John Azoni John Azoni

#114 - Emmy-Nominated Faculty Videos: How Sewanee Amplified The Academic Experience

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

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