Lectures that take you places – Almeria

Client: University of Hull
Project: Geology course videos

As part of the University of Hull’s ‘Let’s get on with it’ campaign, Slate and Mortar were very pleased to be commissioned to produce a long-form course video (as well as a variety of social media edits) for their BSc Geology course, at the School Environmental Sciences. The school was keen to produce content that would feel authentic to its audience and was very keen to stay away from anything corporate. They wanted prospective students to get an idea of what studying the courses would really be about, and they felt that the best to communicate this was from the voices of the students themselves, peer-to-peer and in situ, practising what they preach.

This presented the opportunity to accompany the students on their annual field trip to Almeria, Spain, where the students go to a variety of unique rock formations and study localised geology. To keep the authentic feel, our video production team felt that a mixture of formats would work well, so user-generated-content (UGC) shot by the students, such as vlogs and video diaries, were accompanied by our video production crew’s contributions (all recorded with a handheld, travelogue aesthetic. Finally, for an additional layer of gloss, we added great-looking drone footage of the dessert and slow-motion portraiture shots.

To support the students in producing suitable (and useable) UGC, we sent a producer to the campus in advance of the trip, to run a half-day workshop with the students and academics, showing them how to frame their phone cameras correctly, how to utilise natural lighting, and how to ensure that their audio was clear and crisp, which is essential for creating content that drives a narrative along.

Editing was completed utilising the traditional travelogue style as a template, so a mixture of pieces to camera, basic graphics and picture-in-picture. We aimed to give the films a user-generated feel, but still have a high level of production value that reflected the University’s brand. A huge volume of additional social media content videos were created from this longer film, ranging from the full 6-minute duration, down to 6-second snapshots, all created using vertical, square horizontal formats, and produced for a range of online and owned channels.

To view a small selection of the suite of videos, please visit our showcase page, here.