The video trend has well and truly hit. Video is everywhere online and only getting more prevalent. With an increase in videos being produced comes an increase in people making videos and a decrease in the price of quality video equipment. Making a high-quality video for your school today is drastically cheaper than it was ten or even five years ago. With all this extra content comes more competition and less space in which your school can stand-out with its visual content. Bearing this in mind, creating high-quality video content is more important than ever so it’s important you aren’t making rookie mistakes.
Here are 5 things to avoid when making a school video:
1. Not having an objective for your video
Making a video for the sake of making a video is a waste of the time it takes to make and the resources used. Videos are great fun but if you don’t have a direction or purpose for your video it will lack a clear message and possibly be more confusing then helpful.
2. Using the wrong people
The librarian may have a wealth of knowledge on the history of your school but no-one will be engaged if they speak in a dull monotonous way. Ensure your presenters are engaging, friendly and welcoming.
3. Making a video that is too long
Our want for instant gratification has left us with little patience for too much content. As much as we’d like our parents to sit and watch hours of content about our school, the unfortunate truth is that you will struggle to get more than a few minutes of attention from them. Ensure your message is clear and to the point, otherwise your parents won’t watch it.
4. Not having a good distribution method
So you’ve made your video, what are you going to do know? Email it? Post it on Facebook? Show it at an assembly or meeting? Maybe it would be good on repeat in your school’s foyer? Alternatively, it might be better on YouTube? Once it is online, how will you promote it? Before you make the video, you should know exactly where and how it will be distributed.
5. Not having a call to action
What is the video trying to achieve? Do you want parents to sign up to a newsletter? Or maybe you want them to come along to the end of year presentation? Make sure you tell them! The easier you make it for your parents to take the next step, the more likely it is they will do it.
Most of the time you will want to use professionals to create your video content but it’s understandable that sometimes it’s just not worth the time and expense, especially if you just want to do a quick livestream. For the occasions when a video is being made in-house, here is a quick checklist of things you SHOULD do.
- Film in landscape not portrait.
- Use a high resolution, quality camera.
- Ensure your background is appropriate.
- Make the presenter the focus of the shot.
- Have appropriate lighting.
- Avoid distracting background noise like wind, traffic, noisy students or even noisy birds!
