7 Casting Tips To Improve College Videos
…or, what to do without young Matt Damons and Jodie Fosters
Not surprisingly, the cast of your admissions or campaign fundraising video is the single most important element in the communication. Why? The connection a donor or prospective student feels towards your school is an emotional one. The characters who appear in your videos – students, faculty, alumni – establish your credibility, spark the viewers’ empathy and forge that all-important human connection. And too often, not enough care is taken at a critical time in the process, that is, when choosing your brand film’s stars. Tribe Pictures offers these simple tips to get more out of every video production.
1. The Appeal of Diversity
In an admission video for one college with a reputation for being located in a remote part of the country, we prominently featured a student from Los Angeles and another from New York to subtly reflect the geographic diversity of the students.
2. Spark Alumni Connections
For NYU Law, the alumni had little nostalgia for their own era, but were very proud of how the law school had grown in reputation. We concentrated on the school’s current achievements and vision for the future in our inspiring brand video.
3. Look For Powerful Stories And People
A profile of an unsung alumnus teaching physics in a troubled Bronx high school turned out to be the most powerful of a number of stories in one of our college campaign films.
4. Collaborate
5. Don’t Ignore the Off-Screen Talent
In a video for Kenyon College, Tribe asked actress Allison Janney to narrate. Allison is a Kenyon alumnus of ’82 and well known by the Kenyon family for her success in film and television. Allison personalized the video for the Kenyon audience, and reminded the viewers that alumni care enough for their alma mater to give their time.
6. Foster a Relationship between the Filmmakers and Cast
7. Give Cast Members Responsibility
When we needed shots of life in winter for the University of Vermont, little snow was on the ground that year during our scheduled shoots. There was, however, snow on the top of the Green Mountains and we commissioned one outdoors-loving student to climb one of the peaks with a camera to get us the shot with the sun rising over glistening snow.
With 25 years of producing successful films, Tribe continues to learn a few new things every year. Filming at major institutions across the nation, including Franklin and Marshall College, Washington University in St. Louis, Washington and Lee University, and Agnes Scott College, as an innovative video production agency we always enjoy capturing that contagious freshness and optimism. Although these students are not hard to come by, capturing those special moments on camera is a true feat of casting.