Project Description
How we used video to help St Augustine’s reassure students anxious about returning to study
When prospective students are weighing up where to study, it’s often not just about courses or facilities – it’s about whether their fears will be understood.
At St Augustine’s College of Theology, the admissions team knew many of their applicants were returning to study after a long break. For them, the biggest worry wasn’t whether theology was the right subject – it was whether they could cope academically after years away from formal education.
These kinds of concerns are gold dust when it comes to creating student recruitment videos. By addressing them directly, you don’t just promote a course, you reassure students that they’ll be supported, welcomed, and able to succeed.
That’s exactly what we set out to do in this project for St Augustine’s: produce a video which combined tutors explaining the study support available, with students sharing their own journeys of overcoming those first anxieties and thriving at the college.
What was the pre-production process like?
We’ve worked with St Augustine’s College for many years now, and have been to film at their campuses in West Malling and Southwark on many occassions.
So not only do we have a great understanding of their key messaging, we also already have some fantastic student testimonial interviews in the archive, ready to use.
All but one of the interviews in this video had been captured during previous filming sessions.
So when I was chatting to Director of Operations Becky Young during our annual catchup meeting, and she said that the biggest hesitation prospective students have is around study anxieties, I knew I’d already got some fantastic footage of students sharing their own journeys.
However, the one thing I hadn’t really got is footage of a student receiving the academic support, which I knew would really bring the video to life – so we arranged to record that and interview that student during the upcoming filming session.
What was the filming process like?
When filming with St Augustine’s, we’re generally capturing the footage needed for multiple videos from one filming day.
Therefore we make a list of what we need to get from the day, and have a plan of who we need to interview.
On our list for the study support video was student Ana, to talk about hear fears of studying before joining St Augustine’s, and how the study support she received helped her thrive.
Ana was quite nervous about the interview, but my background as a BBC journalist means I’m able to reassure the interviewee, and make the interview seem really conversational.
This helps them present really naturally on camera, and means the quotes are authentic and relatable.
I also filmed some footage of Ana’s session with study support tutor Suzy Gregory, which brought the interview to life.
What was the editing process like?
The first step was to put all of the relevant interviews into the editing software (from our three years of filming with St Augustine’s College!) and cut it down to the best quotes.
This helped to build a narrative which flowed smoothly from tutors sharing the support available, to students discussing how it had helped them.
With St Augustine’s, we manage the video upload process for them, so after the video had been approved we:
- Created a video thumbnail
- Produced a subtitle file
- Uploaded the video to YouTube, complete with a title and description
- Sent a transcript of the video to the college’s copywriter so they could use the student quotes in blogs
- Sent their website designer links to the video, along with suggestions of which webpages the video would work best on
We don’t just create videos, we slot seamlessly into your marketing teams to make life easier for everyone.
If you need a video specialist to produce student recruitment videos for your school, college or university, get in touch and we can discuss how we can support your current projects and strategy.
