From such great heights: Grads honor Pitt in video

Before Jingjing Xu and Othman Alshehri put Pitt in their rearview mirrors, they spent their last semester trying to capture the campus from a much higher angle. 

After three months of filming, international students Xu and Alshehri uploaded their commemorative “Farewell video to Pitt” to YouTube last week. The three-minute-and-27-second video, set to the sentimental song “Hold Onto the Memories” by Corey Tynan, features both still photos and videos of Pitt’s campus.

The duo took pictures and videos around campus using Alshehri’s drone, according to Xu, who graduated last spring with a math and finance degree.

“This was shortly after my graduation and soon before Othman was leaving, so he came up with the idea of making a video of our time here. I thought, ‘Why not?’” Xu said.

Alshehri, who attended Pitt’s English Language Institute from 2013-2014, attached a GoPro camera — a brand of camera often used in extreme action video photography — to his drone and flew it over Pitt’s campus.

Alshehri purchased the equipment from Amazon for roughly $1,650. With his drone, nicknamed Wanderer, he was able to capture high-definition aerial footage that shows sprawling shots of Pitt’s campus.

For Xu, the nature of the University gave the montage its deeper meaning. 

“The University itself is full of contradictions — historical but young, relaxing but energetic. And that’s what makes it so fascinating,” Xu said.

Xu and Alshehri collaborated on the still photos used in the video. 

They agreed that one of the biggest challenges with the video was finding times with appropriate weather to shoot both film and stills. They filmed most of the video  in the mornings when the wind speed was low to avoid any damage to the drone. Pittsburgh’s notoriously inconsistent weather became a challenge, as they only wanted to feature sunny or partly cloudy days. 

The last clip of the video, a time lapse shot from Schenley Park, features a scenic landscape of campus under a changing cloudy sky. The shot, Alshehri said, took a month to film because of weather issues.

According to Xu, the video serves as a reminder of the brief, but memorable, time Xu and Alshehri spent at Pitt. 

“The video was designed to be a memento of our time at Pitt, and we are hoping that it also brings back some of the beautiful memories of those who have spent some of their days at Pitt,” Xu said.

Dr. Kevin Binning, an assistant professor of psychology at Pitt, said the struggle students go through creates a certain attachment to the University. 

“There’s a lot that goes on,” Binning said. “Self-discovery, effort and struggle, meeting new people, being away from home for the first time — they’re all difficult things. The totality of these things add up to something pretty profound.”

The struggle to succeed, particularly, resonates among students.

“If Pitt was easy, if you could just show up and get an A, there wouldn’t be this attachment,” Binning said. “The struggle of becoming an alum will contribute to people feeling committed and attached to their University.”

Feeling a sense of what you have gone through — including applying for and getting into the University, the late nights spent studying and writing term papers, involvement in campus activities, a particular impact on a student by a faculty member and sports game rituals — can create an attachment to the place where such experiences took place, Binning said.

Alshehri found Binning’s comments to be true.

“Not only have I enjoyed the camaraderie of my teachers and classmates, but I also had the chance to attend some of the events at Pitt, such as homecoming and commencements. Those events made me feel totally immersed in Pitt,” Alshehri said. 

The video offers a different, humble perspective, Alshehri said, and was created as a way of showing the pair’s appreciation about how pleased they were to have been students at the University. 

“Both of us are international students, and, because of Pitt, we haven’t been homesick,” Alshehri said. “If Pitt attracts international students and makes them feel like they are home — like in our cases — then what’s it like for domestic students?”