Videos for Schools

Analytics prove our videos for schools are far more productive than industry norms. 85-100% of viewers watch the entire film.
This school video production is for St.George’s School in Ascot, UK.
Headmistress Rachel Owens and Head of Marketing Henrietta Lightwood briefed us in yet another different way for this school video. The school appeals greatly to a wealthy parent group from London and a long discussion ensued about the value of luxury items to this demograph. Two points emerged. First, the school’s parent group are highly motivated by luxury brands which are used as status symbols within their peer group. Jo Malone diffusers in the hallway, Evoke Range Rovers on the driveway and so on. Second, this parent group probably hot-housed their daughters during prep school years in a central London. They then realise that the pressures of this are counter-productive and bring their childhoods to a premature end. St. George’s offers a rural bubble in which they can still be children during their teenage years.
Our response was therefore twofold. First, we introduced St.George’s branding into this school promo video, so the school name and logo would appear on all kinds of objects: mineral water bottles, fluffy towels, saddlery for horses, a diffuser bottle, a plate of beautiful food (St.George’s had just won a Tatler Award for best school food in the UK). Second, we made sure that the girls were all filmed having fun whatever they were doing. Lots of laughter and smiling faces were needed in this video for a school.
We used the time-lapse footage of a number of flowers bursting into life from buds, as a metaphor for the different speeds at which children naturally mature. And we also took a lot of time over two consecutive evenings to bring a large number of lights into the school grounds so we could film activities taking place at dusk. This showed the comparative safety of the school’s location along with the beautiful rural location. Cedar trees and sweeping lawns look marvellous when lit after dark.
Another cinematic device sprang from the beautiful concert hall that had just been built at the school. One end of this vast space was floor-to-ceiling windows so we covered them in huge sheets of tracing paper that diffused the light. Different children stood in front and performed a range of activities, from tennis to ballet and modern dance. Their semi-silhouettes were then doubled or quadrupled up to give a symmetrical image that was very striking and not seen before in a school promotional video.
Other touches included showing pictures being painted by girls who were standing within their own frames. One of these pictures was set in a vast field of red poppies that we filmed just opposite Stonehenge.
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