LA REINA HIGH SCHOOL
Thousand Oaks, CA
Overview
La Reina High School is a private all-girls school located near Los Angeles, CA. Faced with steadily declining enrollment numbers, the school was in need of drastic and immediate action to combat that trend. Our team worked with them to launch an intensive blitz campaign, centered around a 60-second ad. To add to the pressure, we were on an incredibly tight timeline from signing to delivery.
My Credits:
Associate Producer
Production Lead
Camera
Editor
For most projects, our team’s strategy is to start with a rough idea of what the final product should look like and then let the content guide the direction of the video as we film. Because the stakes for this project were so high, a “wing-it” approach wouldn’t cut it.
Because of the school’s tight timeline, we had two days to shoot footage and only one day to edit the final package, leaving no room for error in the edit. We took the approach of creating two separate outlines for two video concepts. Option A was an interview-driven concept that relied on faculty, parents, and students to convey the selling points of the school. Because we didn’t want to risk the chance that our interview participants weren’t great on camera, Option B outlined a voice-over-driven video that would utilize a b-roll and animated graphics. We had to cover all our bases.
Pre-Production
Production
We flew in the night before the first shoot day with a crew of four people: two producers and two cameramen. When production began, we shot most of the interviews with the whole crew, giving us two camera angles and flexibility in the edit. Between interviews, we split into pairs of two to capture b-roll of different activities around the campus.
Luckily, the interviews were going well, and we were reassured that we could move forward with Option A, our preferred route. As we conducted the interviews, one of the producers took detailed notes with corresponding time stamps to speed up post-production.
Post-Production
There was no clear line between production and post-production during this project. We offloaded footage throughout the day as we had time, and I began cutting down b-roll and syncing interview audio in the evenings. This allowed us to hit the ground running when production officially wrapped. Fortunately, we had a spacious Airbnb to act as our creative hub as we pieced the ad together.
When production finally did wrap, the whole team worked together to draft an outline and brainstorm interview quotes from the notes we had taken. With some trial and error, we landed on a compelling script that hit on all of the selling points the school wanted to emphasize. After finding a fitting track, I was able to cut the interviews and b-roll together to create the energetic and compelling video featured above. I ended up finishing the final export of the video as our plane was landing back in D.C. on Friday afternoon.
RESULTS
When we took on this project, the school was struggling and there was no guarantee that our efforts would change that. So how did our campaign do? It was a home run. Following this project, their open house had the highest attendance within the last eight years. The school was overjoyed with our work, saying, “Everyone was talking about how they saw La Reina EVERYWHERE on social media!” and “You all just nailed that video ad...and we want to do another campaign with you.”
