Project Description

Head of the Marches Academy Trust in Shropshire used a professional presentation video to create a buzz among staff for the new school year

You can’t fight the laws of physics: it’s impossible to be in multiple places at once.

Which causes a bit of an issue when you’re the CEO of a multi-academy trust, and want to speak to all the staff at your 11 schools on the inset day before the new school starts.

That’s why the Marches Academy Trust contacted VideoHQ to get the speech professionally filmed, so that it could be sent directly to the schools to watch.

And hey, I’m always a fan of saving the planet, and that’s a hell of a lot of fuel saved too.

The pre-production process

Since I’ve worked with the Marches Academy Trust before, I was already pretty well briefed on their overall messaging.

So this pre-production meeting, the discussions focused on filming logistics, and aims for the video.

For the latter, we discussed that the video had two key purposes: to play to all staff before the new school term, and to show to new staff when they join the school.

To make sure the video worked for both purposes, we arranged that we’d film two separate introductions and conclusions to the video. One which mentioned the inset day, and one which was not time specific. The main body content could stay the same for both versions.

The filming process

I travelled to the Marches School in Oswestry for the filming, which is where the trust is based.

The main content of the video was to be a piece to camera style shot with Sarah Finch, the CEO.

Since this shot would make up the majority of the video, it had to look good! So I set up my professional video lighting beforehand to ensure that would be the case.

I also used two cameras for this shoot. This was so that Sarah didn’t need to nail the speech in one go – this would be incredibly difficult, even for a pro presenter!

Instead, we split the speech up into manageable sections, and cut to the second camera to cover the gap. Absolutely seamless!

The editing process

Once all the best takes of the speech had been put together in the timeline, most of the edit process was making the video look more visually interesting than just a piece to camera!

The marketing team at the trust sent over a wealth of videos and photos captured at the various schools, so I looked through this and added media which related to what Sarah was talking about.

This is one of the main ways that a presentation video can be more engaging than an in person talk: you can easily illustrate what the speaker is discussing.

I also added high-quality royalty free music to the video, which comes fully licensed so it can be uploaded to social media without copyright concerns.

Finally, I subtitled the video. At the inset days, it would be played to staff on a big screen, and you never know what the speaker quality would be like! Subtitles ensure the message is still conveyed.

Got a message you want to get across to all of the staff at your organisation? Get in touch to see how an internal presentation video could do the trick.