Oversleeping, running a few minutes late and rushing to class: an everyday situation that takes an unexpected turn in the new HES-SO Valais-Wallis campaign. A student’s hurried journey across Valais includes longboarding, bungee jumping, surfing, a frantic sprint and even a parachute jump. After this eventful detour, he finally reaches the HES-SO Valais-Wallis campus, only a few minutes late but with every sign that his journey has been anything but ordinary.
The Valais landscape has featured prominently in HES-SO Valais-Wallis campaigns for many years. Previous campaigns have shown students travelling to class on freeride skis or by mountain bike, and even posing for a class photo on the rock face of Pierre Avoi.
This time, the setting remains integral to the story, but the emphasis has shifted. It is about more than showcasing a spectacular landscape. The film also reflects a broader idea: where you choose to study shapes your experience well beyond the classroom.
“Of course, the quality of the education, the skills students acquire and their future career prospects are important considerations when choosing a degree programme. But your student years are also about the people you meet and the experiences you have. With this campaign, we want to show that studying in Valais brings these different aspects together,” says François Seppey, Director of the HES-SO Valais-Wallis.
Bungee jumping, surfing and parachuting on the way to class could easily give the impression that some of the film’s more spectacular sequences were created using generative AI. However, behind-the-scenes photographs show that the sequences were filmed on location. This was a deliberate creative decision. As the campaign is intended to show what students can experience in Valais, filming the scenes on location was the obvious choice.
The film was produced in partnership with Val de Bagnes, Bungy Niouc, Leukerbad Marketing AG, the Saint-Léonard underground lake, Alaïa Bay and Romandie Parachutisme.
“Much of this film could have been created digitally. But its energy comes from the fact that these situations were real and filmed as they happened. The conditions on location, the movement and the unexpected moments all became part of the footage and gave it a quality we didn’t want to fake,” says Guillaume Darbellay, the film’s director.
The film itself becomes part of what the campaign is about: experiencing Valais.
Studying in Valais. An adventure in itself.