YouTube

You might have already heard about this YouTube video as several higher ed bloggers (mstonerblog, The Old College Try and edustir among others) and twitterers have mentioned it this week.

President’s Day at Macalester College is a 5-minute online video featuring President Brian Rosenberg.

Not your traditional college president video at all.

This online video is a humorous insider’s tour of Macalester College where the president does all sort of things to showcase the school and its spirit.

Take the time to watch it now if you haven’t yet.

Released on President’s Day – just 4 days ago, the video has more than 15,000 views – it’s not a huge hit in YouTube terms, but it’s definitely a popular video that resonated with the MAC community as some of the comments on YouTube prove it.

Here are just a few among the 22 that were posted on YouTube at the time of this writing:

• I love this video! It makes me proud to be at Macalester. I think it takes courage and ability to look at things in a fun manner to do something like this. I am extremely proud to be a part of this community and I want to thank people whose creativity and hard work makes this college one of the most amazing academic environments in the country.
• That was great! ….. Makes me even prouder to be a “Mac Dad”! ;-)
• It’s this kind of self-aware humor that makes the Mac community awesome.

Since I know you are always interested in learning more about this kind of initiatives, I contacted Amy Phenix, director of Communications and PR at Macalester College, yesterday and asked her a few questions about this original video.

1) Can you tell us a bit more about this video? How did you get the idea? How did you convince your president to go for it?

The video was truly a collaborative effort with the president. We knew that we wanted to do more video as another way of engaging alumni. The communications team got together and brainstormed five concepts that we shared with the president and vice president for Advancement. I continued the brainstorm with them and we settled on President’s Day as the hook for a humorous look at campus and student life today, through the eyes of President Rosenberg. From the very first conversation, President Rosenberg was engaged. He came up with some of the funniest bits. No convincing was needed, which is a good thing because I don’t think it would have worked with a reluctant star.

2) How long did it take to create this video? How big was the team and how much did the video cost?

We shot all but one scene in a day (probably about 6 hours of shooting), and we turned it around edited in a week. It was a very fast production process and the shoot was well-orchestrated so we were able to stay on schedule.

The team included four people on our staff, plus an alum we hired to shoot and finalize the script.

It was very low-budget. Other than a freelance videographer, who spent about 40 hours on preparation, location scouting, script and shooting, we did all the work in house. Total cost was about $2,500.

3) How did you promote this video?

We sent it to our alumni (about half of whom we have email addresses for), friends, and current parents, promoted to the campus community, and posted on Facebook and Twitter. We also shared with reporters who cover higher education.

4) This video generated a lot of buzz (15,000 views and many mentions on blogs, etc.). Has it met its goals? Have you noticed a bump in donations or requests for information from prospective students yet?

We are extremely gratified with the response and have exceeded our goals. Because this is the first time we’ve done something like this we didn’t know what to expect. We have seen a bump in donors and donations. The impact on prospective students is a bit more difficult to gauge this early.

A few weeks before the “That’s I chose Yale” video was released, two admissions officers from the University of Delaware launched another musical into the wild, Reading Season.

Their video struck a chord in admissions offices across the country even though it was just a side project for both admissions officers.

When I interviewed Avi Amon about his video back in December, he hinted that there might be other videos created as part of a recruitment push at the University of Delaware.

Avi contacted me a few days ago to let me know about his new project: creating a full-length admissions video including requests and even photos from students, a video that will be produced based on suggestions from prospective students.

What a great idea!

To get some interest in this project, the admissions office created another tongue-in-cheek video and included it in the email sent to 200,000 prospective students earlier this month.

Here’s this call-to-action video:

Students were asked to submit an online form including basic contact information as well as what they would like to see in the video. They can also challenge the admission office to include some unusual elements in the video.

So, how has been the response so far?

More than 1,400 views on YouTube and some good feedback from the target audience according to Avi Amon:

So far the response has been overwhelmingly positive. Students have been excited that we are reaching out to them! Responses vary from the basic (I’d like to see the engineering building) to the more thought-provoking. (how will I know that UD is a good fit for me?).

I’ll make sure to keep you updated about this project.
In the meantime, tell what you think by posting a comment!

Unless you’ve been really, really busy (and away from your computer, iPhone or iPad – wait that one isn’t out there yet ;-), you’ve already heard about Yale’s admissions video: “That’s why I chose Yale,” a 16-minute tongue-in-cheek musical, highly produced but all done by students or recent alums.

Picked up by the New York Times, the Washington Post and other big names in media, the video has gone viral on YouTube (more than 300,000 views at the time of this writing) – and has resulted in many high praises as well as angry comments on different blogs and listservs.

Here’s the video in case you didn’t get a chance to watch it yet:

Brian Niles from TargetX – who is very well connected in the admissions world – managed to contact Andrew Johnson, senior assistant director of undergraduate admissions who was behind this production, and got him to sit in front of a web camera for a 20-minute discussion about the video.

No time to watch the interview now?
Here are my notes:

• The video wasn’t designed to be put online initially, but to be used as a fun introduction before the traditional information session and the campus tour. Johnson explained that it was meant to be used as one component of a campus visit and definitely not as part of a new branding campaign. However, it was decided at some point to put it online.
• They decided to do the video in-house with students after requesting some bids from video production companies. Johnson said it was done with a little amount of money – about 10% of what professional companies were asking for this type of video. When prompted to give a dollar amount for the video budget, Johnson explained that it had not been tallied up yet as the expenses were on several admissions officers’ credit cards (Really? Wow).
• The video took 10 days to film and several to edit. The video was then reviewed in house to make sure it was vetted.
• The musical format was chosen to showcase a more fun yet accurate side of Yale. The student film maker, Ethan Kuperberg, had just completed a musical when he was asked to do this project. Johnson managed the project, but also wrote the music.

Make sure you watch this great video interview by Target X to learn more as I’ve just highlighted the most important points. And, again kudos to Brian for getting us more info on this unusual video.

Care to tell us what YOU think about the Yale video? Post a comment!

It looks like lip synching is the new black in college online videos (or is it that I really like lipdubs and feel compelled to post about any new one I stumbled upon?)

I watch this very well produced online video after Dale Keiger, Associate editor of Johns Hopkins Magazine, posted about it on the CUE listserv.

Published on YouTube on December 21st, 2009, it has more than 22,000 views at the time of this writing.

It’s a really great high-energy-feel-good video including an original soundtrack recorded by students and adapted from the song “I Thank You” written by Isaac Hayes and David Porter as well as some dancing and much more.

So, please take 3 minutes and a half to watch this video.

Targeted to donors, this video was created and produced by Jay Corey, director of Video Strategy at Johns Hopkins University. As soon as I finished watching his video, I emailed him to ask a few questions about what it took to produce these 3 and half minutes of great online video.

1) How long did it take to write, direct and produce this video?

The ideal situation would have been to have a least 6 months to work on this piece. Unfortunately, as is often the case, the
turn-around time to complete this video was tight. The idea of Johns Hopkins University doing an end-of-year video was first introduced at the end of October 09. The only guidance that came with the idea was that the video should be fun to watch and have a “thank you” theme.

From concept to finished produced piece it took about 5 weeks. I started with the music, first by re-working the lyrics to make them more academic themed and then recording a basic rhythm track with guitar, drums, bass and a scratch vocal with my audio production partner David Schmelick. I then added keyboards, a horn section featuring students from the Peabody Institute and finally polished vocals provided by the Johns Hopkins acapella group Octopodes.

From there it was just a matter of logistics. I worked with several driven colleagues who worked tirelessly to keep me running from place to place, rapidly taping and cajoling, for the most part non-dancers and non-singers to perform as if they were.

2) This video uses the technique of the lipdub, a genre recently made popular by students lip synching while showcasing their campus. Why did you choose this technique?

As far as using a lip dub / lip synching technique, once we decided to make a music video, I don’t know of another way to do it. I chose the Sam and Dave tune I Thank You because it obviously fit the theme and because an R&B song would have relevance to largest group of viewers/listeners.

3) How did you secure the rights to use the song? Was it a long process?

In securing the music rights my colleague Glenn Simmons did an amazing job. This process can often be a difficult and lengthy one. By working through a music agent he was able to negotiate a workable rate and finalize a contract with the publishers in less than 2 weeks. Usage rates are fluid and vary greatly depending on the popularity of the song, how it will be used, where it will be seen, etc.

While I was working on the web redesign of Higher Ed Experts those past few weeks, I received a few interesting tips about creative projects created by 3 different institutions.

Patric Lane, Health and Science Editor at UNC News Services, sent me this first tip.

Santa is ready to ride! is a YouTube video about the big chubby guy in red and white. Produced by the medical school from The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, it features a UNC cardiologist, geneticist, psychologist, endocrinologist and Santa’s very own family physician. Published on YouTube on December 7, the video got close to 3,000 views at the time of this writing and confirms UNC doctors and researchers are far from being Grinches.

The second tip was sent by Linda Martin, Web and New Media Strategies Executive Director at the University of Maryland.

It’s the university’s holiday card available on its dedicated page and on YouTube.

And, the last tip came from Casey Paquet, Director of Web Services at Eckerd College. It’s the college animated holiday card featuring the dean of admissions and financial aid and the college president – it’s a holiday tradition at Eckerd.

So, what do you think?
Have you done a video holiday card this year? Share it with the rest of us by posting a comment including the name of your institution and the link to the video!

Have you watched “Reading Season, The Musical” yet?

This YouTube video was brought to my attention yesterday over Twitter via a quick post from TargetX Jeff Kallay.

As you’ve probably noticed, I always try to keep an eye on online videos produced in higher ed.
So, I watched it and immediately felt compelled to share it over Twitter:

Twitter / karinejoly: Wow, Udel has some real talent in the Admissions Office

This morning, I even got an email from a reader of the Higher Ed Experts newsletter who felt the same way and shared the link to this video.

It’s fun, under-5-minute long and is a great behind-the-scene look at the work done in an Admissions office at this time of the year – which is probably why it’s resonating so much within the community with more than 3,000 views on YouTube at the time of this writing.

That’s why I emailed Avi Amon, the UDel Admissions Counselor behind this video to ask a few questions about it.

1) Why did you decide to create this video? What is its target audience?

It’s an idea I’ve been toying around with for awhile, honestly. It’s always been a dream of mine to pursue composition full-time and/or write musical theater. I’m currently taking composition classes at Delaware in addition to working full time. I figured that creating this video was a perfect way to combine these segments of my life! My colleage and co-lyricist/performer, Drew, was an immeasurable help during the whole process.

While the primary target audience is definitely other college admissions counselors and high school guidance counselors, I think the humor and concept is broadly appealing. Students and parents have also left us very wonderful comments!

2) How did you produce it? How long did it take?

We actually have quite a bit of A/V equipment in our office for other marketing purposes. We’re in the process of making videos for all of our majors on campus to better educate and engage prospective (and undecided) students. I’ve learned that the key to good video is good audio, so we took care of that in my roommate’s mini-recording studio (which happens to be in our living room!) The video was shot on one of the office’s HD cameras and we edited it all down using Final Cut Pro at the University of Delaware Library. It took a weekend to plan, shoot, edit, and execute.

3) Was it a side project or something meant to be part of UDel recruitment strategy?

Definitely a side project. Drew and I had to come up with a short activity for our annual staff retreat and this is what happened! That being said, if the project continues – which I plan on – and other videos are made, it could definitely be used as a part of a grander University of Delaware recruitment push.

4) What kind of feedback did you get so far?

People have been LOVING it! And not just on campus either. It’s received some national attention from NACAC, TargetX, and plenty of other admissions offices around the country. We’re at 3000 hits and it’s only been 3 days since we published it!

I also think that the recent success of Glee (one of my favorite shows on TV) on FOX has contributed to our viewership. America is a very ‘musical’ place right now so it seems like the right climate for a project like this.

My latest UB column is now available in the November/December issue as well as online: “How to YouTube with Success: Six tips for optimizing online videos”

Here are the 6 tips:
1. Get listed on YouTube EDU.
2. Make videos that are easy to share.
3. Choose keyword-rich titles, descriptions, and tags for the videos.
4. Produce context-rich videos.
5. Don’t ignore your most fervent video fans—and critics.
6. Add closed-captioning.

University Business: How to YouTube with Success

I wrote this column a couple of months ago, after writing this post on how closed captioning can make a big difference but long before YouTube made an important announcement about new features using speech recognition on November 19: auto-timing and auto-captions.

Auto-timing will automatically synchronize your text-transcript with your videos.

Auto-caps will do ALL the work and is already used by several institutions such as UC Berkeley, Stanford, MIT, Yale, UCLA, Duke, UCTV, Columbia, etc.

You can find out more about these features by watching this video from YouTube:

BTW, if you are a University Business reader who has just discovered collegewebeditor.com, welcome! Don’t forget to subscribe to this blog via RSS or email.

It looks like the incredible success of the lipdub produced by students from UQAM in Montreal, QC (more than 2.5 million views as of this writing) has pushed some institutions in the US to finally join the university lipdub movement.

Texas State University in San Marcos did its lipdub on November 8th in the LBJ Students Center with about 30 students. Lisa Duncan, University Marketing videographer was behind the camera.

Twitter / kymfox: @TXSt students are doing a lipdub

The lipdub is available on Vimeo:

Texas State University – San Marcos Lipdub

There is also an interesting making of produced by the University Star, the student newspaper, on YouTube:

At the other side of the country, in Boston, Suffolk University students got their lipdub done on November 11th with about 50 of them and the help of the university communications office. They used a mash-up of songs from Queen for the music – a first for University lipdubs.

Jessica Krywosa, director of Web Communications at Suffolk, shared the link to this lipdub yesterday over Twitter and was kind enough to answer a few questions about it via email.

Twitter / Jessica Krywosa: Suffolk University Lip Dub …

1) How did the Office of University Communications work with student organizations? Did the students have full creative control?

We reached out through the student activities office on campus who worked with student groups to find interested parties. We also reached out via Facebook and Twitter to any student on campus. There was combined control: students had input on everything from the song chosen to the choreography and characters.

2) How many students took part in the lipdub and how long did the project take?
50 students and staff members participated. It took 6 weeks of work and 4 hours of work. It was shot on November 11th in three takes.

3) Why did the Office of University Communications decide to support the project and host it on its YouTube channel – which is a first?

The Comm office is the centralized office for all university social media efforts. We drive the strategy for the university brand in all instances, including online. The Comm office created an integrated social media strategy and therefore uses ‘their’ channels as the ‘Official University’ channels. We do not own the channel from an office standpoint but as a repository for collaboration: we channel all university video content there for greater reach. Same for our Flickr, Facebook and Twitter accounts, instead of segmenting it as ‘our’ office channel, we created it for everyone to supply content to and create a community around.

4) What is your take on the issue of copyright for the music? Is it the reason why you used a “mash-up”?

What we produced is a mash-up and we hope that it produces a greater interest in Queen and in Suffolk University but we certainly understand the limitations of the digital millennium copyright act. We could be asked to remove it. We aren’t charging for this content or using it for commercial purposes. As with all of the university lip dubs, they used copyrighted music (Black Eyed Peas, Thriller, etc) and are still on YouTube today.

While doing my research yesterday on YouTube, I stumbled upon the following 4 new university lipdubs of interest produced in the past few weeks in Japan (as an homage to the one done by UQAM students), in Quebec and in South Africa.

This year, several institutions have chosen to produce special videos to welcome freshmen on campus.

I’ve already written about “It’s Your Turn” from Missouri S&T, but today I’d like to share the video from Imperial College London in the UK.

At 3 minutes and 36 seconds, this video does a great job at presenting the institution, its history (that part actually is reminiscent of Missouri S&T video’s treatment), its academic programs, facilities and even main research projects.

So, just take the time to watch it, it’s really worth it.

This video was created and produced by Pamela Agar’s team at Imperial College. Pamela and her team members answered the following questions to give you a behind-the-scenes look.

1) What are the goal and target audience of this video? Why did you choose a video to reach this target audience?

At the start of each academic year, all new students attend presentations on their first day where senior staff and student representatives welcome them to Imperial and introduce the College. The staff involved in these presentations felt that they could be more fun and engaging, and so we were asked to produce a short film to open the presentations in an informative but unusual way.

We didn’t need to “sell” Imperial’s facilities to this audience of Freshers (Karine’s note: freshmen as we would say in the US) – they’ve already made the decision to come. So the film was much more about instilling a feeling of pride in our new students. We wanted to grab their attention and make them feel excited about the institution they are now part of. The scope of the film was vast – we were asked to try and cover the College’s history, past and present achievements and what new students can expect – all in less than four minutes! But using video and animation meant we could cover a lot visually as well as using the script.

2) How long did it take you to produce the video from start to finish? Can you describe a bit what kind of effort went into it?

From start to finish, we produced this in 2 weeks. After several initial brainstorms about how to approach the project, it took a couple of days to write and rewrite the script until it was short enough, without losing the desired content and messages. We also spent a day lining up the locations on campus, writing up the filming schedule and ensuring we had three students to star in the films – we used students in the College’s drama society. The film shoot itself took 1 day, and the video production team of two spent 3-4 days in post production. Our web designer developed the intro and in-video gfx and sound over 5-6 days.

In all, five people worked on the project – although not full time over the two weeks.

3) What tools (software, camera, etc.) did you use to create this video?

For the film elements, we used a Sony DVCAM and edited using Media100. Our web designer produced the graphics in Photoshop and Illustrator. The animations were programmed in Flash, exported as mov with embedded alpha channel. The “large” animation of the zooming map was done in After Effects. Sounds were then edited in WaveLab. All elements were assembled in Premiere and exported as one large mov.

4) Any interesting lessons learned in this project you’d like to share with the community?

I asked around the team about this question and one thing they said was that they found that Flash is a great tool for programming animations. The code can be easily re-used for any kind of object which in turn speeds up the production process when having to create loads of animations that follow the same pattern. And a technical thing they reported was that exporting from Flash with embedded alpha channel only works if the file format is QuickTime.

On a more general level, my (very obvious) lesson is don’t leave things to the last minute! We had a very busy summer producing a number of other projects, so left producing this Start of Session video until just a couple of weeks before the deadline. Leaving it until during the Summer vacation also meant it was harder to find students to star in the film as most were away from campus – we were very lucky we managed to find a great trio.

We didn’t leave much contingency time in case things went wrong, and so when our web designer came down with flu just as he was about to start work on the graphics almost ruined the project. Thankfully he managed to complete the project from his sick bed – that’s dedication!

This is one of these posts I have to write as soon as possible.

I was working on my weekly newsletter when I checked very quickly Twitter and saw this tweet from Mike Richwalsky about an online video:

Twitter / Mike Richwalsky: Great 1-take video from UQAM. Great coordination + shooting.

Mike knows online videos, so I checked it out and you should too (if you haven’t already seen it on CNN):

It’s a great 1-take 4-minute video that was produced in just 2 hours and 15 minutes.
Really great work with close to 200,000 views on YouTube at the time of this writing.

But, it’s actually more than another silly – yet successful – student video.

It’s the ultimate energizing campus (more like building in this case) tour video with class rooms, labs, cafeteria, commons, etc. And, it’s part of a student-led project started in Germany, University LipDub, inviting students to produce this kind of videos to showcase their institutions, students and even faculty members… just for fun.

What is lip dub? » University LipDub – What do you do after studying?

I’ve watched a few of these videos and it really looks like this is a non-US trend started in Germany, picked up in other European countries – widely in France – and currently catching up in Canada, especially in Quebec, the French-speaking province.

Here’s a playlist including 18 videos:

After watching a few, I can’t help but think that there’s something to be done to get more of these produced in the US.

What a great project to suggest to your students and an innovative way to present your institution!
What do you think?