#114 - Emmy-Nominated Faculty Videos: How Sewanee Amplified The Academic Experience
Featuring Bobby Silk
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SHOW NOTES
My guest today is Bobby Silk, communication and content strategist in the marketing and communications office at Sewanee: The University of the South. Bobby joined the show to walk through Inquiring Minds, a faculty spotlight video series that went on to earn a regional Emmy nomination — produced on a shoestring, unbudgeted line item of roughly $1,250–$1,500 per video.
Bobby and his small, wear-a-lot-of-hats team (one videographer running two cameras and sound, one editor doing double duty as that same videographer, and an outside animator) pulled off ten faculty videos in three shoot days over winter break, all in a single repurposed campus ballroom basement — accidental purple curtains and all. The conversation covers how they picked faculty, how they framed the ask so it didn't feel like homework, why one location saved the whole budget, and the surprisingly long tail of places these videos have ended up living — from admissions campaigns to a required first-year course.
In this episode:
Why the series went straight-to-camera and personality-forward instead of traditional documentary style, and how that decision got made
How to pitch faculty participation so it doesn't sound like "give us your conference presentation"
The case for one location, one setup, and why that's what actually makes budget video work
How an animator can solve the "we don't have footage of this" problem for historical or abstract topics
Why "views" is the wrong first metric, and what Bobby looks at instead
The unplanned afterlife of this series: newsletters, bio pages, anti-melt campaigns, and a required first-year seminar
Why chasing a $50,000 budget isn't the same as chasing quality — and what Sewanee proved by doing the opposite
Resources mentioned:
Inquiring Minds video series: https://new.sewanee.edu/inquiring-minds/
"How a Diva Made History" (Cecilia Cerja on Josephine Baker): https://new.sewanee.edu/inquiring-minds/how-a-diva-made-history/
"The Mathematics of Aviation" (Catherine Cavagnaro): https://new.sewanee.edu/inquiring-minds/mathematics-aviation/
Rafa documentary (Netflix) — mentioned as Bobby's off-topic "nerding out" pick, no direct link available; searchable on Netflix
Wistia's "One, Ten, One Hundred" Soapbox launch documentary
Leigh Burmesch (Animator): https://leighburmesch.com/
Stephen Garrett (Videographer): https://slgarrett.com/about
Connect with Bobby:
Email: rjsilk@sewanee.edu
Connect with John:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnazoni
Email: john@unveild.tv
Website: https://unveild.tv
Newsletter: https://unveild.tv/newsletter
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(Done with AI so only about 95% accurate)
00;00;00;13 - 00;00;22;20
John Azoni
In today's episode, we're talking top of funnel video content and in particular a series from our friends at Sony called Inquiring Minds. If you want a great example of how to get faculty in front of the camera talking about stuff that they just naturally nerd out about. Do yourself a favor. Go to YouTube and search inquiring minds, Sony or something like that.
00;00;22;21 - 00;00;41;29
John Azoni
I don't have to tell you how to search the internet, but worth knowing though, is that their YouTube channel is University of the South because they're so cool and they have two names or check to the description of this episode because we'll have links. But we are joined by the one and only Bobby Silk. Student Success Communications and content strategist at Sony.
00;00;41;29 - 00;01;03;09
John Azoni
And he was the producer of this series. And he's going to tell you all about why they pursued this series, how they got faculty to enthuse, theatrically participate, how they're distributing it. And small schools will appreciate this, how they did it with a very slim budget. As outsourcing video production goes. So let's do it. Well, Bobby, welcome to the show.
00;01;03;25 - 00;01;04;26
Bobby Silk
Thank you so much, John.
00;01;05;14 - 00;01;11;19
John Azoni
Super great to have you. So tell me something that you've been been nerding out about lately, work related or not.
00;01;12;04 - 00;01;53;06
Bobby Silk
Decidedly not work related. So I think I'm a big professional tennis fan. So ATP, WTA, Tennis in summer is the great season for those of us. If that's true for that, you have the French Open at the beginning of the summer, Wimbledon. That kind of encapsulates the 4th of July midsummer. And I just caught up in like over the last week, Netflix has a documentary that had clearly been many years in the making about Rafael Nadal with kind of a shocking amount of access following really his final year on the tour, which, if you're familiar with tennis for one of the most legendary players of all time, was a particularly unsuccessful year due to injury
00;01;53;06 - 00;02;16;24
Bobby Silk
and other kinds of stuff. And I am not typically a sports documentary person, but found this incredibly moving, incredibly well done, full of all of those weird little quirky moments that you hope these subjects will let you see and usually don't like. Highlight for me, absolutely is watching this legendary athlete sing along to Lady Gaga while he's getting his post-match massage.
00;02;16;24 - 00;02;34;08
Bobby Silk
I've been watching this man play tennis since I was in high school, and then no world did I envision that as an experience that we'd have with him. So that has been a fun like post Wimbledon post World Cup come down, lots to get to, to still spend some some time in that space. Highly recommend the documentary. It's called Rafa.
00;02;34;18 - 00;02;37;20
Bobby Silk
Available on Netflix if you're so inclined. Yeah.
00;02;37;28 - 00;02;54;16
John Azoni
Okay, great. Because I watched a different tennis documentary and I can't remember what it was. I feel like it followed around. It was several years ago. Followed around a few different players, including like one of the main characters was that guy that I can't remember his name that gets really mad and he's like, throws big fits. Maybe that's multiple players, but.
00;02;54;27 - 00;03;02;29
Bobby Silk
There are probably a few. But I think, yeah, I think I know what you're talking about. I think you're talking about Daniil Medvedev, Russian player but if not.
00;03;02;29 - 00;03;04;00
John Azoni
Could be fits.
00;03;04;00 - 00;03;04;12
Bobby Silk
The bill.
00;03;06;00 - 00;03;24;24
John Azoni
Yeah. So we go up to northern Michigan every 4th of July and my step mom is very into tennis. So Wimbledon is always on the TV on the main floor there, and she gets very protective over the tennis watching space. My kids will come in and be like, can we watch like, you know, pot patrol or something like that?
00;03;24;24 - 00;03;29;18
John Azoni
And she's like, No, go downstairs, watch whatever you want downstairs. We're watching tennis up here.
00;03;30;06 - 00;03;41;20
Bobby Silk
We go to Michigan every summer ourselves, usually the French Open week. So you are describing me during the French Open week in what the morning viewing has to be thanks to that time change for sure.
00;03;42;09 - 00;03;52;05
John Azoni
Well, great. Awesome. So give us a quick lay of the land. What's your role at Sony? Who's on your team? What does your content operation actually look like day to day?
00;03;52;19 - 00;04;11;17
Bobby Silk
Totally. So I am a it's technically a communication and content strategist in the marketing and communications office at Sony. And so really that and I'm sure this will resonate with a lot of people who have similar job titles that's a I'm going to describe it as an organized chaos that the day to day is chasing down a number of different things.
00;04;11;17 - 00;04;32;28
Bobby Silk
But kind of starting organizationally, we're not a huge office because we're not a huge school. We have our VP of Marketing and Communications who is steering the ship and then kind of a flat organization beyond that with everybody, as you'll hear, because I think it's kind of fun to talk through having their title and then the implied title that goes along with everything.
00;04;32;28 - 00;04;59;03
Bobby Silk
So we have a director of design who does all of the graphic design work, both for print pieces and for quite a bit of our our video type content. We have our director of publications who edits an astonishing amount of publications and everything that comes out, but also provides the editorial direction for our social media platforms. And in addition to that, because we don't have a staff photographer, he is our photographer for, for a campus basis type things.
00;04;59;19 - 00;05;22;13
Bobby Silk
We have our webmaster since we're all sort of also maintaining the university website and number of web pages. But his also is that when we are not working with outside videographers, he is our videographer, so he will operate the camera and often do the editing on the in-house stuff that we do, which is not traditional for your webmaster, but is how we operate.
00;05;22;13 - 00;05;44;02
Bobby Silk
And then we have myself and my colleague Peter Phillips, who are our at the communications and content strategist level. And so we are kind of splitting roughly responsibilities kind of by topic, but also a little bit by format. So I tend to do a lot of the writing for the university, but also our longer form and higher production video.
00;05;44;17 - 00;06;11;03
Bobby Silk
Peter works in more so the Tik-Tok Instagram, real social media space and working with students on user generated content. But we cross-pollinate all the time and do so a little bit as well with our connection to the rest of the university. So we sometimes kind of operate in a little bit of an agency model where we have some verticals with the parts or the constituent departments of the university that we support.
00;06;11;17 - 00;06;33;25
Bobby Silk
So I provide communication support to most of the student success functions at the university. Peter does so for admissions and we both kind of contribute to advancement development in that kind of area. When it comes to the student success part, the other half of my job is providing support to their needs, but also pulling stories and story subjects kind of back.
00;06;33;25 - 00;07;00;12
Bobby Silk
For us to be able to feed the content needs for social media, for admissions pieces, for for everything else that's going on. So we start the year this time each summer, planning out kind of what big projects we want to budget for and we work towards those while then also being responsive to all the weird, unpredictable stuff that is worth shouting about and chasing it down and getting out there to be able to highlight.
00;07;00;12 - 00;07;06;09
Bobby Silk
So I'm certain I've gone into more detail than you were expecting, but that's the end as it is. Yeah.
00;07;06;19 - 00;07;27;12
John Azoni
Well, it's funny because I feel like a bad hire in Higher Ed is someone that's very niche in their talents. Like having range is, you know, there's this debate of like is it better to be specialized in something or to be have a broad set of expertise and I'm very much like, you know, I wear a lot of hats and I have to know how to do a lot of stuff.
00;07;27;19 - 00;07;34;21
John Azoni
And then that's what I'm comfortable with. I mean, it seems like you guys have that going on, too, where it's maybe for better or for worse, where you guys have a lot of range.
00;07;35;24 - 00;07;53;13
Bobby Silk
Yeah. I mean, and it's funny that you say the thing about wearing a lot of hats because that is the time worn cliche about the small college or the liberal arts college that everybody is doing a bunch of different things. But I think it is exciting. It just means that your fingers are in a lot of pies. You know, I came to this field through the student affairs side of higher ed.
00;07;53;13 - 00;08;17;05
Bobby Silk
So my background is not in marketing or journalism, but my background is very much in Suwanee. And so I take in that in that has said a lot of how I talk to students, how I talk to faculty, preexisting relationships and whatnot that you bring into the work. So I am learning. And as we talk about this project, you'll see the ways I learned how to make a video while doing it and learning the technical bits on all of that.
00;08;17;12 - 00;08;29;01
Bobby Silk
But I do know the school, you know, and I know students and I know that stuff really well. So it's all of our different hats. Some hats are more comfortable than others to continue the metaphor, but that they all have a connection point somewhere in there.
00;08;29;11 - 00;08;50;03
John Azoni
Yeah, well, you've done a good job managing a cool video project, and that's what we're talking about today, are talking about the Inquiring Minds series. So, you know, in case someone's just listening to this and maybe hasn't watched any of the examples or that will put in the description of, you know, a few of these pieces describe what this series is in audio terms for people.
00;08;50;19 - 00;09;19;29
Bobby Silk
Totally, totally. Because I'm excited about it and glad that you were excited about it. So this was a video series that we put together to spotlight a selection of university faculty kind of very much in their zone, if you will. And so this the idea was to sit down with ultimately, I think we produce ten of these episodes, but with one faculty member per episode, more or less have a conversation that starts from a similar point to how you and I started talking today.
00;09;20;07 - 00;09;40;28
Bobby Silk
We didn't literally ask, What are you nerding out about? But we wanted to know what are they passionate about? What has captured their interest? What are the kinds of things that they could talk about for hours if we would let them and turn a camera on for it to be able to showcase our faculty doing what is, you know, one of among their many functions at a liberal arts college.
00;09;40;28 - 00;10;02;11
Bobby Silk
At the core is teaching is educating, is inspiring others. And we wanted to be able to capture that and share that more broadly and give a sense of who you learn from here and what that feels like. And so through the series, each episode focuses on one professor who we gave quite a bit of leeway to to take us on a journey where they wanted.
00;10;02;20 - 00;10;22;24
Bobby Silk
And over the course of 4 minutes, they kind of bring us to that topic in a very personality forward way, bring up some questions for thought and just kind of leave you hopefully wanting to know a little bit more about what has in an academic sense like activated them and turned them on so much. That's I think the nutshell is how I'd put it.
00;10;23;08 - 00;10;48;02
John Azoni
Yeah. And so you have kind of a consistent set every time, you know, a professor looking directly into camera and just delivering this content. And you got a lot of interesting topics on the playlist here. And you've got one that seeing ourselves in the ancient world and then you got one. That's how a diva made history. Or what is a lighting designer do or why amphibians are superhero just related topics, but also kind of like off the beaten path.
00;10;48;06 - 00;11;06;18
John Azoni
And these aren't like, Here's why you should join this school and take my class like, you know, which, nothing wrong with that, but I feel like this is a great complement to, you know, also having something that explains the program, but like, it's more like who is this person that you're going to learn from? And you know, what makes them tick?
00;11;06;24 - 00;11;11;22
John Azoni
That's what I really responded to about that. So how did this idea come about?
00;11;12;08 - 00;11;38;00
Bobby Silk
Sure. So there are two main threads that really led us this way, the first of which was a concerted desire on our end to work more with faculty, to partner more, engage more with faculty, particularly in our video content, and relatedly, be able to do more in the academic space or academic storytelling space, that this was a priority for the institution and a priority for us.
00;11;38;00 - 00;12;08;05
Bobby Silk
And so we knew going into the year that we produced this, that that was top of mind for for what can we do with our professors and how can we get them out there fed by a lot of things, fed by internal desire, you know, both with us and with our colleagues to see more of that. We had sort of or both I and Parker Oliver, our VP, spend among our many followers on LinkedIn is Matt Haimes at three, who has been very vocal about how important faculty are in serving as evangelists for your institution and representatives of it.
00;12;08;05 - 00;12;16;02
Bobby Silk
And so that was very much stuck in our mind. But the second piece that led us to walk up to this idea, this is where you make your cameo, John, is that.
00;12;16;05 - 00;12;16;29
John Azoni
Right here in.
00;12;16;29 - 00;12;45;00
Bobby Silk
The summer beforehand with Simone, we had engaged with John for a video strategy session over the summer as we were setting up our thoughts, ideas and priorities for the year. And one of the opportunities that you had identified for us was in the kind of top of the funnel space. And so thinking broadly, topical education types of content that we weren't already producing hadn't historically produced and would be the kind of thing that would provide some kind of complement or boost to where we already were.
00;12;45;00 - 00;13;05;15
Bobby Silk
And so we got into the fall and we're continuing to fill up our roster, our schedule for the year. And at some point those two threads became intertwined and that we can do we can kind of get the, you know, the proverbial two birds with one stone by combining all of this, that this is the natural opportunity to bring faculty in.
00;13;05;15 - 00;13;31;15
Bobby Silk
And then from a format standpoint that came out of creative discussions with Stephen Garrett, who was the videographer that we worked with on this project. And that's that's where we realized, okay, well, we know we want to get faculty talking. We want to be personality forward. And so it was Steven who said, okay, I know exactly that. We've got to go straight to camera, you know, rather than the kind of more traditional documentary style to be really engaging and talking right to the audience.
00;13;31;25 - 00;13;45;14
Bobby Silk
And so those pieces came after we decided for sure we're going to move forward with it. It's as casual as that. One day we said, we've got to make a choice, and then by the end of the day it was this is the choice that makes the most sense.
00;13;45;27 - 00;14;02;22
John Azoni
Cool. Yeah, I love seeing that pop up in my LinkedIn feed because we had done the strategy work and we had kind of laid out a whole kind of distribution plan and here's kind of what you guys are doing well, and here's what we can add, you know, more of into your content ecosystem. And then I didn't hear anything for a while.
00;14;02;28 - 00;14;19;08
John Azoni
And then all of a sudden this inquiring minds thing popped up and I'm like, Oh, they did it. Yes. So like someone took the advice and actually, like, ran with it because sometimes you do strategy work and then, you know, you deliver a PDF and it sits in a folder somewhere and you know, and everyone says, okay, that was great.
00;14;19;08 - 00;14;39;03
John Azoni
It was business as usual. But it was so refreshing to see you guys do something and then have it really come alive. Like it was cool. And I've actually gotten to know Stephen through that. So Stephen was your videographer? He's a Sweeney alum, lives in Chicago now. So yeah, I've gotten to know Stephen. He's shot and produced some stuff for me in our Chicago based work.
00;14;39;15 - 00;15;11;08
John Azoni
Yeah, Does great work perfect fit for something like this. So on that note, how did that execution play out? So you mentioned, you know, building the plane while flying it. What were it once you decided what to do? What were the next steps? Because particularly, I'm wondering, you know, faculty are notoriously hard to wrangle. So how did you get a lots of them to do this and do it in a way that doesn't look like I've got 10 minutes, you know, what am I talking about here?
00;15;11;08 - 00;15;11;26
John Azoni
You know?
00;15;12;10 - 00;15;38;22
Bobby Silk
No, it's a good question. And I'm happy to run with that. And throughout you'll hear me continue to sing Stephen's praises throughout everything, because he was obviously great to work with. And we continue to partner with him frequently. But really the reason that I describe the experience of doing this is like building the plane while flying. It is is a this is the first video project at this level that I ever worked on in my career.
00;15;39;01 - 00;15;53;24
Bobby Silk
I've mentioned before, this is my second career. So this was the project on which I learned all of the ins and outs or many of the ins and outs of what it takes to pull stuff off. And so all of it was a constant discovery for me. But we put it together in a really tight timeline to be able to make it work.
00;15;53;24 - 00;16;11;22
Bobby Silk
And so this was a project idea that we committed to, I think, on the Monday before Thanksgiving. And then we were up against all of the college calendar to be able to secure our participants and get things in line before we broke for the winter break. And then we were filming in the first week of January when we were back.
00;16;11;22 - 00;16;33;13
Bobby Silk
And so it was quite a compressed pre-production timeline, but we had to start with who are we going to talk to for you ask about faculty. Like that was the first pressing question among many, and we were not anticipating that it would be as easy to secure participants as as it ended up being, though I think there are a few things that need that.
00;16;33;13 - 00;16;55;02
Bobby Silk
But we relied really strongly on the relationship that we built with the Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences and the Associate Dean in our partnership with our colleague over there, or our colleagues over there in that right when we got back from Thanksgiving, we along with kind of the dean of admission and some of our staff over here, had a big brainstorming session of who are everybody that we want to start with?
00;16;55;02 - 00;17;11;25
Bobby Silk
Like who do we want to approach? Like what is out there? We knew that it was important to us that the faculty who we included be representative of the kind of broad variety, both of of disciplines in what everyone is teaching, that we didn't want to do ten math professors or ten English professors that move across the institution.
00;17;11;25 - 00;17;34;15
Bobby Silk
That way we wanted a diversity of experience level, so we wanted to include pre tenure and tenured and extremely senior faculty as well. And we also, you know, wanted to make sure that this group of faculty who we put forward feels reasonably representative of who our faculty population is overall. And so we started with a list we kind of prioritized down to hit all of those markers and what we thought.
00;17;34;24 - 00;17;54;08
Bobby Silk
And really we did have the dean of the college make the first ask, and so we provided her with kind of details. She had her sign off on the project and was able to frame it in the way of this is obviously not a job requirement for you, but is something that is great for the school, great for the college is something that I hope you'll really strongly consider.
00;17;54;17 - 00;18;25;05
Bobby Silk
And everybody said yes with three exceptions. And and those were three faculty members who were on book tours and things that made it impossible, and not because of an aversion to the projects. But I think that the other piece that has quite a bit to helping us are went a long way towards getting us that. Yes, is the nature of the ask that not just who was doing it, but what we were asking for is is not to ask that faculty were necessarily used to getting right that tell us what do you want to talk about?
00;18;25;05 - 00;18;47;29
Bobby Silk
That's going to be our starting question, not framing or putting things forward of we'd like to invite you to come in and give the scripted pitch that will tell you what to say. Right? It's a very different kind of approach. I had been concerned that what that was going to hit the faculty as was, Oh, you want me to drop a whole lecture, a whole new conference present, You know, all of these things that it teaches, Like, actually, that's not what we want to do.
00;18;47;29 - 00;19;13;07
Bobby Silk
This is the clarification that we can give, and we put that out there. And so we very quickly were able to get to our list. And in the remaining time that we had and a little bit over the winter break is where I did the pre-production work with our faculty on massaging and refining the topics so that they knew how to come prepared for our interviews and that we had some expectation on our end of what it was when we turned on the camera that we would be talking about.
00;19;13;16 - 00;19;38;10
Bobby Silk
We did not have time for traditional pre interviews, and my first take away when we finished the project was how very much I wish that I had had 30 minutes with everybody to not do a dry run, but to really get into it because what I was doing, it was kind of a there's a huge variety of ways that ideas and topics were communicated to me through faculty, but we were able to go back and forth and I can hop on the phone with a few people to help jump into it.
00;19;38;10 - 00;20;01;24
Bobby Silk
But mostly we wanted to know what realm we were in so we could do a little bit of research and come with questions, but keep it very conversational as our style with Stephen and I, knowing that we would be jumping in with questions of, you know, follow up questions and keeping it moving and not trying to go through a presentation that you would give in class and be able to draw the personality out that way.
00;20;02;08 - 00;20;26;03
Bobby Silk
So then at the same time, we had to also go through the journey that we go on every time we do a video shoot on campus and find space for it and lock down the logistics for the shoot and said this it was important knowing that we were going to kind of do this straight to camera setup that we needed to make our videographer happy, a space with a lot of depth and a lot of height to it.
00;20;26;03 - 00;20;36;01
Bobby Silk
So we wanted high ceilings, we wanted a light, you know, a very deep room in order to, you know, I guess provide and I'm sure you, John, can speak more to the technical aspect of that, but I know I.
00;20;36;01 - 00;20;42;18
John Azoni
Can do a whole episode on why you want a big room, a big open room. Don't stuff your videographer in a little conference room if you can help it.
00;20;42;27 - 00;21;05;08
Bobby Silk
And oh, yes, no. And I've seen that in your newsletter. And it's like it just kept ticking the box, like, Yep, that's exactly what I heard from Stephen. And also trying to look for a space where we would have as much control as possible over light and sound. But we also knew that in order to be effective and to shoot as many of these interviews in just three days as we could, that we wanted to do one set up.
00;21;05;08 - 00;21;28;09
Bobby Silk
So we wanted to be set in one location, have that for the duration of the shoot, and not be dealing with the additional time constraints of taking things down. At the end of the day, moving to a new location that we wanted to be able to have it and so it helped that we were a little bit on a school break that we were shooting before classes started, but we also were able to just lock into an ignored space on campus.
00;21;28;09 - 00;21;51;22
Bobby Silk
Believe it or not, the lower level of campus ballroom that had been kind of a secondary ballroom space for a little while and in the age of COVID had been converted to a makeshift, socially distanced lecture hall. And what it gave us was the leftover. Like we had the furniture in the space that could connote academia while still having some architectural features and depth needed to be able to make an interesting shot.
00;21;52;07 - 00;22;11;16
Bobby Silk
The downside. The one significant hurdle of that space was that one wall was entirely Windows, and so we did need to to work with our facilities department to get curtains in place to give us a little bit more control. The fun anecdote there is that the curtains did show up the morning of the shoot, which is when we needed them.
00;22;11;25 - 00;22;31;05
Bobby Silk
We did not know they were going to be purple. We thought, we've got black curtains, but they were purple. So if you go and actually watch through the series, there are a few who we shot in the late afternoon that have like a lovely amber violet glow happening in the back, which is purely because of the purple curtains that we unintentionally incorporated into into everything.
00;22;31;19 - 00;22;33;28
John Azoni
I'm trying to find one of those on the playlist here.
00;22;33;29 - 00;22;52;11
Bobby Silk
Yeah. I think the reading fiction in unprecedented times. The 31i know we shot her at the very end of the day and that was our first day. So after it finished, Stephen was like, Yeah, so this is what those curtains are doing. We're going to roll with it because they don't have to be exact, you know, we're not cutting them together.
00;22;52;11 - 00;22;54;22
Bobby Silk
Each video is able to kind of do its own thing.
00;22;55;11 - 00;23;05;22
John Azoni
Yeah, that's great. And one thing because I know you guys do this on a very tight budget as well. Are you comfortable talking about the budget? Because it was remarkable what you were able to do with little resources.
00;23;06;10 - 00;23;24;16
Bobby Silk
Yeah, of course. And really I think all final budgeting ends up being slightly like creative in the accounting is, is the proviso that I will put out there because we went into this project, I should say, with it as an unbudgeted project, and it was in that we added and had not formally committed to on the front end.
00;23;24;16 - 00;23;51;07
Bobby Silk
And so we were finding money to be able to pull it together. And that just is what led to our intense need to be really tight with the purse strings and very specific with the the actual execution of it. Ultimately, in the final accounting for these ten videos, I would put where we spent in the like 1250 to 1500 per video range, which again, I am learning this or I was learning this field as we got into it.
00;23;51;07 - 00;24;12;09
Bobby Silk
And one of the things that was told to me is that you can think of a rule of thumb that for really high quality video, you're probably spending at least $1,000 per minute of screen time, and these are 4 to 5 minute videos, and that was the entirety of what we spent. But that came down to two a ton of production decisions meant to streamline and spread the costs across everything.
00;24;12;09 - 00;24;43;07
Bobby Silk
And so part of what made this an unbudgeted shoot was that we were taking advantage of already bringing Stephen to campus for a different project and just extending his stay. So we were able to cover travel costs and incorporate them that way while also sticking to the single location. And Stephen was our only crew member, so Stephen ran two cameras and sound and I was there with him, you know, to do the interviews and tracked story and, and was of limited assistance to set up lights and whatnot.
00;24;43;10 - 00;25;03;18
Bobby Silk
Yeah, I was booted at that time, the broken foot. Sorry I couldn't do that kind of stuff. So that was our ragtag team that made this happen. And then Stephen was our lone editor after the fact, and we did work with an animator, Lieber Marsh, who is wonderful, and I hope in the show notes or something we can when we link to these videos, you'll see her work.
00;25;03;18 - 00;25;30;17
Bobby Silk
But that can link to that as well. But knowing that to stretch our dollar, our shoot was essentially what we could do was the interviews, right? So we did not have B-roll days or kind of additional shoot days built in. And so we needed to take advantage of subscriptions, two story blocks and five and those sorts of things to be able to again at like per video costs of 20 or $30.
00;25;30;17 - 00;25;51;25
Bobby Silk
That would help provide imagery, but also sound effects and music that would be able to pull this all together without having to go super far on a per video basis and be able to take what we had left in the budget to be able to work with kind of buying a block of our animator less time and to distribute her work across the series.
00;25;51;25 - 00;26;12;11
Bobby Silk
So she kind of knew how much she would be able to work with us. But what gave us the flexibility to identify some videos that really didn't need anything beyond the title screen and others that needed quite a bit more to be able to go into it. And that, I think, raised what is the perceived production value of these videos to have that really high quality animation happening in it.
00;26;12;18 - 00;26;16;05
Bobby Silk
But treating it as the block of ten made that effective that way?
00;26;16;05 - 00;26;45;04
John Azoni
I think yeah, from a budget perspective, that's one thing I notice. It's like, you know, for people listening, the big ways that colleges spend more money on a video is having unique locations for every person. So you're having to take the time to, you know, when we roll up with gear and we got to unpack everything at least an hour and a half to set everything up, light the interview, get everything ready, and then when you tear that down and you move somewhere else, now you got to spend that time again.
00;26;45;15 - 00;27;08;25
John Azoni
So, yeah, I mean, keeping everyone in one spot, same frame. You have kind of a series that's just working for you. You're just saying we're going to live in this environment visually. And from the videos that I've seen, not following them around trying to film like this narrative B-roll, not trying to fake them, working at their desk or anything like that, but just leaning in to like the interview is what you get.
00;27;09;09 - 00;27;34;17
John Azoni
Here's some extra visuals to, you know, to kind of make this come alive. But like the main event is the interview and it's just the thoughts coming out on camera. I think we overcomplicate video too much, too, where we try to make it too much about making this like cinematic documentary, these moments, and then they end up like when I watch people's videos, sometimes I'm just like, I know that you faked that and it feels really fake, you know?
00;27;34;17 - 00;27;55;14
John Azoni
So sometimes it's refreshing to just like, I just want to listen to an interesting person talk. I don't need you to dress this up with, you know, them typing at their computer or, you know, pointing at a whiteboard or anything. So yeah. And you were able to save quite a bit of money by doing that because yeah, when you keep everyone in one location, you keep one set up and you just cycle people through.
00;27;55;23 - 00;28;18;16
John Azoni
Personally, that's my favorite because now we can just focus on the content and the conversation. Having a natural conversation. We're not. Every time you move the gear now you have new production problems that sometimes you don't realize until you're a third of the way into the conversation. You're like, Oh, shoot, the sun's coming in this window now. And I'm like, distracted trying to interview this person and also worrying about how is my editor going to fix that, you know?
00;28;19;07 - 00;28;29;10
John Azoni
So anyway, you guys did a lot of things right in saving money, but also having that be like an asset to like it works, you know, it doesn't feel like a compromise.
00;28;29;23 - 00;28;40;27
Bobby Silk
Oh, I'm so glad to hear that. And honestly, it also I think I'm just reiterating what you said, too. But it lends the series and it lends us focus and it lets the right parts shine. And yeah, I'm glad that you picked up on that.
00;28;41;25 - 00;28;51;08
John Azoni
Well, let's unpack a couple of these specific examples. So, you know, walk us through a couple what they're talking about and kind of what, you know, the value to the viewer might be from something like that.
00;28;51;19 - 00;29;17;04
Bobby Silk
Totally. So one of the first ones that I wanted to talk about is called How a Diva Made History. And I know you've read that title on this episode already, but that's Professor Cecilia Sergio, who is a professor here that teaches in both politics and women's and gender studies. And the topic of her video was Josephine Baker, who was a kind of early 1900s pre World War Two, but extending up to the 1960s.
00;29;17;04 - 00;29;46;16
Bobby Silk
She was a vaudeville dancer, civil rights leader in America, but also abroad. And I think perhaps most interestingly, an allied spy during World War Two. And so just an incredibly dynamic figure from all of those different angles. And this video topic, Cecilia, is not a Josephine Baker scholar per se, but she does study pop culture. She studies figures and particularly women political figures and entertainers who are also activists.
00;29;46;16 - 00;30;24;11
Bobby Silk
And so this came out of kind of one section of a course on historical divas that she teaches, you know, addition to Beyonce and kind of others that that form the basis of that. And I think it really from a topical standpoint is such a great display of like what kind of one time, you know, with one unit with this professor what it might look like, but also can be a little bit of shaking up if they're existing and these stuffy ideas about what a traditional liberal arts college study looks and feels like that this is really relevant and really kind of exciting and dynamic ways of talking about these kinds of topics.
00;30;24;17 - 00;30;46;04
Bobby Silk
What I love about this video is that this was one that we put quite a bit of our animator Leigh's time on because we're talking about a historical figure for whom a lot of the most interesting aspects of of her life are not recorded on camera or on video and left us with some kind of quandaries about how do we because we're talking about a specific famous person, how can we visualize this?
00;30;46;13 - 00;31;16;19
Bobby Silk
And we have some ideas of maps and kind of certain photos that we could animate. And the beauty of working with a really great animator is that they bring their ideas and their boost to lift that up. And so this is it was Lee's idea to sort of be able to show through animation one of the ways that Josephine Baker served as a spy for the Allies during World War Two is that she could as an entertainer, she was be expected to cross borders, that she needed to move between countries to be able to go to all of her spots.
00;31;16;19 - 00;31;35;26
Bobby Silk
And as an entertainer, one of the things she would need to bring with her was her sheet music. And so, B, wartime secrets were written on that sheet music in invisible ink and therefore could be smuggled across the border. And clearly liked to maintain secrecy that was never photographed or videoed. But Lee's animation was able to show that in progress.
00;31;35;26 - 00;31;55;08
Bobby Silk
And give us another way of just expanding kind of the visual language of that story. And I think that the animation there really underlines, like it adds movement to the video, but I think it also helps reflect Cecilia's personality and how you think, okay, we're talking about history. This is know could not be a more bubbly and kind of captivating speaker.
00;31;55;17 - 00;32;11;02
Bobby Silk
And I think having really kind of fun kind of cardboard cutout style animations moving that forward just continues to hammer the town home. And so that's one where I'm like, if you're going to start anywhere, start there. I think it's such a nice example of of what we're doing in the series.
00;32;11;14 - 00;32;29;04
John Azoni
Yeah, I love that. So that stuff that's fascinating to me. And as if I were going to be a grad student, you know, you want to know what the program is and is this a program that makes sense for you? But then when you want to go deeper, you want to know like, who is this professor? And like, what could I learn?
00;32;29;14 - 00;32;48;26
John Azoni
And the fact that, you know, you can watch a video for free on YouTube and learn something profound. I really think that that says a lot about the academic experience that we don't lean into enough. And I know Matt Haymes, you mentioned, you know, harps on this a lot. And him and I vibe a lot about YouTube optimization, too.
00;32;48;26 - 00;33;19;12
John Azoni
I have a episode earlier with Matt all about YouTube. So yeah, he harps on a lot of things. But yeah, one of them is a faculty participation and I think this is what makes it great. You know, it's just interesting and, you know, it's not necessarily something that's going to go viral to the general public, but for somebody that's interested in Suhani and interested in what that professor teaches, I think it's just a great way to show, not just tell what the academic experience is about.
00;33;19;17 - 00;33;37;19
Bobby Silk
Totally, totally. And I think we were hoping that one of the ways it would also allow us to do something a little different is I think it's very natural and I think there's a lot of value in we think of faculty and jump frequently, right. To tell us about your research or let's show you doing your research or report out on the research that's happening.
00;33;37;19 - 00;33;55;03
Bobby Silk
And I think that that's a really vital part of university life, but particularly at our institution, our faculty, our teachers, and they want to be teachers, you know, they want to be educating. They're engaged with students in all of these ways. And sometimes it can be hard to figure out how are we going to show that or invite people into that.
00;33;55;05 - 00;34;16;12
Bobby Silk
So this was an effort to be able to showcase that aspect of of the many roles that they are, in addition to advisors and researchers and at leading academics. And again, our premium was on personality and letting these people be their selves because they are. If you come here small college, you're going to know your faculty deeply. And many times over the years.
00;34;16;12 - 00;34;19;24
Bobby Silk
And so they are humans and so we want to present them as humans.
00;34;20;05 - 00;34;49;09
John Azoni
Yeah, that's great. The one that I saw initially was the mathematics of aviation, and that was like I was like gripped by that because it was like it felt suspenseful, you know, like, you know, she's talking about flying and I mean, a year or so ago, I watched this. I immediately remember what was about. But I remember being about, you know, we're seeing plane footage in the air and she's talking about mathematics and like, what happens when, you know, how do you get a plane to stay in the air or something like that?
00;34;49;09 - 00;34;50;03
John Azoni
Tell me about that one.
00;34;50;08 - 00;35;19;26
Bobby Silk
Absolutely. So the mathematics of aviation, our faculty speaker on that one is Katherine Carbonaro, who is the chair of mathematics and Computer Science, but is also a pilot and an aviator herself and really highly regarded one. And so one of the things that we seem to see in our research we're not aware of before we sat down with her was that for a period of time she was a world record holder for in a small plane like three spins going like a.k.a and she described it.
00;35;19;26 - 00;35;27;21
Bobby Silk
You go up as high as you can point your plane back down to the earth and just spin as many times as you can before you kick the engine back on and don't crash.
00;35;28;07 - 00;35;33;09
John Azoni
That's what it was. Yeah. The suspenseful part I remember it was something about a plane crash, but I didn't want to.
00;35;33;16 - 00;35;35;16
Bobby Silk
Yes, Yeah, yeah, yeah. But you know.
00;35;35;16 - 00;35;35;28
John Azoni
Something about.
00;35;35;28 - 00;35;55;14
Bobby Silk
That. It is a tricky thing. And she was the world record holder for quite a number of years because she is a bit of a daredevil. But that was something that once she said and we dug a little bit more into on camera, immediately stood out as, Oh, that's our intro to the video that you can't hear her tell you that and not want to find out more about what she has to say.
00;35;55;22 - 00;36;19;19
Bobby Silk
But her kind of whole story is these are her two biggest passions that she's been passionate about. Math and studying math for forever came to Swanee, where we do have an airport on campus, and she runs the kind of student pilot program here. Catherine learned to fly here and has continued to then combine those different pieces, her mathematical self, as she puts it, with her pilot self.
00;36;19;19 - 00;36;37;29
Bobby Silk
And she is well-regarded in the aviation community. And so her video has had traction beyond Suwanee because of that. If you get a pilot's license in Tennessee, there's a good chance that Katherine is the person who tests you. I have found a Reddit threads of people sharing gossip about how I've got my test with Kevin Arrow. You know, she talks, you know, what's what's going on.
00;36;37;29 - 00;36;53;26
Bobby Silk
So she's out there and she writes a monthly column for a Pilots magazine and one of the things that kind of led her to say, this is what I want to talk about, is that she would hear from pilots who go through their specific training and understand how their planes work, but aren't required to know the math behind it.
00;36;53;26 - 00;37;14;03
Bobby Silk
And Katharine's thing is that knowing the theory, but also the math for why the balance point of a plane needs to be where it is, why speed matters so much when you're making a turn. Because if you're going faster, you need more space to make a turn. So you have to adjust your speed to avoid crashes and those kinds of things that she felt like pilots were telling her.
00;37;14;12 - 00;37;35;27
Bobby Silk
Knowing that and knowing the math underpinning it absolutely makes me a better pilot, a safer pilot and whatnot. So Katherine really did sit down wanting to talk about her journey at Suwanee and specifically about where she sees flying and the liberal arts connecting. And that was parts of a very lengthy conversation that we were more so able to capture in the article that accompanies the video.
00;37;36;07 - 00;38;06;03
Bobby Silk
Because and this is what I love about mathematicians, that we're sitting there and we're having the conversation and we're talking about all these aspects of flying that we were able to ask about the mathematical concepts and she could, without pulling out a textbook, name the equations, talk us through them, give us all those pieces that help make a dynamic and interesting visual that we can have her talking through gravity and forces and turn radius, knowing that we're going to be able to illustrate that and have her voice give the practical what it means.
00;38;06;03 - 00;38;28;04
Bobby Silk
And then it was Steven's wonderful call as inspiration visually for that to pull out 1940s and fifties pilot's manuals. So like what the Army was using back then. Yeah. To give us the font style and imagery style for Lee to then animate as we brought that stuff to life. So we got to have some fun in how we presented it also.
00;38;28;14 - 00;38;38;08
John Azoni
That's great. I love it. And you mentioned a print article that goes that went with each of these. So what was talk me through your distribution strategy. How did this get rolled out?
00;38;38;18 - 00;39;00;18
Bobby Silk
Absolutely. So we started on social media knowing because we were building the plane as we were flying it, that we were going to build out the rest of the distribution as we did it. But knowing we wanted to use these as as many in as many places and in as many ways as possible. So we started by releasing the full videos on social media, including with links back to the kind of web architecture that we built around the series.
00;39;00;18 - 00;39;22;17
Bobby Silk
And so each video on our website, they live together as a collection and each have a sub page that includes more opportunities for engagement or more opportunities to explore across the Greater Suwannee dot edu web presence. But that included a written article because these are four minute videos. I think our shortest interview with a faculty member was like 45 minutes.
00;39;22;24 - 00;39;57;07
Bobby Silk
So we had really, really scintillating conversations and more areas for inquiry than we could put reasonably in one video and so this was a way to capture some other pieces of that while also being able to create links or other ways of engaging with the topic that moved out of that. Right. So one video that we haven't talked about is an English professor who was very passionate about young adult genre fiction and the ways that that genre is ripe for analysis and absolutely as worth diving into as your more, let's say, highbrow literary fiction.
00;39;57;17 - 00;40;14;03
Bobby Silk
But what came out of that video was also a recommended reading list. And so we were able, in her website to capture her book recommendations with more of her context setting for each one and give kind of other ways to engage with the topic that way. But coming back to the question that you really asked, this isn't distribution.
00;40;14;04 - 00;40;37;17
Bobby Silk
How do we get these out there? And so we started with the full length social media rollouts on Instagram and Facebook and linked. We also produced cut downs for Tik Tok that we have circulated and will probably circulate again all of these videos and we release them roughly at a cadence of about one every other week over the course of several months, which allowed us to kind of keep the content mill churning.
00;40;37;25 - 00;41;00;10
Bobby Silk
You know, from our our one shoot. But the university every month has a monthly e-newsletter that goes to all students, faculty and staff, but also all parents, all alumni and all kind of friends of Somali, if you want to call it that way, which is a 45,000 plus distribution list. And so these are were featured content pieces in those newsletters at that Cadence to keep going along.
00;41;00;19 - 00;41;23;02
Bobby Silk
And then we're kind of still working through because we're doing more work on the website, in particular our institutional website, when it comes to departmental and program pages. But the idea is that these will be incorporated into faculty bio pages and onto the departmental landing pages as well. The kind of final use that we've continued. I guess there's two more really.
00;41;23;13 - 00;41;46;27
Bobby Silk
These have been incorporated into summer anti-male campaigns through admissions, so we have more ways of keeping people entertained, informed and keeping the fires of their excitement in the tent here. Fed And then these videos kind of this was not part of the plan at all. But the university recently did roll out a newly recalled or retooled first year experience for incoming new students.
00;41;46;27 - 00;42;09;11
Bobby Silk
That includes a one credit weekly course that all first years take that is not 71 to 1, but is very much of that ilk, as other institutions have, which includes exploration and thinking about future paths, both for academic study and career. And this video series has been incorporated into the syllabus for that class to help carry out all the different ways that you can pursue these questions.
00;42;09;22 - 00;42;28;11
Bobby Silk
Whether or not you are a bio major, you know, you still have a way into to all this other kind of stuff. So that's the discovery we made about just how to get these out there. We feel really good about them. And so the underlying idea was like we put all of this time and effort and resources into creating something.
00;42;28;11 - 00;42;40;00
Bobby Silk
And and your words echo a lot in my head of like, what a shame if it's used one time in one way and forgotten about, like, this is good content. It should still be out there or be put out there.
00;42;40;10 - 00;43;02;09
John Azoni
Yeah, I had previous guests on my podcast. Ross that was we talked about Reddit when he was on. He posted it on LinkedIn. The other day and he said, you know, content marketing is a two word description. He's like, You make the content, but you also have to market the content. And he was talking about how like, you know, how so many people make a piece of content and just dies there.
00;43;02;09 - 00;43;18;23
John Azoni
They made it, they move on to the next thing. And I just thought, there's an interesting way to put it. Yeah. So we talk about content marketing, but really too often teams are focused on the content because that's the thing that's like yelling really loud. We got to get this done and then we got to post it and then it's like, okay, we did it now under the name and then the next thing.
00;43;18;23 - 00;43;49;07
John Azoni
But I love to see that you guys are finding new ways to integrate this content in your existing, you know, workflows in various touchpoints with students, because I think we underestimate how many touchpoints there are, you know, possible uses for our our marketing content. I love that you're integrating it into like classwork, you know, because it's like, you know, what a way to just get more use out of the thing that you already made from the, you know, these professors and giving them a video, you know, videos to watch that are actually engaging.
00;43;49;07 - 00;44;15;16
John Azoni
These aren't like, you know, 1980s, you know, infomercial style like corporate training videos or something like that. You know, these are modern, engaging, learning pieces. So, yeah, I love to see that. And as you've been distributing these, the question that people always want to know is what is the return on investment for something like this? You know, there are so many different ways to measure effectiveness.
00;44;15;16 - 00;44;27;09
John Azoni
I think we often go straight to, okay, well, how many views did it get? But where do you guys seeing kind of anecdotally or measurable with Italy?
00;44;27;09 - 00;44;48;09
Bobby Silk
Yeah, it's an I knew the question would be coming and again, this is me singing your praises back to you. But one of the things that I think you have been clear about is that I'm paraphrasing, but not all views are created equal. Right? And that like a raw viewership number can only say or mean so much because so much matters about who is seeing what their engagement or interaction is.
00;44;48;21 - 00;45;05;07
Bobby Silk
I think that not that I'm an expert in stepping maybe slightly out of my lane, it's really tempting or I really want to be able to point to an individual video or a video series and attribute X number of applications. You know, start at the top of the funnel, go all the way down and say, yes, and this was the thing that did it.
00;45;05;14 - 00;45;41;07
Bobby Silk
And I know that that's really an impossibility. And so it's more we have to have a couple of different measures or things that mean success about this. For us, I think we consider it a successful return on investment. A on like the quality level. And I think that that is I don't really don't want to feel like I'm tooting my own horn like gratuitously when I say that, but we're proud and that the reaction from the kind of direct feedback that we've gotten from the fact that frankly, that you noticed it and liked it, that we're aware because we've heard from provosts and senior leaders at our peer institutions who have made it known that
00;45;41;15 - 00;46;00;10
Bobby Silk
I want my school to do this, like good job. All of those things point to evidence that we were on to something here and that the idea that we had was something that we were able to execute because other people got it right. The fact that I would aim higher than zero, I look at the viewing numbers and really for the way that we traffic the use of that.
00;46;00;11 - 00;46;18;17
Bobby Silk
I think the irony is that like the YouTube view count is the lowest because we actually send actively send people to YouTube less than we do to Vimeo or social media or kind of other other ways. So I don't get hung up on it, but it has been watched in the fact that every time we do share it through a newsletter, we have these moments that that goes out right?
00;46;18;17 - 00;46;48;21
Bobby Silk
I'm like, okay, people are clicking. There are successful pieces there. I think the bigger success, not bigger, but a notable success as I look at the effort, was that this was the first or maybe the second step in walking towards our goal of greater engagement with faculty, greater incorporation of faculty, spending more time in the academic space. And so it was in a lot of ways a proof of concept that we turned out not have the the difficulty in securing faculty participation that I thought we might.
00;46;48;21 - 00;47;10;18
Bobby Silk
But we also now have for all of our future projects something really and concrete to point back to of what it means when we're inviting our colleagues in and what we say. We want to talk to you. We want to showcase your work, that we have something really high quality, really approachable and really respectful of the work that they do that then provides a trampoline for even more participation.
00;47;10;20 - 00;47;36;19
Bobby Silk
I mean, I think where we're hoping to to revisit series and extend it in the coming year, and I can only imagine that will have an even easier time and have more possibilities to be able to do that. But I don't want to underplay the the success factor of trying something new, of selling a bill of goods, you know, to all the people that have to underwrite it and being able to deliver in some ways overdeliver on it and say, we set out to do something.
00;47;36;19 - 00;47;52;23
Bobby Silk
And we did. And so that is is a piece that was us going out on a limb a little bit, even just at the top of the funnel. We weren't doing it, but now we are and we're doing it because we had to start and build the momentum somewhere. And so I think that's like built into how you evaluate whether something was worth doing.
00;47;53;01 - 00;48;12;07
John Azoni
Yeah, I know it's something that you said earlier about, you know, feeling is you don't want to be, you know, like you're bragging or something like that, but you're proud of these videos. And I think that is a very valid, measurable, like a thing to measure. Is the team proud of the production level? Does this represent the university?
00;48;12;07 - 00;48;30;25
John Azoni
Well, Because if you're not proud of it, you're going to be embarrassed on some level. You know, you're not going to share it. No one else is going to. No one else is going to share it. You're more likely to keep it hidden. You know, there are podcast episodes that I do that I don't promote as much as much as other ones because I feel like, you know, it didn't go as well as I wanted to.
00;48;30;25 - 00;49;02;03
John Azoni
And usually those are the solo episodes where it's just me blabbering into the mic and I don't feel like I articulated my thoughts very well. But one thing I've learned as a videographer and, you know, doing a lot of client working proposals and things like that and and discovery work is whenever I ask, you know, potential partner, how are they going to measure this video nine times out of ten, they don't have an answer that they've actually thought about, like they don't have like we want to get X number of applications from this video.
00;49;02;12 - 00;49;25;10
John Azoni
Really, You know, if you wading through all the various responses that we get to that question, it really, I think, comes down to we want a tool that we're proud of. So for me, I'm kind of like I've had to make peace with the fact that, like, I may never get these like case studies where it's like, Oh, we made this video for the school and they increased enrollment by 2,000% or something like that.
00;49;25;16 - 00;49;43;00
John Azoni
I'm never going to get one of those because really I'm in the business of making videos that are tools that people are proud of. And I think if, you know, if you're going to be a construction worker or you're going to do something where you need a lot of tools, like you want tools that you're proud of, that in itself is like the first step.
00;49;43;00 - 00;50;11;27
John Azoni
Like I said, I find it hilarious. All the tiktoks I get about like ryobi users, you know, Ryobi is like they make like consumer power tools versus like, you know, so you have the people in the trades that are like, you know, someone does something dumb and they're like, he probably is a ryobi user, you know? So there is something to be said about like the pride of the tools that you have and what that says about you, what that says about the university's identity.
00;50;12;04 - 00;50;33;00
John Azoni
And then when people feel that that positively represents their identity, they're likely to spread that content further. So I think we should just come out and say it that, you know, like all the beating around the bush that we do about, you know, our ally, we should just say, I want something that I'm proud of. And if we've accomplished that, we've accomplished the goal.
00;50;33;00 - 00;50;43;09
John Azoni
So now we have a tool that we can take places and be proud of what we're presenting, you know? So, yeah, I think that there's just something that comes up for me a lot, and I think it's something that we should embrace.
00;50;43;18 - 00;50;48;04
Bobby Silk
I'm right there with you. I appreciate the validation.
00;50;48;04 - 00;50;56;04
John Azoni
Yeah. So speaking of the quality of these, you guys were nominated for a pretty significant award. So tell me about that.
00;50;56;04 - 00;51;18;22
Bobby Silk
We did. We were recognized in the education and Schools category at the regional Emmy Awards for the Mid-South region, which, you know, was the I actually didn't know that that award existed. So this is why you combined with professionals. Thank you, Stephen Garrett But who you know, Stephens and this is again, kind of feeding into that idea of being proud like it meant something to me.
00;51;18;23 - 00;51;44;19
Bobby Silk
How much Steven, who has been doing this for way longer than I have, and on many other more projects that I had, certainly at that point in time, for him to look at it and say, Now we really have something here and this is this is worth sharing. And frankly, part of the impetus for her for submitting it for consideration was another way of putting the university name out there, of having more people see kind of what we're doing or what we're trying.
00;51;44;19 - 00;52;12;02
Bobby Silk
Now. And we were lucky enough for it to result in a nomination. And like a very interesting evening for me, Spence at a formal awards ceremony for an industry that I was very duly a part of that was very fun and totally, totally worth the experience. The way I can best encapsulate it is that it felt very much like going to a wedding where you don't know the bride or the groom and everyone else knows each other.
00;52;12;11 - 00;52;35;07
Bobby Silk
You're in a tux and just kind of figuring it out. But it felt kind of wonderful to be to have those who have no specific connection to the university or even necessarily a specific connection to higher ed, be able to recognize the quality of the production and the storytelling, which is what makes that series successful. So thanks for letting me brag about that part of it too.
00;52;35;09 - 00;52;56;20
John Azoni
Absolutely. And it's something to be proud of because, you know, there is an award mill kind of industry in the video industry. You have I won't name any of the specific ones, but, you know, you start getting ads for them to submit your work. And this is not one of those like this is one of the actually like people in the industry like respect, you know, the Emmys.
00;52;56;20 - 00;53;14;12
John Azoni
And, you know, they have like I think the national chapter and then they have like the regional chapters and stuff like that. I mean, even just to be nominated is a huge honor. And I think it's really, you know, says a lot about, you know, what you guys are doing and the quality of it, all of it. And I'm just amazed that you did it with such a small budget.
00;53;14;14 - 00;53;23;03
John Azoni
So I'm so impressed, you know? Yeah, it can be done. You know, let some vendor tell you, you have to spend $50,000 to get this done.
00;53;23;13 - 00;53;59;10
Bobby Silk
Yeah, it requires a ton of, like, force and determination of will. I'll be upfront about that. And frankly, probably on my end, a little bit of naivete of I didn't know that if I had more money, we could do it differently, you know. So there's also like developing the habit, but it in retrospect can see, Yeah, yeah, but I, I'm happy to talk about that aspect of it and glad that you jumped on it because I think the point that throwing more money at something is not a guarantee of what's going to come out the other side and that the core kind of principles and the core idea really do still matter.
00;53;59;10 - 00;54;02;01
Bobby Silk
And it's nice to see that, you know.
00;54;02;01 - 00;54;30;02
John Azoni
One of my favorite documentaries was put out by the staff of Wistia. Are you familiar with Wistia now? It's like Vimeo, but it's got like extra bells and whistles. You can put calls to action and stuff and it's just a little more robust a hosting platform. But the team is like they're great content creators. And years ago I was ten years ago, they put out this documentary called 110 100, and so they had a new product that they were launching.
00;54;30;07 - 00;54;53;02
John Azoni
One of the most brilliant product launches that I've ever seen. And it was basically like a predecessor to Lume, like where you can record your screen and kind of give a presentation and send that link to somebody. It was called Soapbox. And so they made a promo three different times for Soapbox. One was $1,000 budget, one was $10,000 budget and the other one was the $100,000 budget.
00;54;53;13 - 00;55;16;03
John Azoni
And you could see it like very different in quality from 1000 to 10000. But then you see like honestly, this drop off when you started getting at the $100,000 level, getting the commercial actors in there and a big crew and all the lighting and stuff like that. And the consensus was from the audience because they did this task they wanted, they had them vote.
00;55;16;03 - 00;55;40;23
John Azoni
Which one do you prefer? And almost everyone unanimously said the 10,001, because it was like it's quality, but it's not too commercial because when you start to throw more money at something now you have all this room to play with to start, you know. Yeah, like I mentioned, kind of like faking things and like, you know, trying to get extras in the shots and like kind of trying to fake this scenarios.
00;55;40;23 - 00;55;48;18
John Azoni
Whereas when you are limited to a certain constraints, then you just got to make it about the content. And I think you guys did a really great job with that.
00;55;49;02 - 00;55;51;01
Bobby Silk
Awesome. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
00;55;51;15 - 00;56;02;23
John Azoni
Well, this has been a great conversation. I've been looking forward to this one. So glad it went as well as I hoped. And this will be an episode that I promote heavily. So rest assured that.
00;56;03;09 - 00;56;08;04
Bobby Silk
I appreciate that. I appreciate. That's all I wanted to be for you. Suitably quality guest.
00;56;08;21 - 00;56;12;02
John Azoni
Yeah. So where can people connect with you if they have questions?
00;56;12;14 - 00;56;33;06
Bobby Silk
Absolutely. I'm reachable by email. RJ Silk. Silk. It's the money that edu. I'm also on LinkedIn. Perhaps by the time this goes up I may bite the bullet and add a photo to my LinkedIn profile so you'll know for sure it's me. But I'm Robert Silk LinkedIn. I'm happy to connect in that way or take anything either way.
00;56;33;09 - 00;56;39;22
Bobby Silk
I don't have a social media presence beyond that though, so that's that. Those are that are limited avenue towards reaching me.
00;56;40;03 - 00;56;43;06
John Azoni
Yeah, probably best to email you then if you don't. Yeah LinkedIn.
00;56;44;05 - 00;56;49;03
Bobby Silk
I get on there but you know it's I'm currently a blank profile to my great saying yeah.
00;56;49;09 - 00;56;55;05
John Azoni
Yeah we'll allow it. Well it's super great conversation loved having you on. Appreciate you being here.
00;56;55;12 - 00;56;56;07
Bobby Silk
Thanks so much, John.
