The Brief
Occasionally at Small Films, schools come to us with internal projects that are designed to reinforce their position as the school of choice for existing parents. Whilst these films may never be used publicly they are still a highly powerful way of getting a particular message across.
Wellington College came to Small Films with a challenge. Every year they do a large Speech Day event. This is an event for parents and pupils where awards are given and speeches are made to sum up the year. Whilst a lot of schools have Speech Days, Wellington College goes above and beyond with a variety of performances, a large marquee, and a series of films which get played throughout the day.
In past years these films had been created internally by members of WTV (Wellington’s Video Club) before being made by videographers and other production companies who increasingly set the bar higher and higher. This year, Wellington College wanted to go all out and create a series of four films that would be truly memorable – so they came to Small Films to see if we could help.
Our Creative Solution
The four films were focused on various themes. The arts, sport, academia, and their Global Citizenship Programme, a programme they run to educate pupils about the world and their responsibilities within it.
The Small Films team went to Wellington College and we talked to the Head, to the marketing department, and to the Heads of Department about what was important to them. As an internal project it needed to be done on a finite budget that would be reflective of the event itself and the budget that you might want to allocate to that. So we had to think creatively about how to make it exciting without breaking the bank.
We decided that coverage was important, so we tried to maximise the number of filming days, spreading the project across the year and sending a single camera operator to the school as events were happening. We then tied the footage together in different ways depending on the type of film. For the arts we relied on the drama aiming to give parents a behind the scenes view of performances that they may have already watched in the audience. We used music and creative editing to bring this to life. For the sport film we created a fast-paced film with lots of stats and interesting camera angles to show the excitement of the sport. Global Citizenship was a fly on the wall experience to see what actually happens as part of this programme and to also help parents understand the importance of it. And finally for the academic film, we held interviews with pupils about what it means to learn at Wellington.
The Result
All four films were extremely well received and have certainly set a high standard for what these films will need to be moving forward. And despite us originally making these films for internal projects, through some subtle adjustments we were able to make films that could also be used by the marketing department for outward facing promotional activities. We also created a series of social media films too.
Wellington College were delighted and they continue to work with us across several projects And the team are back this year filming more Speech Day content.
