Scene Selection
When first starting out, we had an extremely long list of scenes that we felt best described the University of Michigan. After the first round of peer reviews, we realized that most of the scenes we had chosen fell along the lines of our favorite memories as seniors. We had to take a step back and reconsider the fact that our audience probably knows nothing about the city of Ann Arbor; we had to serve as more of an introduction for them.
Additionally, we ran into the issue of filming acess pretty early on. Apparently, there are many places throughout the University that do not allow filming of any kind. We learned this the hard way, as we carried our bulky filming equipment into the UMMA on a freezing cold day only to be sent away, discouraged and without any footage. In order to solve this problem, we chose scenes that were more "public" areas; places thatwe didn't necessarily have to ask for permission to film.
Professionalism
As mentioned above, professionalism was one of our most important goals in the beginning. We wanted our video to be something of such high caliber that the University would actually consider using it. However, we soon realized that we needed to crowdsource a bit in order to gain scenes that varied from the dull, grey weather outside. This meant including some iPhone footage, which we originally assumed would compromise the quality.
When meeting with Paul, he urged us to, again, think about our audience. This video was meant to be for students, by students. We realized that we were able to incorporate different types of organic footage, and still create a product we were immensely proud of.
Collaboration
One thing that made our project so unique was the fact that there were two of us working on it. Between carrying the equipment around campus, setting up shots, and editing the footage, there was never a time when we doubted our need for a partner. Having someone to bounce ideas off of and challenge my stylistic choices was continuously thought-provoking and rewarding.
The Making of "Welcome HoMe"
When we first set out to create a promotional video for the University, we had our prospective marketing careers in mind. After both acknowledging a lack of student-generated welcome materials, we wanted to solve this problem by reaching out directly to new students and showing them why this school is so great. We thought that collaboration would be something very prominant in our futures, and decided to work together in order to bring the project to the next level. Although our original goal was professionalism, we hit a couple of bumps along the way, and our project shifted drastically into something fairly different.
Style
We chose a tone that was both lighthearted, but powerful. We wanted the incoming atudents to feel welcomed into their new student community (we do have some fun here), but we also needed them to recognize how special they are to have been accepted here. Our music was chosen based on its cheerful beat, and we tried to include as many "sunny day" scenes as possible -- especially since most incoming students only ever hear about our awful weather.
One of the surprisingly challenging aspects was the script. Although it is short, word choice and tone were of utmost importance with this project. Abigail and I spent hours contemplating over small sentences, content on not going to bed until we said exactly what we needed to say. Click the picture on the left for a larger view of the final product!
