The Power of Video Production for Businesses: Enhancing Communication and Engagement
Oxford University Examination School Promo Video
We recently made a promo video for Oxford Uni Exam School and we thought we’d share some of the more practical considerations that go into making something like this.
The Brief:
The brief was a sub 3min video that highlighted the Oxford Uni Exam Schools facilities for conferences and meetings. This included multiple rooms with multiple levels of occupancy, various facilities offered like catering, wifi, break out rooms, halls for exhibitions etc and alongside this, the central location.
The Break down:
The first thing to do was to break down, in order of priority, the absolute must-do shots. This involved a walk around with the Marketing Manager i.e a recce of the entire venue and noting down where she thought the most important parts of the building were.This became a working shot list which was sent to the Event Manager who then wrote back with the dates of what conference happens when and in relation to which shot.
The thing to always bear in mind are permissions, especially on this scale where there are hundreds of people attending conferences.It’s almost impossible to get individual permissions slips signed. Blanket permissions where given by the conference organisers in some instances and in others, blanket permissions but only for certains speakers and talks.
The Shoot:
As we couldn’t really intrude on the conferences, a zoom lens was used for a lot of the shots. At f2.8, this still offered a good depth of field. A fish eye was used for some wides and the steadicam shots and on occassion, a 25mm prime for some portrait type shots where we felt we were not intruding on the occasion. We used a Letus Helix Jr for the steadicam shots which was mostly well mannered. The Letus could go off centre on occassion but a quick restart fixed that.
The time lapses were quite straightforward apart the high street shots which required liaison with St.Edmund Hall College and access to a flat that faced the Exam School and had a view of the High Street.
Post Production:
Bar the usual colour correction, editing down and fiddling about with speed ramping and percentages, the most complicated was the graphical map. It took over a day to do as the map wasn’t layered and had to almost be recreated from scratch. We shot over 25mins for a 3min promo which was above our normal shoot edit ratio but some of the shots were longer timelapses and a variety of steadicam shots in each location.
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