How to Manage an In-House Videographer At Your College
By John Azoni, founder of Unveild— a video production company for higher education.
TL;DR: Give your videographer a real gear budget, get them into classrooms and labs, build a shared b-roll library, and set priorities for the next six months. Their biggest advantage is being on campus when real academic life is happening. Make sure the job uses that.
Hiring a campus videographer gives you something an outside production team can’t easily replicate: someone who’s there when a class gets interesting, a lab is running, or a student does something worth capturing.
So how do you make sure that person’s time is going toward the work you actually hired them to do? Start with these four things.
1. Give them a gear budget
If you’re bringing video production in-house for the first time, your new videographer probably doesn’t have the equipment they need yet.
“But we already have a GoPro, so we’re good, right?”
If you’re making the occasional social clip, maybe. But that’s probably not the whole reason you hired a dedicated videographer.
Set aside at least $5,000 for gear. That gives them room to build a useful kit without trying to buy every shiny thing at once. They’ll likely need a camera setup, lenses, audio gear, lighting, batteries, storage, and all the little pieces that somehow add up (the camera bag is never the end of the shopping list).
You also don’t need to buy the most expensive version of everything. For the kinds of videos most colleges make, a $500 lens can do the job beautifully. A $2,500 lens might be great, too, but the price tag alone doesn’t make it the right choice.
If you hired a competent videographer, trust them to make the gear decisions. Give them the budget and ask them to explain what they’re buying and why. And if you want a second opinion, I’m happy to help.
A GoPro isn’t a production plan.
2. Get them into classes and labs
Your videographer should be filming the academic experience early and often. Classroom and lab footage is gold, and there are probably great moments happening right under your nose every week.
An outside video crew can capture a lot. But when they’re on campus for a day or two, they may have to stage a lab scene because the actual lab isn’t running during the shoot. Your in-house videographer can show up when the real thing is happening.
That’s a huge advantage. Don’t waste it on a calendar full of generic event coverage.
Start by building relationships with faculty and department staff. Ask what happens in their classes, when the most visual parts of a course take place, and what students are working on this semester. Then make it easy to schedule a shoot. A little planning can turn “we should film that sometime” into footage you can actually use.
I’d make it a long-term goal to film a class or lab with every professor. You don’t have to do it all in a month. Just keep the list moving.
The best classroom footage usually can’t be recreated later.
3. Build a b-roll library people can actually use
Your videographer should be building a comprehensive b-roll library and keeping it organized somewhere the rest of campus can access.
Don’t let the system live in one person’s memory or on a hard drive named “New Folder 7.” Organize clips so people can find them by subject, location, program, or date. Add basic labels and notes where they’ll help. Make sure the right people know where the library lives and how to request footage.
This helps your own team move faster. It also gives outside vendors useful footage to work with when they can’t film every detail themselves. If you bring in a production company for a campaign, they can use your existing campus footage to fill gaps. That can save shoot time and may bring down the quote.
A b-roll library only helps if people can find the footage.
4. Define the work before someone else does
If you don’t define your videographer’s priorities, someone else will.
Reactive video-making eats up time and budget. Having a videographer on campus doesn’t mean they need to drop everything for every event, ribbon cutting, and last-minute request that comes their way. Some events are worth filming. Plenty don’t connect to enrollment goals or brand awareness in a meaningful way.
Decide what needs to be made over the next six months. Then map out when the work will happen, who needs to be involved, and what each video is meant to do. Maybe that means student stories for a program page, lab footage for paid social, or a set of short videos admissions counselors can share with admits.
You’ll still get surprise requests. A clear plan gives you a way to sort them. Does this support a priority? Is there a real audience for it? What work would need to move if your videographer takes it on?
That makes it easier to say yes to the right work, and no to the requests that would pull them away from it.
A videographer needs priorities as much as they need a camera.
Give the role room to work
A campus videographer can capture things an outside crew may never see: the actual class, the real lab, the small moments that make a program feel like itself. That advantage only shows up when the person has access, useful equipment, an organized place to put the work, and a plan for what matters.
Give them those things, and you’ll get a lot more than event footage.
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