In the fall of 2024, we were contacted by Hillel Day School of Metropolitan Detroit, a Jewish day school in the suburbs of Detroit. They had received a grant to create a series of videos that would help enhance their brand. The school was in a very good position within the community, but due to some of the recent global events happening in the Middle East, there was a sense of needing to reaffirm the value that their school provides to students and families. We went through the proposal process, and Hillel Day School signed on with us in January 2025. It was super exciting, considering that I had actually been to Detroit several times throughout my career, and I’ve always loved the suburbs of Detroit. We had also worked with a school not too far from Hillel a couple of years earlier, so I was very familiar with the area.
The initial plan was to film during the spring and have the final deliverables ready by early summer of 2025. Like most schools, there are always complications. One of the biggest challenges Hillel was facing was a debate over certain student policies, and for privacy reasons, I won’t go into that. There was also some construction happening that would not have looked great on camera. Ultimately, it ended up being the right move to hold off until the fall of 2025.
In the meantime, we developed our pre-production plans, and there were discussions about what kinds of videos we were actually going to create. Because we were producing ten different videos, it was really important that we were efficient with the style of videos we created, which was our traditional docu-style approach. Our contact person, Casey, did a phenomenal job scheduling interviews and B-roll based on the scene list I provided—a task that is not always easy.
My team and I finally arrived, and we were greeted with open arms. It was easy to see why the school was thriving. The community was strong, welcoming, and supportive. This was also reflected in the number of interviews we had lined up, from parents and faculty members to students. By the time the week was over, I walked away with about 45 different interviews!
While we filmed a lot throughout the five days we were at Hillel, the schedule was incredibly organized. We had days dedicated solely to interviews and others dedicated entirely to B-roll, which is the best possible outcome and can be very tricky to pull off at a school. This made organizing the footage after each day of filming much easier, as we didn’t want to spend unnecessary time during the editing phase sorting through footage.
When it came time to edit, there was a lot of footage to sift through. I probably had about 2.5–3 TB of footage. Handling that amount of content can sometimes be overwhelming, so staying organized is critical. For the first two days, I focused on organizing the footage, syncing the audio with the cameras, and determining which interviews would be used for each video. From there, I just tried to be as meticulous as possible about staying organized.
This project was part of a much larger branding overhaul, and as of this writing, they have just launched their new website, which features many of the videos we produced. Here are a few of them.
With their website launched and the videos out in the world, the next step is to track the data and see how effective these videos are with marketing and enrollment.
It was a fun project that had us traveling to a great area (with great food at every turn, especially the pizza)!
If you ever want to chat about creating a video strategy for your school, feel free to reach out to me at joe@monzomediapro.com
