot in the foreground, with the stove, the mother and son and the family members coming back through the gate arranged from front to back. The bamboo-shoot segment joins several key stages from nothing to something, capturing the process from tips emerging to full height.
Overall, the film uses a bright daytime palette consistent with the series' other episodes, alternating wide landscapes with close-ups of plants and animals; the bamboo shoots and the rocket both point upward, and the launch site and port are both in Wenchang, which is why the ending flows so smoothly.
More Work
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