Producing Online Promo Video for Schools, Part 2: Building Out the Program

Showing and Telling, Not Selling

As with many interview-driven projects you’ll undertake with corporate, academic, or other non-profit clients, you will often find yourself speaking with people who have never done this sort of interview before. You’re essentially working with non-talent talent--that is, doing video that is in most respects akin to commercial video, but working with interview subjects whose expertise lies somewhere outside the field of on-camera performance (even as that expertise qualifies them to appear on-screen in other respects, such as their unique understanding of or role in the company or institution your video will promote).

As such, you’ll generally have to do some hand-holding of one sort or another when you put them on-screen. While some of your interviewees will prove willing participants (if they’re hand-picked to participate, that ought to be a given) and naturally comfortable on-camera, in nearly all cases where they’ve never appeared in a video that’s promotional in nature, you’ll have to coach them a bit on the nuances and tone of the project.

Specifically, with projects like the film DigiNovations is producing at Middlesex, Wales says, you usually need to make it clear that “it’s not about a sale. So many people think, ‘Oh, gosh, so I'm trying to help sell the school, right?’” And that’s not really it, Wales maintains. When he’s working with students, he’ll prompt them with something like, “Imagine you’re speaking to the seventh-grade or eighth-grade you. You want that person to be clear about whether this is a good school or not, and what are the deciding factors for you that might help determine, give clarity to that prospective student on the other side.’”

Likewise, with faculty, he says, you need to make it clear that “they don't have to sell, but that they're just trying to clarify. And if people can understand why what they do as teachers has value, where their passion lies, what makes them excited--if they can impart that, that that will have meaning and value to someone outside of the community.”

Mixing the Voices and Composing the Shots

It’s also important to let interviewees know that they (or their remarks) won’t be carrying the entire piece--that you’ll be threading their comments into a narrative with other speakers that will vary and reinforce the message. “I think that takes a little bit of the pressure off,” Wales says, “and helps them to be a little more relaxed. With the arts and athletics piece, we probably did like 35 interviews over the course of two days. Logistically, it was very run and gun.”

While that approach can be physically demanding and stressful, it also allows you to showcase a number of different locations at the school as you work to match up the shooting locations and backgrounds to the subjects at hand.

“We want each of the backgrounds to speak to the aesthetic--if not the actual details--of athletics or arts at Middlesex. That really was stressful, but we'd done reconnaissance in terms of understanding where those places were and how we might do it and where we might go. We had a clear sense of what we might use. We knew where the windows were and what light we could use, and we knew we could bring a very small kit to be able to just work it quick. I think that's a key element--really understanding what your background is going to be, and what your composition is going to be for the frame.”

Dealing With Departmental Politics

Another challenge is dealing with departmental politics, and the constant balancing act between what will satisfy specific departments in terms of representation and what will actually work in the film you deliver. It’s important, Wales says, to anticipate these issues so you won’t be blind-sided--and to know going in that if someone says, for example, “We’ll just have you talk to one or two coaches; you don’t need to include someone from every sport in the program,” that others will most likely take issue with that.

“Without fail, what happens is they go to the head of the athletics department and you come to find out that really so many coaches are going to be upset if their program is not represented, if they don't have an opportunity to speak on behalf of their department. So you kind of have to negotiate and massage and understand what that's about and how much you can push and how much you need to back off.”

Another challenge arises, inevitably, when you include people for representation’s sake, is that you end up with people who either don’t want to be there or simply aren’t as at ease with the process as others. “Not everyone is as comfortable or is as passionate about being in front of the camera to make their case, to talk about what they are doing with their lives.”

Part of the problem, Wales explains, is that however excited and curious people are about what you’re doing there, they also “have very little sense of what you’re doing, and they have no idea necessarily, even if they're in the film, of how this is all going to fit together.”

But they are interested in seeing the “mirror” you hold up to the school, and ho accurately it captures the school the way they see it--or maybe even what they haven’t seen but still recognize when they see the finished product. And ultimately, once you’ve tamed the political issues, Wales says, that’s what representation is all about--not so much putting someone from every department on screen, but capturing the “core values” of the program and what they mean in the broader context of the school’s stated mission, and making sure that your film makes that clear.