Edenhurst Preparatory School wanted a video to showcase their friendly atmosphere, so they could attract more families to their open events.

Edenhurst is a co-educational independent prep school which is based in Newcastle-under-Lyme, Staffordshire.

They were looking to boost their student recruitment. After their marketing team looked at their statistics, they realised that their conversion rates from open day attendance to application were great – so they wanted more prospective pupils attending their open days.

They approached VideoHQ, as they saw we specialise in producing marketing videos for the education sector, which help schools to boost their student admissions numbers.

The pre-production process

We sat down with their marketing lead, Lucy King, and the Headteacher Emma Mousley. 

During this meeting, we looked at Edenhurst’s strengths compared to the other local schools, and what they really pride themselves on.

They really wanted to get across how friendly and welcoming the environment is, as well as the specialist teachers and high quality education on offer.

Therefore, we decided to opt for a Headteacher Welcome video – where the Headteacher is personally introducing the school to prospective parents, and inviting them to an Open Event.

We decided that the video would be scripted out so we could really nail the message.

Although Emma’s voiceover would be leading the video, we didn’t want her on screen the whole time. As lovely as she is, this isn’t the most visually interesting approach, and we wanted to keep prospective parents engaged until the end, where she issues her invite to Open Days.

Instead, the visuals of the video would mostly be comprised of happy children who are really engaged in their learning.

Lucy wrote a script, I made some tweaks to make it work better for video, and then it was go time!

The filming process

Although it was all thoroughly planned in advance, we didn’t want the video to feel staged, so on the filming day we visited a variety of classes to catch pupils acting naturally.

It was all on a schedule, so the teacher’s knew we’d be visiting – this is a crucial step to make sure that they’re on board with the filming, and that they’ve planned a lesson which looks great on camera.

We planned to visit classes of all different age groups, showing how Edenhurst has a real family feel, from the nursery through to the prep forms.

We even went to the local ski slope with their after school club to showcase the extracurriculars on offer. Although I must say I can’t ski – and walking to the top of a dry ski slope is WAY harder than getting the ski lift up there!

We decided to use an autocue to record Emma’s scripted sections, as it has a few benefits:

• Emma was able to look directly into the camera while reading her script, making it much more personable as the audience feels like she’s talking directly to them
• She could just focus on how she was saying the script, rather than trying to remember what to say next
• It reduced the amount of time took to record the scripted sections – Headteacher’s are busy! They don’t want to spend all day recording a video.

The editing process 

The scripted sections with Emma drove the narrative of the video, and then it was all about choosing footage of the pupils which illustrated that message well.

For example, where she says ‘from nursery, through to our prep forms, we are proud of our warm and welcoming community’ – I chose a clip of a nursery pupil, a clip of one of their year 6 pupils, and then footage of children kindly sharing some paintbrushes. 

You want the words to enhance and match up with the voiceover – so I’d kept the copy of the voiceover in mind when filming, to make sure I got the right footage.

I produced two versions of the video; a horizontal one for the website and Vimeo, and a vertical version for social media with subtitles burned in.

Vertical videos work far better on social media as they fill the whole phone screen, and as we wanted to reach a new community of potential parents, shareability was crucial with this video.

What the client says

Hannah was extremely easy to work with and took the time to make sure she fully understood the brief.

She is a skilled storyteller and helped us to capture a video that captured the true ethos of the school.

The finished video exceeded our expectations, and I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend her to other schools looking for video services.

• Lucy King, Marketing at Edenhurst Preparatory School

Are you looking to promote your school to prospective parents and students? Get in touch for a free marketing review, and we can look at what content would help your organisation reach your target audience.