An educational film about water produced by UC Riverside students took second place in an environmental film competition hosted by the American Chemical Society.

The group’s Committee on Environmental Improvement held the film competition at its national meeting in San Diego from Aug. 25-29.

The film already won in the “Water’s Impact on People” category and was one of four from each category the audience chose from in deciding the best overall film in the competition. It was announced as the second place film Aug. 27 following a screening of the finalists.

The 12-minute film, “Getting to Know H2O,” was produced by graduate students in UCR’s National Science Foundation Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeship program called WaterSENSE (Social, Engineering and Natural Science Engagement), which is made up of cross-disciplinary academics addressing different issues regarding water.

The video includes short segments providing information on different aspects of water, such as its history, the hydrological cycle, and how it’s used in food production.

“The whole idea of this video was to generate a K-12 information video they can play in a classroom,” said Michael Bentel, a fellow in the program and one of the producers.

He and the other fellows decided on the content and wrote a script. They reached out to filmmaker Merideth Hillbrand, a Gluck Fellow in the Gluck Fellows Program of the Arts at UCR, who shot and edited the film.

Bentel described the video as similar to a Ted Talk or YouTube explainer video. He and the other fellows appeared in segments of the film to explain different facets of water.

The other fellows in the program who contributed are Scott Coffin, Stacia Dudley, Daniel Harmon, Todd Luce, Samuel Patton, Parisa Parsafar, Parsa Saffarinia, and Carolyn Schutten.

The video will be available to view at the Gluck TV Steam Channel page starting Aug. 27 at 4 p.m. The website also includes a water study guide for classrooms.