The 24 Solar Terms
Between work in the fields and a cool bowl of something refreshing, the film captures the very start of midsummer.
01 / Background
The Minor Heat episode had to show the season’s rising heat while also covering field management and summer life. With content spanning nature, farm work and food, the film ties it together through people’s actions: in just over forty seconds, each line of narration gets its own group of images.
The opening’s blue lake, green grassland and white yak establish a clear, bright setting, followed by work in the paddies, laundry drying in a courtyard and a close-up of liangfen. The knowledge unfolds step by step through everyday actions, and the ending, a meadow under the stars, leaves a quiet summer-night feeling.
02 / Creative Highlights
Lake water, forest and grassland lay down a blue-green base, and a white yak gives the wide shots a clear subject. The introduction to the season starts here, and the field work and daily life that follow all unfold in this setting.
After weeding, fertilizing and pest control in the fields, the film moves to a courtyard where laundry is turned to dry in the sun, then to a bowl of liangfen. Work, drying laundry and food each match one line of narration, joined into a natural everyday flow under the same bright summer sun.
Wide shots set the scene, people’s actions explain the farm work, the food in the bowl brings out its texture, and the starry sky at the end opens the frame again. With wide shots, people and close-ups taking turns, a film of just over forty seconds never feels rushed.
Farm tools move with people’s steps, hanging cloth sways in the breeze, and chopsticks lift liangfen from the bowl. The growth of the rice, the people’s feet and the shape of the tools were all checked one by one, so both the seasonal information and the actions hold up to close viewing.
03 / Scene Breakdown
The opening line, “Good morning, today is July 7, 2026,” is paired with a single unbroken shot: diving from high above Qinghai Lake down to the grassland and stopping beside a grazing white yak.
The camera looks down from on high over the deep blue lake and green hillsides, then dives along the road and spruce forest, faster and faster, slowing as it nears the ground.
Once the camera lands it settles, showing a white yak with colorful ribbons tied to its horns grazing by the lake, another standing in the distance. The narrator reads “the 23rd day of the fifth lunar month, Minor Heat.”
The line “shu means heat” gets the sun overhead, then the film moves into the paddies: the farm work of Minor Heat is weeding, fertilizing and pest control, and each task has someone doing it.
Shot from beneath the rice plants looking up, with green rice ears in front of the lens and the sun blazing through the gaps in the leaves. One shot makes “heat” clear.
The rice has grown tall and dense; a farmer in a straw hat bends to pull weeds while another walks along the ridge with a rake over his shoulder, a village of white walls and black tiles in the distance.
On the left, a farmer with a backpack sprayer sprays the paddy, the mist glinting in the sunlight; on the right, another crouches on the ridge, scattering fertilizer from a bucket into the water. “Fertilizing and pest control” each get one person.
“Because of the heat and humidity” is paired with a dense ancient tree and upturned eaves, then the film steps into a courtyard: making the most of the strong sun, a family brings out clothes and bedsheets to dry.
Looking up at an old tree with dense foliage, blue sky showing through the leaves and the upturned eaves of a historic building in the lower right corner. The camera slowly tilts up as the leaves sway gently in the wind.
Two women drape bedsheets and hang clothes on bamboo poles as a little girl runs past in front carrying folded clothes, the cotton across the courtyard fluttering in the breeze.
“The scorching days of summer” holds on sunflowers for just over a second, then the camera gives its time to a bowl of liangfen: first the whole bowl, then the moment chopsticks lift it up.
Golden sunflowers face the blue sky in a brief flash; then comes liangfen in a celadon bowl, topped with chili oil, shredded cucumber and crushed peanuts, with fine beads of water on the side of the bowl.
Chopsticks lift a strand of liangfen from the bowl, backlit by the sun so the noodles glow translucent as chili oil drips down. The narrator reaches “cooling off from the summer heat” right on cue.
For the last line, “the heat is building but not yet at its peak,” the film goes first to a southern coastline, then to a starry sky over the northern grasslands; after half a film of heat, the ending turns quiet, followed by the NDRC end card.
Looking straight down: dense rainforest on one side, a curving white sand beach and turquoise sea on the other, with waves lapping gently at the shore.
A lone larch stands on the grassland, a pink-and-purple Milky Way behind it. The camera slowly pushes in: “the story of high summer is unfolding in good order.”
04 / Storyboards & Final Frames
The Minor Heat episode breaks four lines of narration into twelve shots, listed below in the order of the finished film: each shot describes what it shows, alongside the final image used in the film.
Shot 1.1
A high view of Qinghai Lake, grassy slopes and spruce forest serves as the first frame; the video dives from here all the way to the white yak in the next shot. No birds in the sky, keeping the frame clean.
Shot 1.2
A white yak grazes with its head down, colorful ribbons tied to its horns, with deep blue lake water and distant grassland behind it.
Shot 2.1
A low-angle shot looking up, with green rice ears in front and the sun shining through the gaps, its color matching the rice seedlings in the paddy that follows.
Shot 2.2
The rice has grown tall and dense; a farmer bends to weed while another walks along the ridge with a rake on his shoulder: the work actually done in the fields during Minor Heat.
Shot 2.3
One person sprays pesticide with a backpack sprayer, another crouches on the ridge scattering fertilizer, splitting the two tasks in the narration between two people.
Shot 3.1
Looking up at an old tree with dense foliage, sunlight filtering through the leaves and upturned eaves in the lower right corner, matching “heat and humidity.”
Shot 3.2
In a courtyard with white walls and black tiles, two women hang bedsheets and clothes as a little girl runs past carrying laundry, matching “turning clothes to dry under the blazing sun.”
Shot 4.1
A single sunflower in full bloom facing the blue sky, held for just over a second to carry the words “the scorching days of summer.”
Shot 4.2
Liangfen in a celadon bowl, topped with shredded cucumber and crushed peanuts and drizzled with chili oil, with beads of water on the side of the bowl.
Shot 4.3
Following on from the previous shot, chopsticks lift a strand of liangfen, backlit so the noodles turn translucent.
Shot 5.1
Looking straight down: rainforest on the left, white sand and turquoise sea on the right, matching “the heat is building.”
Shot 5.2
A larch on the grassland with a pink-and-purple Milky Way behind it, ending on “the story of high summer is unfolding in good order.”
05 / Script Excerpts
06 / Results
Completed a roughly 43-second Minor Heat short with matching posters and banners. Moving from the lakeshore to the fields, the courtyard and the food, it turns seasonal knowledge into concrete scenes of daily life; all three deliverables share the same series layout, so they look consistent side by side.
Case Study
Minor Heat literally means “little heat”: the weather is getting hot, but the hottest part of the year has not yet arrived.
This episode has only four lines of narration: fertilizing and pest control in the fields, drying laundry at home in the sun, and a bowl of liangfen on the table.
We produced the Minor Heat episode for the 24 Solar Terms series: about 43 seconds and 12 shots, from a highland lake in the early morning to a starry summer night.
01
Every episode in the series opens with the same words: “Good morning, today is…”. Viewers grow used to hearing it, so the images have to take them somewhere new every time.
The Minor Heat episode opens at Qinghai Lake. By a highland lake in early July, the grass is green and the water is blue: summer at a glance, without feeling hot and stuffy.
Instead of cutting between a few landscape images, we used a first and a last final still to generate one continuous shot: starting high above the lake, diving down along the road and spruce forest, slowing as it nears the ground, and finally stopping beside a grazing white yak.
Fast in the first half, slow in the second, so the date and the words “Minor Heat” land just as the yak appears.
To keep the opening clean, we removed the birds above the lake from both the final still and the video, leaving only the lake, the hillsides and the yak.
02
The narration says “the fields are bustling, and farmers are busy fertilizing and controlling pests.” What this line most easily gets wrong is the season.
In the first version, a farmer stood in muddy water holding seedlings, looking as if he were transplanting rice. But by Minor Heat the seedlings have long since grown tall, and the work in the fields is weeding, fertilizing and spraying. We changed the shot to tall, dense rice, with a farmer bending among the plants to pull weeds while another walks along the ridge with a rake.
The next shot splits “fertilizing” and “pest control” between two people: on the left, someone with a backpack sprayer sprays pesticide; on the right, someone crouches on the ridge scattering fertilizer. Even without catching the narration, viewers can tell from the image what is keeping the fields busy at this time.
We also tried a golden version of the rice-ear shot; the finished film uses green rice ears, which match the color of the seedlings in the paddy that follows.
03
“Heat and humidity” is an abstract phrase. We first set the weather with a dense old tree and upturned eaves, then stepped into a courtyard with white walls and black tiles: two women hang bedsheets on bamboo poles as a little girl runs past in front holding clothes.
Before locking the shot, we corrected the shape of the feet of the person on the left in the courtyard once more, so the way people walk and raise their arms holds up even when paused.
The liangfen is the most “cooling” moment in the episode, shown in two shots: first the whole bowl, with beads of water on the celadon; then chopsticks lifting a strand, backlit by the sun, the noodles translucent and chili oil dripping down.
“Refreshing and appetizing” can’t convey texture in words; the only way is to make people feel cool just by looking. The water droplets, the translucency and the dripping chili oil are all there for exactly that.
04
The last line is “the heat is building but not yet at its peak.” The heat is still rising, but hasn’t topped out. Instead of piling on more blazing sun, we went first to a southern coastline, then to a night on the grassland: a single larch with a pink-and-purple Milky Way behind it.
After half a film of heat, the ending turns quiet, leaving room for “the story of high summer is unfolding in good order.”
Delivered alongside the short were a cover poster and a landscape graphic. The poster follows the series’ unified layout with the lakeshore key image of Minor Heat, and its cover line, “Warm winds arrive on cue with Minor Heat; crickets shelter under the eaves as greens and reds bask in the sun,” adapts the Minor Heat signs of the season “warm winds arrive” and “crickets shelter in the house.” The landscape graphic builds on the vertical version, with the mask color of the image, the overlay color of the mountains and the background gradient readjusted, so the two look like one set.
The value of this episode is that it turns four very short lines of narration into a Minor Heat viewers can recognize at a glance: people weeding and spraying in the fields, laundry drying in the courtyard, a bowl of liangfen on the table, and a night that is still fairly cool. Getting the season and the farm work right comes before making the images look good.
FAQ
Every farming shot is checked against the season before images are generated. In the first version of the Minor Heat episode, the paddy scene looked like rice transplanting, but by early July the seedlings have grown tall and the work in the fields is weeding, fertilizing and spraying, so the final version shows a farmer weeding among tall, dense rice, with the next shot giving one person spraying and another fertilizing.
Shot by shot, with the image and video revised together. To make the opening of the Minor Heat episode cleaner, we removed the birds above the lake from both the final still and the generated video; in the courtyard laundry shot, we corrected the shape of a person’s feet, then reviewed the whole film again after the changes.
For the Minor Heat episode, we began breaking it into shots after receiving the narration copy in late June, set 12 shots based on the length of the actual voiceover, and packaged the finished film, cover poster and landscape graphic for delivery on July 6, ahead of Minor Heat itself on July 7.
Yes. The Minor Heat poster follows the series’ unified layout, swapped in with this episode’s lakeshore key image and cover line; the landscape graphic builds on the vertical version with the mask color, mountain overlay color and background gradient readjusted, so the vertical, landscape and video versions share one visual identity.
Approach
We first broke the locked narration into what each shot needed to show, then checked the timing against the actual voiceover. Pauses between sentences were folded into the lines before and after, the automatically generated storyboard served only as an editable first draft, and the length of each image was set by the audio, so every farming and daily-life action lines up with the right narration.
Nature shots and people shots each had their details checked. The field actions were set as weeding, fertilizing and pest control, so farm work from different stages wouldn’t get mixed up; the lakeshore transition uses a fast-then-slow speed, and people’s feet, birds in the sky and the shape of farm tools were all checked one by one.
The poster uses the series’ unified template with the Minor Heat lakeshore key image, with the mask color, mountain color overlay and the gradient of the rectangular background adjusted together. The landscape and vertical versions share the same wordmark and main colors, so the video, poster and banner read as one set at a glance.
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