Since my post about the holiday card of the University of Maryland got picked up by the Chronicle of Higher Education’s Campus Wired blog last week, I’ve received a few interesting pitches and links from universities and colleges (please, keep the good stuff coming) related to their web videos.
This morning, Colin Fast, Communications Coordinator at Red River College of Applied Arts, Science & Technology as well as a regular reader of this blog emailed me a great pitch about his institution holiday video card:
I know Maryland beat us to the punch this year, but I thought I’d pass along the link to Red River College’s holiday video card as well: www.rrc.ca/holidaycard
It starts out on our executive floor as a parody of “The Officeâ€, then segues into a zany montage of clips of our President pulling an all-nighter to get all the College holiday cards out on time.
We’re quite proud of the finished video, and had a lot of fun with the production. I thought your readers might enjoy it as well.
Actually, I had already watched the 4-minute video (via FG Gaylor’s blog) and really liked it. It’s a tiny bit too long, but this college president, Jeff Zabudsky, is really amazing (he can even do push-ups while eating donuts).
Anyway, since I liked the video so much, I asked Colin a few questions about the kind of work behind it.
How long did it take you to produce the video?
Actually the part that took the longest was coming up with a concept in the first place. We must have tossed out a dozen different ideas before landing on this one. The final video took about a week to produce in total. All the shooting was done in a little over a day, and the editing process, creation of the mini-site and final approval was about four days.
How do you plan to promote it besides YouTube? Via email? With a link from your homepage?
Yes, we’re using a promo banner on our homepage, we’ve added the video to YouTube and it’s going up on our Facebook page. As the e-card is actually a replacement for our traditional paper card (more green, cost-efficient), we’ve also built an HTML email template for all our departments to use in sending out a link to their contacts. We’re also going to try and get some local press coverage, as this approach is a bit unique for our market. Finally, I’ll be sharing with the higher ed community through Twitter and blogs such as yours.
How did you convince your president to do it?
Our president, Jeff Zabudsky, was great to work with on this. He had a blast and didn’t hesitate to do anything we asked. He was really keen on developing a fun card concept and realized he might have to ham it up a bit for that to happen. Our other executives were very cooperative as well.
I actually have to give credit to the “web dudes†over at Eckerd College for giving us the inspiration for the holiday video in the first place. Their fantastic e-card from last year made the rounds of our executives and helped open them up to trying something new.
Nice job on the video, Colin and Co. I wonder how it has been received by different audiences? Has anyone complained about not getting a “real” holiday card?
How did they get the rights to the music?