We’re not supposed to pick favorites, but we really do love working with Villa Maria Academy in Malvern Pa. We’ve been fortunate to be able to have a great relationship with the marketing director, Laurie, and I’ve been able to work on a couple of projects throughout the years. The latest project we worked on was a revamp for their general admissions video as well as two other program videos, one for art and the other for athletics. For the admissions video conceptually, it started off by trying to say let’s tackle something different than traditional interviews, testimonials, and all that. As we dove deeper into pre-production of what defines a Villa student, we realized that it’s the authentic voices of the students that make the school so impressive. How do we use authentic voices but still make something that’s a little different?
I recall a project that we did back in 2019 for a company where we used a roundtable discussion as the framing of the story. And that really allowed us, instead of interviewing five different people, to have a roundtable conversation around the value proposition of that company. I figured: is there a way to do something similar with these girls? Maybe there’s a two- to three-person conversation happening about their experience at Villa, and they’re talking to each other as opposed to talking to someone off camera. This would allow the authentic feel of Villa Girls, and really, as prospective families look at schools, they’re going to notice that these girls are special. But it would also give us just a different look, something a little different, and just a different way to tell the story that is authentic. We had the theme Dare to be Extraordinary.
For this project to work, I needed to up the number of crew members that we had. For most of our projects, it’s normally two people, but for this, we needed a third person to tackle this project. The tasks handled were someone to handle the cameras, another to run audio, and the final to direct and set the stage for the conversation the girls would have (that was me!).
We decided to get three groups of girls for various scenes: two groups of two girls one group of four girls. All were in various locations to help showcase the campus and the environment of the school. This was especially important because the school had recently undergone a new building renovation, and it was really nice to see all of the new spaces the school had just created. Of course, the biggest thing is the voice of the girls and what Villa means to them as they have gone through their years at the school. Seeing the transformation they have undergone from girls to young women.
Once we finished the interviews, we were able to dive in and capture some great B-roll that would be used for both the admissions video and the two program videos we were working on.
For the program videos, we decided not to use specific voices. We decided on a different approach for each video. For the arts video, we let graphics and text really showcase the value of the arts program at Villa. With the athletics video, we let the high energy of the edit showcase the excitement of playing at Villa sports team.
You can check out the videos here
https://vimeo.com/1109381345?tq=villa#t=2
Feel free to reach out if you’re interested in seeing how creating compelling videos can work for your school or brand. You can reach me at joe@monzomediapro.com
