Cinematic Video Production for Schools
At Copper Hound Pictures we have been producing video content for colleges, universities, and independent secondary schools for almost a decade, and through the years we have learned that no two schools have the same personality.
We specialize in communicating exactly what makes your school stand out from a wide range of competitive schools in the northeast.
Video content gives schools a chance to engage with prospective students, families, or donors with a level of complexity and nuance that isn’t possible with other mediums. We want to make sure that you are able to tell your story honestly, emotionally, and with a level of professionalism and quality that we can both be proud of.
Below we have put together a list of video types with examples that you can consider while developing video content for your school.
“Choosing to partner with Copper Hound Pictures has hands-down made the greatest impact on our school's marketing materials over the past decade. Their work has made a lasting impression and we've been able to build a library of assets that will continue to serve us for years to come. For us, the investment has been worth every penny.
Melissa Laroque, Belmont Hill
The Overview
The Overview video is the most common first request we get from schools. We are often tasked with building a 3-5 minute video that can walk a prospective family through the broad strokes of a school. This will often feature interviews with a variety of faculty, administrators, students, and parents. Viewers should walk away from this type of video with not only a solid understanding of the school, but also of the school’s personality. A variant of the overview video is the divisional overview (think lower, middle and upper school divisions).
“Copper Hound Pictures was able to capture the spirit of our campus community in ways that are fresh and timeless. I can use these videos and photos in numerous ways from marketing online, print pieces, social media, and special purposes. They are thoughtful, creative allies to join you in your marketing efforts”
Laurie Flynn, The Wheeler School
The Fundraiser
The fundraiser video, or the campaign anthem video, is a major segment of our work. These videos are informational, inspirational, and intended to motivate financial giving. We have been told that videos we have created in the past have been game changers in terms of fundraising. They allow the development department to speak to a large population of parents, friends, and alumni when direct face to face contact isn’t possible. They are also another great way to involve the voices and perspectives of alumni.
The Alumni Profile
Great outcomes are incredibly engaging. We love producing alumni profile videos for schools, because they give us a chance to tell one specific and interesting story about how an incredible school changed someone’s life. These feel like documentary shorts and can have a massive impact. These short videos can also be a great way to engage your alumni network.
The Long Form Event Video
This type of video is common around major retirements or school anniversaries. We have been brought on board to interview a variety of stakeholders and combine that footage with a mix of new B-roll and archival photography and video footage. These videos typically run longer than a public facing online video and tell a deeper story about either the progress made by the school in the previous decades or the impact that one particular person has had on the school community. These videos can be emotional and engaging, and have a different intended audience than the the typical marketing piece.
The Announcement Video
Sometimes a school needs to make an announcement around a particular piece of news, and a video is a good way to reach a broad constituency all at once. This approach is also useful around donor thank you messaging, new hire announcements, building dedications, major curricular changes, or other pieces of specific and important news.
The Subject Specific Video
This is generally the next level down for a school that has the Overview Video sorted. This type of video content highlights a particular part of school life, Athletics, for example. Other topics we have covered in the past for our clients include, Arts, Dorm Life, Academics, College Counseling, Maker Spaces, or STEM. Each school will choose a variety of these topics for us to produce all at once, or highlight an emerging program at their school.
“We have partnered with Copper Hound since 2018, and their work just gets better and better! Our faculty and students shine through every video they produce for us!”
Teddy Ryan, WMA
The Social Media Video
Short form and punchy, maybe a little looser in style, the social media video is often a one topic quick hit to drive engagement. These types of video are often the byproduct of the video content library build.
“You could not ask for more dedicated, creative, or just plain fun partners to work with. We've now made close to 20 videos with Copper Hound and have been extremely pleased from start to finish.”
Ann Hallock, The Williston Northampton School
The Holiday Message
For well wishing around the holidays, a nice short holiday message video is a great way to engage with the school community.
The tour Video
Sometime prospective students and their families can’t come to campus for a visit, or perhaps they want to dig into a school before they do. Bringing the campus and student experience to life through a tour video is a great way to introduce a school.
Make it stand out.
What makes Copper Hound Pictures different?
OUR APPROACH
We believe we take a fundamentally different approach to video production for schools than a lot of production companies that include school work as one of many different types of videos they create. We specialize in video production for independent schools and universities, so we approach each engagement as the start of a long term relationship with a school. We consider each project as piece of the building of a library of assets for our clients.
FIRST TIME ON CAMPUS
Let’s take a typical first time engagement as an example. We come to campus with our team for three to five consecutive days of filming. Each day consists of an interview portion and a b-roll gathering portion. Let says at the end of the week we have 15 to 25 interviews and three to five partial days of different moments captured across academics, arts, athletics, dining, advisory, all school meetings, extra curricular activities, and campus life.
BACK IN OUR STUDIO
When we return to our studio to edit we not only create the videos that we were engaged to create, for example a four minute overview and three subject specific edits, but we also transcribe and categorize all the content that was captured in the interviews, as well as categorize the b-roll footage that we capture. This content always far outnumbers the usable soundbites and visuals that we can put into the initial scope of edits. From here we have the flexibility to recommend additional topic-specific edits or social media edits that we can pull together for you from the transcripts.
IT ONLY GETS BETTER
The real value comes from multiple engagements. After three or four visits to campus, which is the type of relationship we have with almost all of our clients, we are able to pull from a wide variety of voices and story lines that have all been well documented and organized to build additional stories. We had clients that were able to continue to release videos throughout the duration of the COVID remote learning periods simply because we had built them enough of a library of assets to pull from throughout our previous projects.
We want our clients to think about the project at hand, but also plan for the future together.
Melissa Larocque at Belmont Hill
What Services Does Copper Hound Pictures Provide?
PRE-PRODUCTION
We are happy to take as much work off your plate as you would like, or follow your lead. We have the ability to do all the pre-production work from concepting, to storyboarding, to pre-interviews, to scheduling - but often our clients want to be heavily involved in the pre-production, we take a collaborative approach and are positioned to fill in where needed.
PRODUCTION
On the filming days themselves our team typically leads the interviews, which we approach as conversations that are guided by a list of pre-approved questions, but have the flexibility to organically follow useful or unexpected paths. We come into each day of filming with a very clear understanding of our goals and have the experience to know which tangents will prove useful.
POST-PRODUCTION
In post production we handle all editing, sound, music and color. Typically a few weeks after filming we send a private link with a first edit. These first edits are typically close to 90% on target and only require minor changes to get to the finishing steps. We are also happy to provide graphics work for lower thirds, intros and outros, as well as closed-captioning.
What Equipment Does Copper Hound Pictures Use, and Does it matter?
This is an interesting question, because we believe amazing stories can be told with any equipment, but we have found the combination of truly cinema-quality equipment and great storytelling can elevate educational videos to the next level.
We use all RED Digital Cinema cameras, from the newly released 8k V-Raptor to the incredibly portable Komodo-X. We currently own and operate four REDs.
We also have a FAA licensed drone pilot with the newly released 5.1k DJI Mavic 3 Cine Pro for aerial video and photography. Our cameras are supported by SteadiCam systems as well as a variety of cranes, sliders, and robotic head systems.
If this is interesting to you, that’s great. If it isn’t, just know that we have invested heavily in making sure your final product looks and sounds incredible.
YOU CAN CONTACT US DIRECTLY AT :
What are the first steps?
First, let us say we absolutely love this work and we are excited to talk to you. The best first step is to reach out to us at bob@copperhound.com and we can set up a call to get to know each other. If you’d like we are happy to provide references from several schools. Whatever we can do to make this process smooth for you, we are happy to help.