Containing from my musings about editing seminar live streams and podcasts as video in a previous post I thought I would discuss a more recent leap in my education on how to film and edit video.
The first video that I was required to design from scratch and to a higher professional standard was placed on my lap in late January and has just been completed and uploaded to the IHR website, Youtube and a few other locations. This video – an IHR campaign video for our new premises and several other related projects is vital to the future of the Institute. We are embarking on an ambitious plan of renovation and expansion in times that are far from ideal for the world of academia.
The first take of the video was perhaps too ambitious to achieve in such a short space of time: we planned to include talking heads from the library staff, one of our research fellows, and one of our members as well as a presentation from the IHR Director, Professor Miles Taylor, and some filmed shots of the Senate House location. It proved too ambitious for a relatively short deadline and the resultant video would have edged towards 10 minutes in length – could we really expect potential donors to listen for that long? I probably wouldn’t. So we set up another meeting to discuss the video and reduced our plans. Miles Taylor rewrote his script to reduce it to less than three minutes and we dropped the idea of talking heads.
The final video comes in at just over 3 minutes and focuses on our Director as voice over to accompanying images of the IHR past, present, and future. I think the final product looks fairly good and does the job its intended for.
The video is also available on our own IHR website, Vimeo, and Youtube and if you are interested in helping us reach our targets to ensure a modern IHR for the 21st century please take a look at our website.