How do you use your videographer?

[Julie Grundy Marsello]

Hello University Web Developer friends,

 

I am researching how other schools position a videographer. We are currently scoping out a full time video position.

 

If you have a videographer, is he/she more production-focused or does the role undertake the entire process - from concept to final product? 

 

Also, does this videographer live in the communications dept or the web/it side?

 

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

 

Thanks in advance!
Julie

 

[Michael Fienen]

We currently have a part time GA for a videographer, and just got the position approved to go full time. He is attached to Marketing and Communication. Basically he handles all of the production aspects of the video, especially since there really is no additional support for the position. So he put together some stock bottom-thirds, and lead in/out clip, standard music beds, etc. He gets assignments like a beat reporter would, and is given relatively free reign to script and compose the video given the original goal.

 

Mostly he is used for PR type video right now, though we have farmed him out for other things where people have made video for something that was high visibility and god awful (e.g. Alumni). The problem is just time, as we're able to keep him pretty busy with just our stuff. We do try to tailor what ends up as video to, subject-wise. So we don't necessarily send him out to work on things that visually won't be interesting, we try to plan for that.

 

You can see a lot of his work on our YouTube page: http://www.youtube.com/user/pittsburgstate. We share that page with athletics, and we don't do their video, so don't blame us for that, heh. Really though, the kid is pretty damn good. He's got good baseline skills, and has good compositional vision for what he's putting together. It's certainly as good as anything that's the local news puts together.

[Julie Grundy Marsello]

Oh, he's got great skills! That is fantastic! Thank you for the reply. Very much appreciated.

[Michael Fienen]

Let me know if there's any other info I can help with. I can always hit up the boss man for details that I don't know about.

[Brian Alves]

Hi Julie

 

Our communications department has 1 full time videographer who does it all from gathering raw footage to editing to uploading to Youtube. I take it from there and embed it into our website as a lead or simply part of the story.

 

Concepts are created by managing editor or other content producers then he goes out and creates the final video with some hand holding from Senior staff on what angle to take, what shots to use, music, etc... I'm sort of the video person as well but we only have one editing workstation so he has most of the work -which is preferred seeing he knows the ins and outs of the people he interviews and what raw footage he shot. Turnaround time is usually less than a day or two before it has to hit the web so for quick delivery its preferred he takes on every video - and he does get VERY busy with various promotional pieces to edit, video to accompany articles with, event DVDs etc., etc.

 

 

 

 

 

He gets very swamped with work to do.

[Marcy Sterner Gineris]

Our photographer moved into a videographer position a year ago since we felt the pull to produce more videos for the web and for general university projects. It's been terrific - she manages 1-2 video interns a year, who primarily work on weekly admissions on-the-street, youtube projects. She also edits 4-5 minute documentary-style videos for website use and for development. She's our expert in the field. Her position is housed fully within the marketing/communications department. She undertakes the entire process, from concept to final product and works 1:1 with university clients.

http://www.youtube.com/easternmennoniteuniv

[Tony Goins]

We hired a videographer about a year ago. He shoots and edits all of his own stuff, although story "leads" generally come from myself (the web content coordinator) or our PR guy. We have him doing mostly pr/news stuff, although I personally think he's best used doing videos for the website. Y'know, stuff that lives on the site for a while, rather than news stuff that disappears quickly.