Create your school video.
It is essential to thoroughly plan the filming so getting the best shots becomes easy!
When is the best time to create your school video?
You can create your school video anytime of the year but we recommend filming during the spring and summer terms and early Autumn. The weather is generally better during these periods. A school, both externally and internally will look better during these months. There is foliage on the trees, the flowers are out and there is more light, flooding the classrooms with warm natural daylight. We always check the long distance weather forecasts when booking filming days. Filming on an overcast day in November doesn’t look great and the light starts to fade mid-afternoon, cutting the filming day short.
We do bring a selection of film lights with us which we may use to create additional mood or light dark situations such as drama studios. We usually arrive on site at 8.00am so we can set-up our equipment and have a quick recap on the days plans.
How to prepare a lesson for filming
We offer simple advice on how to organise subject specific shots. Is it important that the teachers involved understand that the lessons we are filming are NOT ‘business as usual’. To create your school video it’s good to have everyone on the same page.
Staff must be fully briefed beforehand and appreciate that the whole purpose of their lesson is to provide the crew with visually engaging action that communicates a positive impression of the school. Staff won’t be able to conduct a ‘proper’ lesson because they will need to follow instructions and direction from the crew. Sometimes repeating an exercise again until we are happy with the footage.
For each subject we suggest organising an activity that is visually exciting. Students interacting, holding and using props to illustrate a lesson looks fun, is interesting and is captivating. Taking English as an example: a few students at the front of the classroom, dressed in Elizabethan costume performing a scene from a Shakespeare play is far more interesting than the same students looking down at the book. Apply this to all the subjects being filmed and you will have a great film creating your school video. The excited, enthused, animated faces of the students is what parents want to see, not the backs of heads!
So the thing to bear in mind when planning each subject is to consider what will look great in our video?
After years of filming and photographing in schools we know what to look for to create your school video, it second nature to us. Is everyone wearing the right uniform correctly? Does anyone have writing on their hands? Are they wearing jewellery? Is there a bin in the background? We can spot these things and rectify them immediately.
Contact us if you’d like to talk through your project or head over to our YouTube channel for inspiration. Our Getting the Best Shots guide to school video production is available below. Just fill in your details. Create your school video with School Video Production.
