XCL Education: Video Examples
We Created This Web Page For XCL Education To Demo Our Videos
This page introduces you to the video work we have done for over 50 schools in Asia as well as gives a framework for a potential project around videos for XWA and XAA. What is most important to us is the message and creating videos that connect with your viewers. Below we will outline two video briefs and our approach to fulfill them.
The SchoolHouse Agency
The SchoolHouse Agency is led by Alexander Manton and Helen Barry and specialises in helping the top international schools in Asia tell their unique stories by empowering them with strategic and effective marketing and communication tools and content.
Alex is an American photographer and cinematographer from New York City, based in Asia for the past three decades. With 130 years of family history in education in Asia and having attended an international school himself, he understands the specific needs that international schools face (in fact, the term “Third Culture Kid” was originally coined at his school in India).
Helen is originally from Australia but has spent many years living in Asia, working with clients in several industries. As our Executive Producer, she does a great job making sure that clients’ needs are met and that productions run smoothly. Our clients love the way that she makes their lives easier every step of the way.
We are based in Singapore, but have worked in nearly every country in Asia for both educational and corporate clients, with a particular emphasis on Hong Kong, India, Thailand, and China.
What Makes Us Different: A Unique Focus On Schools
This specialty gives our school clients a lot of advantages over hiring a generalist video production company for their videos.
1. We know international schools like the back of our hand. We understand schools’ goals, priorities, issues, and challenges.
2. We understand what is cliche and what is really unique to a school.
3. We understand which schools compete with which particular schools and how to avoid marketing overlap.
4. We know educational systems and the difference between AP and IB and CBSE and IGCSE and …. well, you get the point.
5. We understand what marketing tasks should be kept in-house and what tasks can be more effective if outsourced to an agency.
6. Despite our experience, we approach each school with fresh ideas and a unique perspective, and a commitment to tell their own story in a way that connects with their perspective families.
How does this experience make a difference for schools? We plan the production based on your particular message and goals while emphasizing what makes your school really unique. We can do interviews with students, staff, and parents that have substance and connect with your viewers with information that they are looking for to make educational decisions. We also connect with your interview subjects well because we “speak their language”. We create videos that are on message, not just pretty pictures that move.
Project #1:
Introductory Videos for XAA
We have viewed the existing Superintendent video. We feel that we can do better and create content that fulfills the brief better.
We propose a short series of videos rather than one video. In this way, each video can focus on one particular message and won’t have to cover too many topics at once. In addition, the videos can target different uses at the same time. For the website, one short video can be featured on relevant web pages, such the superintendent’s message, the curriculum, and the campus. Then, when teachers have been hired, we can do another video highlighting the teachers. This will form a video series that can be constantly expanded as the school gets closer to opening. This series of videos can also be emailed to families as part of a “drip campaign” or used on social media.
The three videos that we propose are: 1. The Campus; 2. The Vision, 3. The Head of School.
The Campus video will be a combination of Mr. Carney speaking about the new campus. He would go into not only the “what” of what is being built but the much more important of “why” – why were classrooms designed the way they were to facilitate learning? What was the thought behind the spaces? His interview would be accompanied by renders of the new campus in a similar way that they are used in the existing video, but more of them. By splitting up the videos, we have more time to explain the campus.
The Vision video would go into what makes XAA unique and why it fills a very important gap in the current offerings of international schools in Singapore. XAA offers an affordable American education, which makes it the first in this space in Singapore (other schools in this space are not American, such as OWIS, EtonHouse, etc). This offers families an alternative to expensive American schools such as Singapore American School and Stamford. This is shared nowhere in the existing video. This video would go into the curriculum offering and what it can lead to in higher education in the US as well.
The third video would give Mr. Carney time to delve a bit more into how he has come to lead XAA and how his background has brought us to this position. The existing video only touches on this, but is not deep enough. We would like to hear what he has learned in his experience and how that will steer XAA. He can go into his own educational philosophy as well.
The videos will be created in a way that they can be edited into either a series of short videos or one longer video, or both.
The goal of these video galleries below is to show example videos that we have done that highlight aspects of our idea for the introductory videos for XAA.
Superintendent: Sharing The Vision Of The School
International School Bangkok (ISB) is one of our favourite school clients. The video below is a good example of a Head of School sharing the vision of a school, how it came to be developed in a very in-depth way, why it is important to the future of the school, and why students will benefit from that vision. This is the type of deep message that we’d like to see from Mr. Carney at XAA. Inspire us and show us why sending our child to XAA will set them up for a great future. If we are impressed by the way you think, we will be impressed with the way that you will help our child to think.
The Importance Of The Message
When you don’t have supportive footage yet because the campus hasn’t been built yet, the message becomes of utmost importance. What is said needs to carry the entire video. Below is a good example of a strong message with only very little supportive footage. The speakers refrain from superficial messages and dive into the details of what makes an education at GIIS different – that the school has spent the time to develop a unique educational framework with the goal of educating the whole person, one that staff from all areas of the school adhere to and promote on a daily basis.
Superintendent: Sharing The Vision Of A New Campus
This is an example of a Superintendent sharing the vision of a new campus with two elements – rendered images of the new campus and an explanation of why certain decisions were made for the new campus and their significance. Island School is one of the top international schools in Hong Kong, and is part of the English Schools Foundation’s 23 schools, our largest client. NOTE: Please don’t judge us on the quality of this interview as it was provided to us by the client.
New School Campus
Tanglin Trust School is one of our main video clients. They are building a new building and wanted key members of their staff to explain not only what each new space would be like, but why they were created the way they were and how that will extend the ability of Tanglin to provide an even better education to students with this new building. What we want to stress here is the “why” and the significance of the space, not just that it will be new and state of the art. Stress the story behind the space. Ex. “our classrooms were designed with collaborative learning in mind, to develop teamwork in our students”. These are good examples of using renders as well.
Project #2:
Teacher Recruitment and Admissions Videos for XWA
The goal of these video galleries below is to show example videos that we have done that highlight aspects of our idea for the videos for XWA.
Teacher Recruitment Videos
This gallery is an overview of some of the best teacher recruitment videos we have done for international schools over the years. There are a lot of videos here from all over Asia, so make sure to click the next pages in the gallery and they will start to appear.
Admissions Videos
This gallery is an overview of some of the best overall and admissions videos we have done for international schools over the years. There is a good mix of teachers’ voices and student voices to address a wide spectrum of prospective families.
Marketing Videos
This gallery is an overview of general marketing videos we have done for international schools over the years. Subjects range from Vision & Values to specific academic programs and everything in between.
SAS Divisional Videos
We are quite proud of this set of videos, so we thought we’d share these as well. These are divisional videos we did for Singapore American School. Instead of a traditional interview and following a single child through a “day in the life” scenario, we decided to not have any interviews and pick a song that seems to sum up that age group well. We went one step further and used songs that had lyrics that seemed appropriate to the age group of the video. The idea worked very well. These four videos were some of the most popular videos we did for SAS because the kids and parents could relate to them very well, the songs are very catchy, and the message was friendly and light.
OTHER MARKETING SERVICES
In addition to video marketing, we offer our international school clients other marketing services as well. From admissions strategy to admissions software; from design of all sorts to website support; from specialised consultants to …. Well, we do a lot now. Click below to explore more: