Two ways to run a campus content year
Every department for itself. Or plan, produce, compound.
The reactive model
Admissions asks for a film in August. Advancement asks for one in October. Each office hires its own crew, briefs from scratch, and pays for the same campus footage twice.
The pieces never add up to one story about the school. Prospective students can feel that.
The Bowstring approach
One planning conversation puts every office’s deadlines on one calendar. Production days get shared, so one visit to campus covers admissions, giving, and the colleges.
Everything gets labeled and cleared for reuse. The next cycle starts with an archive of flexible content instead of a new RFP.
Where the plan actually gets built
Three things happen before anything gets produced.
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The campus footage problem
You already filmed the quad. Twice.
Same building. Five offices. Five drone shots.
We fix that. Every campus production is labeled, cleared, and shared across departments. Admissions gets recruitment. Advancement gets donors. Each college gets its story.
One production. Every office. Year two costs less than year one.
When the request isn’t on the calendar
The gala wasn’t in the plan.
Not everything fits the plan. A gala, a building dedication, a president’s message after news breaks. They get added after the year’s plan is already set.
You don’t start from zero on those. The team already knows your campus, your standards, and who signs off, so we’re ready when the unplanned happens. We capture the night, cut the recap, and pull donor thank-yous from the same footage.
Then it all goes into the same library as everything else.
Events we’ve supported
Why schools bring us back every year
We know the system. Your people are the cast.
Inside the system
Higher education doesn’t operate like a typical brand. Approvals must go through executive leadership, deans, and communications teams. Procurement operates on its own timeline, and individual colleges often interpret brand standards differently.
Having navigated these processes at Ivy League schools, public universities, and regional institutions, we proactively structure our planning to avoid potential roadblocks.
Vendor onboarding that takes longer than the production
Releases for students, minors, and patients
An empty campus in July
Finals, move-in, and commencement blackout dates
Captions and accessibility review before anything posts
Athletics recruiting rules
Real people, not hired talent
No casting call. Your students, faculty, staff, alumni, and donors are the story. Prospective families can tell the difference in about three seconds.
Most of them have never been on camera. We keep sessions short, schedule around classes and office hours, and know how to get a nervous provost to sound like herself.
You get more out of the people you already have. And they show up again next year.
Four offices, four campuses, one way of planning
An Ivy and a regional campus, same plan.
Admissions, advancement, a strategic plan, a school anthem. Click any piece to watch it here.
