Our target audiences' engagement with video content has increased demand to produce, curate and share top-quality video content across the University’s online channels, including our website and socials.
For example, our academic departments may want to create a video to promote a course, to showcase graduate profiles, or to promote an event. Other departments may want to create content to inform students and staff about services, initiatives, or policies.
We’ve several teams at the University who can advise and support the creation of your video content depending on your objectives.
Our Marketing and Student Recruitment Team look after all student recruitment activity, including advertising campaigns, Open Days, and producing marketing materials to promote courses. The team has marketing officers allocated to each faculty – you can contact your faculty marketing officer or send a general enquiry to marketing-team@essex.ac.uk, for advice prior to submitting your video brief.
Our Internal Communications Team can advise on messaging in any video idea which is targeting current students or staff. Find out how they can support you by emailing comms@essex.ac.uk.
Please be aware that all our videos must meet accessibility requirements. All videos with dialogue must also have subtitles/captioning which a viewer can choose to use when playing the video. Additionally, for a social media video, most viewers will scroll through their feed with sound off so if your post does not have captioning, your audience may simply scroll past. Further information on adding subtitles/captioning can be found in the Media Centre's resources on Moodle.
Whether you’d like to promote a new course or research project, conduct an interview, or film an on-campus event, the first thing to do is submit a video brief. Submitting this form will create a ticket in the video request system. The team will use your brief to work out who is best placed to support you in creating your video and contact you about next steps.
An initial meeting will be organised with the production team, the client requesting the video and relevant marketing staff. A storyboard, script, timeline and cinematography will be discussed to create a completion plan.
No work should be commissioned with external suppliers without submitting a video brief for our internal team to consider first.
Filming can be very time-intensive, and you may end up recording as much as an hour of footage for each edited minute in the final video, so consider the enormous job ahead for the video editors.
Please bear in mind that video production may need to be funded by the department.
Videos which don't meet our guidelines cannot be uploaded to the University's channels, including the website so please make sure you’ve consulted with our video team before production commences. It is much easier to make sure you are doing things in the right way from the start, than make changes at the end of the process.
Social media user-generated content
User generated videos provide engaging and authentic social content. For guidance on messaging and visual style considerations in user generated video contact social@essex.ac.uk
If you require equipment or technical support for user generated content, such as vlogging or podcasts, please email media@essex.ac.uk to enquire what resources are available.