Rikkyo University video content - ‘Different is where we begin’
Real comments from real university students for engaging video content
This blog post will set out the interview-based video content we made for the College of Intercultural Communication (CIC) at Rikkyo University in Tokyo. By spending time in pre-production and during the interviews to ensure we pulled out the stories of each students’ experience, we produced video content that prospective students could relate to, encouraging them to apply to the College.
Pre production - getting to know the students and the scope
The new slogan of the College, ‘Different is where we begin’ emphasizes that difference is should not only be respected, but that it is a great starting point to develop and build relationships and understanding. We that in mind we worked with the College to chose students to appear in the videos, along with developing an overriding theme for each video.
Video 1 is focusses on why the students joined CIC and the experience of they had for the first 6 months or so, until they felt a part of CIC, rather than just an outsider. Video 2 is more looking to life after graduation, with comments on how what they have learnt, both in class and out of class, has contributed to the next stage in their life. With these themes in mind the College selected 4 students for each video. Four students for a 2 minute video means that each student would only get 30 seconds or less of speaking time which doesnt sound much but having such an array of faces, countries and opinions really emphasises the diversity of the College.
Before the shoot we met each group of students on an online call. It was really to chat with the students about how they joined the College and to get a feel for the way the conversation could go on the shoot.
Production - spending time to talk
It was decided to separate filming of the interviews and the other campus shots up to allow us time to really have a conversation with the students and pull out their story. I think we spent about 40 minutes with each student talking with them on camera, allowing them to really explore their experiences at Rikkyo, making for unscripted engaging content. Having the students speak straight to camera also helps connect more directly to the audience.
“In CIC Rikkyo I faced a lot of challenges. And I think that is why I can that now I am stronger than I was before.”
In addition to the interviews we also got some shots around campus of the students (love the library shots we got!) and off campus around Ikebukuro Station. We have a general drone flight permission, including for flying in central Tokyo so, after informing the relevant police of our flights, managed to get some early morning shots of the campus.
We are also photographers so took portrait shots of the students at the end of each interview recording for the College to use in marketing materials.
Post production
As we usually do for interview-based videos, we first laid out the interview selects on the timeline and shared that with the College as a basis for crafting the flow of the video. Just having interview shots, with no other scenes or music to distract, can mean that the final feel of the video is hard to imagine, but in our experience this enables the client, and us, to focus on the core message of the video. With the interview parts locked in our editor then added in b-roll shots and music to complete the story.
With a graphic design artist on our team we interpreted the graphic elements supplied by the college to visually show the four different fields of study available at the college and which field each student was studying. They key is to get a balance between graphics that add to the interviews but not intrude into the flow of the comments
“The thing that we can learn more than language at Rikkyo CIC is that we are all different.”
Short, shareable, edits for social media
Videos for Youtube and the university website are great, but it is essential to also have an engaging social media presence, particularly so considering the young target market of these videos. With this in mind we also edited a social media cutdown version, below, of around 40 seconds for each of the main videos.
