It was around late November 2025, maybe early December, when Matt from the marketing department sent me an email saying they wanted to tackle some program videos for their school, Chapel Hill-Chauncy Hall. We had previously worked together on a fundraising campaign for the school a couple of years ago, and now we had the opportunity to tackle something that would help more with marketing and enrollment.
The key was to film and edit the content before yield season began. There were numerous types of program videos they were interested in tackling, but ultimately, we decided to focus on four core program videos: Academic Approach, Skills and Academic Strategies, Social and Cultural Environment, and Extracurriculars.
The short-term goal for these videos was for CH-CH to use them in lead-nurturing campaigns, while long-term, they would be able to use them on the website. This meant we would have to handle pre-production in late December or early January and then quickly film no later than the middle of January. That way, we could work on editing all four videos in February and have them ready for launch by early March.
Of course, one of the things that started coming to mind was the weather. CH-CH is based right outside of Boston, and similar to Philly, where we are located, they were experiencing a very harsh, cold, and snowy winter. As we were planning the filming, we had to be really conscientious about whether snow would impact our travel or any of our filming days. Luckily, by the time we were getting ready to make our move north to the Boston area, the snowstorm had already come and gone.
That did lead to another conversation: Do we really want to showcase the school in snowy, cold weather?
The answer was no, but we were still able to utilize footage they had captured internally throughout the year and plug it into these program videos. Pleasant, beautiful fall and spring clips look much better than harsh, snowy, cold clips.
We were on campus for about three days, so we had to be efficient with our time, the people we were interviewing, and the B-roll shots we needed to capture. For each program video, we dedicated two spokespeople: a faculty member and a student.
We figured each video would get its own space for interviews. For example, for the Academic Approach video, we would film the interviews mostly in one room, back-to-back. We did the same with Skills and Academic Strategies and the other videos. This gave each video its own personality, if you will, that matched the topic being discussed.
Since we were intentional about who we were filming and how they would be used in the program videos, we had enough time to set up and break down a couple of times throughout our three days on campus. From there, we would try to capture B-roll of the student and faculty member, as well as other B-roll footage that was a little more general.
Since CH-CH is a boarding school, it was a little tricky to avoid getting students bundled up in their winter gear and coats, but we made the best of it.
Once we returned to Philadelphia, we got right to work on the edits. We were able to deliver the first cuts within three weeks or so, which gave the school enough time to provide feedback and request any changes. We were then able to make the final revisions and meet that early March deadline.
One of the biggest challenges during editing was that some of the extracurriculars we had shot represented only a small sample of everything that happens on campus. Luckily, we were able to pull from existing footage the school had captured internally and plug it into the edits to create a seamless video.
This is one of the great purposes of having an internal video team: to capture and document. That way, when you have a need for something more polished, or you’re getting help from an outside partner like Monzo Media Productions, you can provide that existing footage for scenes you know might otherwise not be accessible to an outside production company.
You can check out some of the videos here
Overall it was a great winter project that we were honored in helping share the many stories of Chapel Hill-Chauncy Hall. If program Videos like this interest you? Feel free to reach out to me at joe@monzomediapro.com.
