Project Description
Shrewsbury primary school showcases revamped curriculum and improved behaviour code with authentic promotional video
In the education industry, it’s well known how important high pupil numbers are. Whether you’re a state school or private school, it’s often the key to a bigger budget.
The headteacher at Grange Primary School, Charlie Summers, has implemented a new behavioural code and curriculum for the school, and she wanted local parents to know the improvements they’d seen.
After all, it’s one thing doing the work – but unless parents know about it, they might be reluctant to consider sending their kids to the school.
Therefore, VideoHQ arranged to produce a website promotional video and series of short social media videos, to help them to spread the word that the school has vastly improved.
What was the pre-production process like?
The first step was to meet with the school and outline the key messaging they wanted to convey.
We decided to go for an interview led style of video. This enabled the pupils to get their personalities across rather than learning a script (we wanted the funny moments!) and also makes for a really authentic and natural style of video. Too scripted, and it can look like you’re trying too hard to control the narrative.
I asked about the reasons parents had been choosing to send their kids elsewhere – and one thing that cropped up was that the school had previously had a poor reputation for behaviour.
With reputational issues like this, it’s often best to tackle them head on. Otherwise, parents will be watching the video thinking: ‘it’s all very well and good having great sports clubs, but what’s the behaviour like in lessons? My friend told me she’d heard it was terrible.’
You’re not going to change their attitude by beating around the bush!
The headteacher also mentioned that the school is really proud of the relationship they have with the parents, and they’re always there to answer any questions.
Now that sounds fine coming from the school – but obviously they’re going to say the relationship is good! So we arranged for me to interview a parent as well, as it is far more convincing and relatable coming from them.
After that, it was a case of working out what activities and lessons I needed to film in order to get the key messages across.
What was the filming process like?
There was a lot we wanted to film during the day, so we’d come up with a very tight schedule of where I needed to be and when.
I was on site from 7:45am to 5:30pm, and during that time I filmed:
- Ten activities
- Two teacher interviews
- One parent interview
- Two pupil interview sessions (with two students in each)
- The after school club
It was slightly hectic, but capturing so much footage really helped to paint a varied picture of the school. This is really important for a primary school. When you have children from age three until they’re eleven, you need to get across the whole pathway they’ll follow at your school.
Other than the interviews, most of the filming was spent trying to film the children acting naturally in their everyday environment.
Obviously there’s things you can do to make the video more visually interesting – like choosing to do archery for the PE lesson! – but broadly we aimed for the video to be authentic.
What was the editing process like?
When I produce videos like this, the interviews form the backbone of the narrative.
Therefore the first step is to put all of the interviews into the editing timeline, and pick out all of the best quotes from each person.
I slot these quotes together like pieces in a jigsaw puzzle, until the video has a natural and engaging flow to keep viewers entertained.
But a video of just interview footage would be really boring! So I overlay these quotes with relevant activity footage, to illustrate what they’re saying.
With this project, the main promotional video was only part of it. I also produced ten social media clips for use on Facebook.
These were really fun to make, and dived in deeper on ten different topics (agreed with the headteacher).
While on the main promotional video there’s only a maximum of 30 seconds to talk about an individual topic because you’ve got to mention everything in one video, these social media videos were just about one topic at a time.
This gives you license to include quotes from more people, and use different illustrative footage to the main video.
Finally all of these videos were subtitled, as many people on social media watch with the sound turned off.
What did the client say?
Grange Primary School is part of the Marches Academy Trust, and their Director of Marketing and Communications Hayley Allridge said:
From the initial stages of planning to the final delivery, Hannah demonstrated an exceptional level of professionalism, creativity, and dedication.
Hannah’s approach to the project was nothing short of impressive. She took the time to thoroughly understand our vision and goals for the promotional video, ensuring that every aspect aligned seamlessly with Grange Primary School’s values and ethos. Her ability to translate our ideas into a compelling narrative was truly commendable.
What truly set Hannah apart was her talent for creating engaging and visually stunning social media clips to complement the main promotional video. These snippets perfectly captured the essence of Grange Primary School and will be instrumental in generating excitement and interest across various online platforms.
In addition to her technical skills, Hannah’s enthusiasm and passion are second to none. She brought a level of creativity and energy to the project that elevated the final result beyond our expectations. The promotional video and social media clips she produced have become invaluable assets in promoting Grange Primary School to a wider audience.
Looking for a promotional video for your school, college, sixth form or academy trust? Get in touch to book a free 30 minute video marketing review and see how VideoHQ can help you to boost student numbers and increase engagement with the parent community.