For the past two years, we’ve been able to develop a great relationship with The Hill School, a co-ed boarding school here in the greater Philadelphia area, specifically Pottstown, PA. During our initial few projects, one of the big goals we determined was that we really wanted to focus on capturing a library of content, especially since there are so many things happening on campus on a daily basis. As a team that is not made up of full-time employees and certainly is not on campus every day, it was really important to be strategic in what we were capturing during those first few projects.
Now, fast forward to August 2025. I began conversations with the marketing director of The Hill School, and we were discussing the school’s major milestone: 175 years of providing a great education to students from all over the world. One of the topics we discussed was creating a 175th anniversary campaign. To kick off that campaign, we needed to create a 175th anniversary video that would showcase how the past, present, and future are all woven together to create a lasting impact for the school for another 175 years and beyond.
The first question is always this: What do we want this video to do? Realistically, we wanted this video to create strong emotions because the viewers were going to be alumni and stakeholders from all backgrounds. It was really important to make sure that, as we kicked off this 175th anniversary campaign, we let stakeholders know this was serious and something the school takes a lot of pride in creating.
When we began thinking conceptually about what this video would look like, we knew we wanted to incorporate older photos and weave together current footage that we had shot over the last few years. We would also likely need to record some new footage to make sure we were being intentional with what we were filming. The goal was to have the video ready and released by May 1, 2026.
One of the challenges was that we needed to get the 175th anniversary budget approved before we could start producing the video. Technically, the anniversary budget did not begin until May 1, 2026. If we needed to produce the video in the first half of Q2, we had to make sure we could move forward. To help with that, I decided to spread the payments out into four monthly installments. So we officially got started in March 2026.
The script was finalized with help from the alumni director, along with several people from marketing, with a couple of notes from me as well. When we initially discussed using a voiceover, we thought about hiring a professional voiceover talent. It was ultimately decided that we should use someone from the community instead, which made a lot of sense.
We decided to use two different voiceovers, a male teacher and a female teacher, and we used their voices to interweave the narration throughout the anniversary video. Both of them did a stellar job.
Once I had the voiceovers, it was really about piecing together the archival B-roll we had with the archival photos we had collected. Some of these photos dated back to the very first year of the school, which was pretty cool to see and gave the video a lot of character.
By the time we got to the editing portion, it was already early April, and we needed to have the video wrapped up by April 27th. I wanted to make sure we were set and ready to go for launch. I was also going to lose those extra few days because I was heading off to Spain for my sister’s wedding, so I was going to be mostly out of pocket.
One of the great plans we had was making sure we knew ahead of time:
- when first cuts were being delivered
- when revisions were going to be sent over to me
- when I would deliver updated cuts
We really mapped out a strong timeline. It was also important to make sure that anyone reviewing the video understood they needed to send feedback in a timely manner. Otherwise, we would not be able to complete revisions on schedule.
One of the biggest challenges with a project like this is that, because the video is for stakeholders, there are a lot of different audiences involved. The common thread is that they are all big fans of The Hill School, but we are also talking about generational differences and generational tastes. Sometimes that can be tricky to communicate through video. An older generation may be interested in something more traditional, while a younger generation, such as current students, may be more interested in a slick, TikTok-style video.
Overall, the client was very happy with the results of the video. There were hundreds of likes and reactions, thousands of views, and tons of engagement. Of course, this is just the beginning, and utilizing this video throughout the 175th anniversary campaign will be crucial.
Personally this was a really nice video to produce, seeing the historical photos in particular was super neat to see, especially as I walked through the campus for other projects. I understand why stakeholders are so proud to be a Hill alumn.
Please feel free to reach out if you’re interested in learning more about how to utilize video for your big celebrations at joe@monzomediapro.com
