#94 - Stop Filming For Posterity - Rethinking How You Use Your In-House Video Staff
w/ John Azoni
Podcast Host
🤔 Want to create deeper emotional impact with your institution’s storytelling and content creation efforts?
🎉Join the Newsletter!
Every week I send out a dose of insights and inspiration including:
💪Excerpts from that week's podcast episode
💪Case studies and best practices from other institutions
💪Tips for creating content that resonates and inspires action
(it’s free)
SHOW NOTES
In this conversation, John Azoni discusses the challenges and strategies of video content creation in higher education. He emphasizes the importance of a unified video strategy, intentional content creation, and the concept of 'going long to go short' to maximize engagement and meet institutional goals. Azoni also highlights the need to empower non-professionals in video production to enhance content quality and reach.
Key Takeaways:
Colleges often struggle with a scattered approach to video content.
Intentional content creation is crucial for meeting institutional goals.
Filming for posterity can lead to wasted resources.
Short form video is essential for engagement on social media.
Transforming events into engaging content can maximize impact.
————————
Transcript (done with AI so only about 90% accurate):
00;00;00;21 - 00;00;21;14
John Azoni
Recently I was working with the college on their video strategy. We did a whole strategy workshop and we discovered they had a scattered team of doers. They had some people at different campuses that could do video they had in the central unit or creative unit or whatever. They had two guys, two person video team. They're really good, but there's just not enough of them to go around.
00;00;21;14 - 00;00;47;01
John Azoni
And so we were talking about how do we create a unified approach and what is working against unifying all of these, you know, people that can do video to some degree. And it became clear instead of creating intentional content that helped meet institutional goals, the big stuff like enrollment and, you know, really being a pillar in the community and things like that, they were getting bogged down filming these events that didn't matter.
00;00;47;11 - 00;01;12;10
John Azoni
And they saw me going all over the state, filming events and live streaming events because different departments had asked for it and leadership's reasoning or whoever was asking for its reasoning was, It'd just be great to have this filmed just in case you know, someone can't make it. So I totally get that. But the problem here is filming for posterity at the expense of being really intentional and forward pushing.
00;01;12;20 - 00;01;38;26
John Azoni
This is not a problem at all that is unique to this school. I've seen this a lot and I'm sure you have too, and can relate on some level, but they're spending their time and resources creating content for maybe one person who couldn't make it to an event. It's funny because like, you know, in the workshop, they were kind of like, it might be like one or two people that can't make it to this event that might actually watch this.
00;01;38;26 - 00;01;59;17
John Azoni
So all of those resources being fed and funneled into content that's just for posterity. So filming for posterity is a trap and it's a very common trap. It's the same energy as, you know, the person that like you, I'm really not a big fan of fireworks because I'm just kind of like you've seen one, You've seen them all.
00;01;59;27 - 00;02;31;13
John Azoni
You know, not everyone shares that sentiment with me. But what's funny to me is I like to people watch the folks that are filming the fireworks on their phone and wonder when are they going to watch that? You know, if you've seen it in person, you've seen the best of it. Watching video of fireworks is far below, you know, recreating the experience that you can experience by just literally just watching it in person and seemed like I used to do wedding videography at a production company I worked for.
00;02;31;26 - 00;02;58;08
John Azoni
And the biggest frustration for wedding videographers and and photographers alike is what we call in that industry the Uncle Bob. And Uncle Bob is the guy that's standing up, leaning out into the aisle as the bride's coming down with his friggin iPad and filming the bride coming down as there are professional videographers and photographers trying to professionally capture this moment.
00;02;58;16 - 00;03;16;04
John Azoni
Now we have Uncle Bob in the shot with his big iPad or, you know, you see these glowing phones and devices in the aisle during this beautiful moment because everyone's trying to film for posterity because they think, what if I miss I don't know if they think that like the videographers, like whatever, they screw it up or something like that.
00;03;16;04 - 00;03;35;21
John Azoni
And like, I think that it's a real possibility that no one is going to capture this moment. So Uncle Bob takes it upon himself. But, you know, all of that is filming for posterity at the expense of what really, really matters, at the expense of something better. And I liken this to hoarding. Yeah. I don't know if you've ever seen the show Hoarders.
00;03;35;21 - 00;04;00;25
John Azoni
It's remarkable what these folks houses look like and how much stuff they collect and how unwilling they are to let go of the smallest thing like some random vinyl record from the seventies or something like that, or like a jacket they got at a thrift store or just anything. And collecting hours and hours of footage for posterity is kind of like that.
00;04;00;25 - 00;04;19;09
John Azoni
It's like, if you were honest with yourself, you know, you're probably not going to use that in any form. No one's really going to watch it. It's just going to sit there on a hard drive collecting dust. And yet we feel this pressure to like if the event goes by and we didn't take video of it, we've somehow missed some big opportunity.
00;04;19;18 - 00;04;43;09
John Azoni
So that's the problem. And like I said, it's a common problem. There's all kinds of stuff that, you know, I hear about videographers. I talk to a lot of in-house video folks that, you know, have said something along the lines of they're just getting swept up in filming presidential messages and, you know, events that just don't matter. Like, you know, I don't know, pancake breakfast or something like that where it's like, that's not going to be the thing.
00;04;43;19 - 00;05;16;22
John Azoni
I mean, you're paying a videographer a salary that's not that's not going to be the the biggest return on that investment is filming the pancake breakfast. Let someone film that with their iPhone. Here's the rub, though, is, you know, I understand that there's these kind of politics, these internal politics, and you want to make people happy and you want to ride this line between what is a priority for the marketing team and also by kind of wanting to respect their requests and maybe empower them to do them themselves or just kind of like validate that.
00;05;16;29 - 00;05;39;22
John Azoni
Yeah, that's a that's a good need. That doesn't mean that we have to do everything. So here is a shift that I have been thinking about since this workshop, and it's a way that everyone gets what they want. Now. What I think the best thing to do is to establish priorities for what kind of content gets a yes, gets the green light, and what kind of content is way on the back burner.
00;05;39;22 - 00;06;04;04
John Azoni
And with this particular school, that's exactly what we're what we're working on together is defining those strategic priorities where the content and the institutional goals are a fit. But there's a couple of things. So what if right now you said, you know what, while we're we don't have our priorities in order or we don't feel like we can say no?
00;06;04;04 - 00;06;26;05
John Azoni
What if right now, instead of refusing to film the events altogether or just filming the events and just being yes, men and women, what if you turned those posterity or requests into something that actually moves the needle? And it's this concept I like to call going long to go short. It's the idea of going long to go short.
00;06;26;05 - 00;06;48;26
John Azoni
And we all know that short form video is the hot thing, right? Sort of tick tock, Instagram reels, YouTube shorts. But you know, there's this pressure to constantly crank out like, you know, 200 or so unique, you know, short videos a year for those vertical platforms. That's really overwhelming when you think about it, like, okay, what we we got to keep up, we got to keep the algorithm fed and happy.
00;06;49;09 - 00;07;14;01
John Azoni
But the mindset shift is when you take something that is long that there may be a few interesting things in, you've killed two birds, you've documented the thing, but you've documented it for a reason that is going to help you grow your audience and influence your audience by taking things that actually might work really well in a short form context out of this boring event.
00;07;14;14 - 00;07;38;16
John Azoni
Like think about the event, someone speaking or maybe, you know, someone's a guest speaker you have on campus and they're giving a speech and whatever like long after I graduated and I had gotten into video production, my college, the art school I went to had the founder of Twitter, Jack Dorsey, come to campus and give a lecture. And there was about 20 people in the rooms, really intimate lecture.
00;07;38;25 - 00;07;55;12
John Azoni
And he was just starting Cash app and he was telling us about, you know, the the idea behind Cash App and how they were going to grow it and all this stuff. And I'm not sure how this applied to art students, but it was really interesting. And I was, you know, our company that I used to work for, we were hired to go film it.
00;07;55;12 - 00;08;26;18
John Azoni
So that's something you should absolutely film that you get the founder of Twitter before the pre Elon founder, this billionaire that's like started so many crazy things and yes definitely film that there's going to be I wish you know I wish I could show you an example There were so many tidbits in this that would be perfect today for for a vertical platform that would just I don't say go viral or go nuts, but like would actually be interesting, would have some legs to it.
00;08;26;28 - 00;08;46;26
John Azoni
Saying things that challenge thinking about like how we pay people. You know, how we think about the exchange of money and how do we make that easier and things like that. Because like I said, he was developing Cash app, but most events aren't like that. They're not, you know, really that are not really interesting like that. But if you've got a guest speaker, come use it as an opportunity.
00;08;46;27 - 00;09;05;04
John Azoni
Say like, oh, let's let's get some short form content out of this. Let's film the thing, make the people happy that ask for it. But then we're going to actually have a plan for repurposing this and distributing it intentionally. And then if you have maybe you have a boring event. A pancake breakfast is not a boring event for the people that eat pancakes.
00;09;05;04 - 00;09;24;27
John Azoni
I love pancakes, so that is not a boring events. Me that is that would be the highlight of my day. But if I was a prospective student, I wouldn't care to watch that footage. But what about that? Could you film that is cool. That could work as a short form piece of content. Let me give you two examples.
00;09;25;15 - 00;09;50;20
John Azoni
Let me back up to the lecture that, you know, this lecture that's going to talk on a niche topic. University of California, they filmed this lecture of this guy, and I talked about this in my webinar or what's working in higher ed videos get unveiled that TV slash higher ed video where we talk about seven different themes of video content that is getting a lot of engagement in higher ed.
00;09;51;07 - 00;10;17;20
John Azoni
One of these is these just very simple clips of someone just talking about something interesting. And so it was this professor and he was talking about the effects of sugar on metabolic syndrome. I'm not sure what metabolic syndrome is, but he's the expert at it and he's, I guess the guy, the metabolic syndrome guy. So this one clip and it's their most viral YouTube short, last time I checked, it had well over a million views.
00;10;17;20 - 00;10;38;09
John Azoni
I can't remember how many might be 2 million or something like that, but that thing went crazy. And that was we saw that as we were researching for this. What's working in higher ed video report that we put out that you can get at that that URL. We saw this as a pattern that videos a short clips of someone just saying something profound really resonated with a niche audience.
00;10;38;09 - 00;11;06;20
John Azoni
You know, there was clips from a was a clip from University of Chicago where there's like three politicians, just old white guys talking about some very like niche political thing that I'm sure was relevance at the time or something like that. And that was one of their most successful videos as well. It was would have otherwise been just a like just a boring, you know, watching three old guys talk about politics, that doesn't sound really exciting.
00;11;07;01 - 00;11;30;12
John Azoni
But for the people that are into that sort of thing, it really had legs and it got a lot of engagement. We saw that across the board. That was one of the things that always floated to the top was someone saying something interesting on camera. And so when you have an event or a guest speaker or maybe it's your president giving the talk and they're going to, you know, and you're tasked with filming this event, think of it as a positive.
00;11;30;17 - 00;11;55;19
John Azoni
Let's make sure we get the person, you know, miked up or put a mic on the podium. So we have good quality audio. Let's film this and maybe we film it so that in a way that we can crop it vertically and we're taking notes and we're looking for things that could be interesting, like viral ish type stuff, like what are profound ideas, new ideas, fresh ways of thinking about things, some funny moments, like just something remarkable.
00;11;55;19 - 00;12;15;27
John Azoni
What is remarkable about this thing and how can you cut that into a 30 or 62nd thing? And how many? Maybe you can get a bunch of those out of that. So that's where that's how you turn an event, just a for posterity event into nowhere actually going to do this because we want to do it, not because we're just being tasked with doing it because we've tied it to the institutional goals.
00;12;16;07 - 00;12;37;07
John Azoni
Top of funnel, attracting students that are interested in that niche topic. So that might even influence who you decide to come do a guest lecture if you're trying to fill seats in a particular program that maybe is lagging behind, maybe you invite some influencers from that industry to come and give a talk. It's interesting for the in-person crowd.
00;12;37;14 - 00;12;51;16
John Azoni
You've got the whole thing filmed for posterity, for the one or two people that couldn't make it. But really you're thinking, What short clips can I get out of this? I know they're going to say a bunch of interesting stuff and this stuff is going to absolutely be repurposed. It's not just going to sit on a hard drive.
00;12;51;24 - 00;13;11;11
John Azoni
It's going to be out into the world algorithm. Let the algorithm do its thing. Okay, great. So that's that's one thing I want to go back to the pancake breakfast. So, like, what do you do with these events that, like, there's nothing really like profound being sad, but maybe it's like event coverage or something like that. It's like that might be something like, you know, people smile and B, billion pancakes, whatever.
00;13;11;22 - 00;13;38;06
John Azoni
I can't remember the school, but this, this one school had a video from a pancake breakfast on like a Tik tok or Instagram reels that actually did quite good. It got, I mean, fried even to make it into the report, it had to have at least, you know, around 100,000 views and it had to be one of their top performing that school's top performing videos from that account, from that, you know, account on that channel.
00;13;38;15 - 00;14;04;07
John Azoni
And all this was, if I remember correctly, it was this guy who was growing up pancakes, and he's flipping pancakes in this. And the students are like 15 feet away and they're catching the pancakes on the plate. And it sounds like interesting, just a fun moment. And then they put that with a trending song. So that's the key to like the trending song or the trending sound corrects a lot of things that would otherwise be boring without it.
00;14;04;07 - 00;14;31;01
John Azoni
The algorithm loves a trending song or a trending sound like, you know, some meme or something like that or whatever. So they did that and it really took off for them and it's just vibes. That's all it is, is vibe. So you have opportunities to film events where people might say something interesting, but then you have this other category of like events where it might just be vibes, so how can we take this and really go double down on the vibes and put a trending song to this?
00;14;31;01 - 00;14;50;08
John Azoni
And we're going to create a highlight reel for Tik Tok or whatever of this event, and it's going to be sweet and it's going to just really have this a lot of energy and when people watch this, they might be like, Oh, that's, that's kind of fun. Like, I love that like student life. You know, you can have, you know, this go in your student life playlist on YouTube or something like that.
00;14;50;08 - 00;15;10;09
John Azoni
So it's like, take it, you know, when you take it seriously, when you're forced to go into a situation where you have to film for posterity, figure out how you can use it and amplify it in a way that's actually interesting and maybe this is how you say no to things, because maybe if there's zero opportunities for anything short form for this event, I don't know what that would be.
00;15;10;22 - 00;15;36;17
John Azoni
Maybe that's the thing you say, okay, this does not reach the threshold of getting our internal, you know, video team involved. There's nothing that we can use this for institutionally beyond posterity. So that's just, you know, one idea you can consider. Okay. And the other thing about this is this here's the other. When when this is really a win win win, it's a win for you.
00;15;37;06 - 00;15;58;29
John Azoni
You get short form content out of a boring event. It's a win for the person that asked for it. They get their thing they ask for, and the one person got to watch it on YouTube later. And the third win is the beauty of the and what we talked about in the report, what's working in higher ed video is that these don't have to be really highly produced.
00;15;59;04 - 00;16;26;13
John Azoni
You don't need cinematic cameras for something to have a viral quality and get a lot of engagement. It just has to be interesting. Just point the camera at interesting things. Any camera could be an iPhone. Actually, iPhone would be great. That would be the ideal. But the win here, our third win in the win win win is what if you got your media students to say, hey, we're going to have them cover, cover this event and they're going to learn how to do audio?
00;16;26;26 - 00;16;56;01
John Azoni
Trust me when I tell you, if you learn how to film an event and manage the audio and the different camera angles and then cut that together and, you know, and stuff like that, you will learn so much. I learned so much about production. That's helped me in all aspects of production from filming weddings, because when you're filming a wedding, you don't have a 20 person crew, you have like one or two people that have to do everything and make this really cinematic video with really high quality audio and stuff like that.
00;16;56;01 - 00;17;26;01
John Azoni
You just have to learn how to do that and how to manage risks of, you know, something failing, the audio failing, what do you what's your backup situation? So there's so many learning opportunities filming in event. I don't care what the event is. You practice filming B-roll of, you know, students listening, practice filming, like how do you know when someone might smile or someone they might clap or How do you know where in the talk that the person is giving that the interesting flippable stuff might be?
00;17;26;16 - 00;17;45;00
John Azoni
Spoiler? It's typically at the beginning of their talk or the very end. So there are all these sort of nuances that you can that you as a media student can learn while they're also filming the events, getting the posterity coverage and giving you short form material to work with, or you set up a system where just anyone can do this.
00;17;45;00 - 00;18;03;27
John Azoni
So like it doesn't have to be the media team. You don't even have to involve them. What if you had a system where any one anybody on campus that maybe knows how to push the camera button on their phone, you know, that has that level of skill can come and document this event. So I have a insta360 camera.
00;18;03;27 - 00;18;20;26
John Azoni
It's such a great little camera. It's 360 degrees. It's filming. So it's without getting too much into it, it's a great camera for just like behind the scenes stuff. It just, just lo fi kind of stuff. And the great thing about it is you can just set it somewhere and it's filming all the way around, filming things that are happening behind you.
00;18;20;26 - 00;18;41;09
John Azoni
It's front of you to the side of you. You don't have to point it anywhere. It's filming all the way around three six. So that's how that works. You could just get you know, an insta360 that like 500 bucks get a some sort of tripod or something to mount it too. That would go on the stage. Anyone can come along, boom, set that thing up, turn it on hit record.
00;18;41;09 - 00;18;57;15
John Azoni
Maybe you have, you know, some instructions that go with it so you get the settings right, but that's it. And then they turn in the video clip and you haven't had to involve anybody professional or the media department at all. You know, the whoever's organizing the event should know how to do this so they can film their own stuff.
00;18;57;19 - 00;19;18;08
John Azoni
So it might be as simple as an investment in some gear. If you want to gear more, feel free to email me. Janet unveiled that TV and I'm happy to make some recommendations. I love talking about gear and workflow and stuff like that. So. So feel free to reach out to me if that's an area that you want to pursue is like, how do we equip the person that's asking for this?
00;19;18;08 - 00;19;40;29
John Azoni
Or the department that's asking for this to film this themselves, or how to basically just how do we remove the professional video team from the equation and use their time more strategically elsewhere? It could be as simple as it's just a gear, small gear investment. Maybe you already have a camera, just set up a process so that it's easy and dummy proof for someone to come turn the camera on.
00;19;40;29 - 00;20;02;29
John Azoni
Hit record pointed out the stage. You know, you're probably not going to get great audio that way. So that's where I'm kind of like maybe get the media students in there that learn how to do the audio. But there are also ways to make that very easy. Things you can buy for like 100 bucks that could just a little recorder that just sits on the podium and captures audio with whoever standing near it talking.
00;20;03;11 - 00;20;36;06
John Azoni
And that's better than capturing audio from 30 feet away where the camera is. Just so you know, little tip about video. Wherever you have the camera and you have no external microphone, that's how far away the microphone is. The microphone currently that I'm talking into is six inches from my face. If I were to back up and go into the hallway, watch what happens or listen to what happens, rolling my butt out of the office here, you'll notice that this sounds like crap, right?
00;20;36;06 - 00;21;06;15
John Azoni
So I am about ten feet away from the microphone now, still significantly closer than anyone would be standing with the camera for an event. Really? I would be back here in the bathroom. So I'm like 20 feet away right now. If we don't have a microphone connected to this camera and we're just we're just filming it with the onboard with the onboard microphone, that's the audio you're going to get is from that far away, super echoey, unusable.
00;21;06;15 - 00;21;44;18
John Azoni
So a small investment in how to do some very simple event audio that's very dummy proof is helpful. And that's just so you can equip non video people to do the job that people are asking for win win win and then we can expand this go along to go short thing to things like presidential messages don't just film a ten minute you know update and then just bury it on your website you know, clip it out into, you know, 32nd clips, you know, maybe where the president announces a new internship partnership or, you know, that can become a piece for like, you know, enrollment content, something like a like an enrollment email drip or something.
00;21;44;27 - 00;22;02;25
John Azoni
Share it with recruiters, put it in an email, drop it on Instagram, whatever it is, and then maybe you can set your president up to say interesting things that you want him to talk about that he didn't come he or she didn't come there to talk about initially. But you're like, Hey, extra stuff for our short form video strategy here.
00;22;02;25 - 00;22;26;14
John Azoni
Can you talk about scholarships? Can you talk about a story of a student that just really changed your life that you saw some success in or something like that? Whatever. Ask me whatever. Figure out what would be good for short form platforms. The same thing with student testimonials, student success stories, film for the long thing. But then don't forget to think about why we've got the student here.
00;22;26;14 - 00;22;58;12
John Azoni
We can ask them whatever we want. Let's ask them, you know, eight or ten questions that are going to lead to good short form content. And that's that is what we do at Unveiled. That's how we've structured our subscription packages for student success stories is we you film 12 packages of stories, you know, one per month, but then you get the full length thing through 3 minutes videos of Jamie's story or whatever the 32nd cut down or 15 second cut down, and then eight topical short form videos.
00;22;58;20 - 00;23;25;00
John Azoni
And that's one package. And you get that package 12 times. And we really we use the process that we are suggesting to you that you can do on your own, which is think about the needs of the funnel, think about the student journey, what emails are they getting, what's a video that you can put in this random email that they might get right after they submit, you know, requests for information or something like that that you can get a student perspective talking about.
00;23;25;00 - 00;24;02;00
John Azoni
Maybe it's like, I'm so glad that I came to such and such college as the best decision I ever made. Here's why. Whatever, you know, that could be just like a separate little aside that you could ask a student to speak on while you've got this camera, you know, recording them and, you know, repeat that. So, you know, when we do interviews, we are always asking, you know, ten or so additional aside questions that aren't part of their story necessarily, but that we can give to the client, to the school for talking about the things that are important to their, you know, messaging pillars, but getting it from a student perspective podcast, same thing.
00;24;02;00 - 00;24;36;23
John Azoni
One episode can generate potentially dozens of little moments that can really travel far, travel much farther than the original long episode ever could. So instead of filming things where the long form piece by itself would be very low impact, think about how you can break that up into short clips, get a lot more mileage out of that, get that effort to be intentional and connected to your institutional goals and moving the needle towards those goals and put those clips where your audiences actually are.
00;24;37;03 - 00;24;58;09
John Azoni
Always be asking yourself, Can we get more out of this? Every event, every interview, every message, treat them as opportunities to create content that ties back to those goals like enrollment, yield, reputation, whatever. That's how you avoid becoming like the Yes department and instead become the team that makes video actually work for your institution that's going long to go shorts.
00;24;58;20 - 00;25;12;16
John Azoni
I hope you take that, hope you use it. And if you do, I hope you send it to me. John unveiled that TV. I'd love to see some of the cut downs that you get and how you've been intentional about what would otherwise be a very low impact opportunity. Thanks.
