Following a phone conversation, I sent the following email message to Nick Kelsh, of Kelsh Wilson Design, who directed the video prompt and gave it that casual quality with artful shots that also distinguishes the video we show our campus visitors.  (No surprise there, since the same team produced it.)  As with that project, Nick had an assist from Kevin Monko, who not only worked  on the shooting and editing, but also provided the funky background music.


Below the message is the screenplay I had written as something akin to a primitive storyboard.  As is evident in the final cut, the project evolved as it was being filmed.


From: Henry Broaddus

Date: July 18, 2008 1:38:12 PM EDT

To: Nick Kelsh

Subject: Video Essay Prompt


Attached is my first effort at describing the video essay prompt.  For context bear in mind that the concept springs from three basic ideas.


    1. Most students apply online now, but no institution is taking advantage of the fact that an online essay prompt need not be limited to text alone.


    2. The one thing that all applicants review are the application questions.  As much as they're intended primarily to aid our selection process, they're under-utilized marketing tools.


    3. Even to the extent that they aid our selection process, most colleges' essay prompts are terribly, terribly dull.  When we bemoan lifeless writing from students, it's at least as attributable to bad questions as it is to any lack of creativity on their part.  Setting livelier parameters should help everybody.


The text prompt itself will remain, and below it, we'd provide a YouTube link to our video, which is intended to be an interpretation of the prompt in 60-120 seconds.  Everything in the attached is still rough, and as always I'd be grateful for any insights and/or suggestions you have. 


HB

 
Video Prompt for Essay, First Treatment H. Broaddus, 2008-07-18, p. 1 (Part 1: People Aren't Words) A hand with a black flair pen moves into a shot of a plain piece of white paper (maybe with a W&M Admission letterhead) and begins to write. Camera speed picks up as the following words appear on the page somewhat faster than real-time as they're written by hand: Nobody fits neatly into 500 words, and Cut to a shot in which we pan a drawer of files or a crate of files or display a still-shot of a pile of files. We need a succinct visual representation of paper applications. It may be most effective if we stage a pile of Common Applications (clean, visible masthead) that are more immediately recognizable as applications even as they're less individually identifiable. Alternatively, we could try video in which drawer after drawer in our Operations Area is opened by a staff member. The whole point should be a strong visual of file volume. The word "these..." needs to superimposed on the video or still.  After a a brief pause, additional words appear, one at a time, to complete a text heading imposed on the video or still that reads "these...are never mistaken for this."  Crisp cut to a flurry of still photographs of student faces, possibly even the reuse of a flurry we're already using in the admission video for visitors.  Cut to the white of a computer screen on which a blank document is open. If we want to get visually creative with a transition, we could shoot the laptop screen flat with the pen that started our film hovering over it in order to create the illusion that we're back to the piece of paper. The pen and hand withdraw from the shot, and then typing noises sync with the following words as they appear on the screen letter by letter: Your essays, your recommendations, all the writing in your application for admission give us a snapshot Here the word "snapshot" gets highlighted and replaced, as if the writer is considering different words. Each one gets typed, highlighted, replaced, ending with "sense of you." snapshot simulacrum sample sense of you. Typing continues: It's less like what you do in a research paper than it is like what you do with a Facebook page or blog. At this point the cursor moves down the screen to the dock and pulls up a web page, already loaded, that displays the Facebook page for WM Admission. Hold shot just long enough for a gratuitous plug that the committee is on Facebook too. We may benefit by using one of several applications that captures video of a computer screen instead of actually shooting this part. (Part 2: Your Readers Aren't Who You Think They Are) Cut to a picture, and I'm struggling to find one that works, of the most stereotypical group of old white men we can find in something like a smoke-filled room. It needs to be an image from before trust busting or from another bygone political era. For the first time in the film, we hear a voice. The voice says the following: Many students think the admission committee looks like this... Cut to a picture of dogs playing poker or something similarly humorous that presents a foil to the picture of old white men. Obviously we need a picture we're confident we'd have permission to use. Any thoughts? The voice interjects: ...or maybe even like this. Cut to video of our admission officers, each on front of the same backdrop (ideally a backdrop that's distinctively William and Mary, and I'll need to keep thinking on this). The audio continues seamlessly even though the voice changes after each couple of words, and the editing creates a staccato effect whereby multiple members of the admission committee are seen. But in fact, the members of the William and Mary admission committee look like this. Some of us have been teachers, and all of us have been students. We're more interested in knowing you than judging you. (Part 3: Put Us on Notice) Cut to an iPhone screen (my iPhone arrives this week!) while thumbs furiously text the following. Keep that in mind when you're preparing your application and composing your 500 words. You're not telling us who you are; you're giving us a sense of who you might become. Slow dissolve to a black screen with white text. Hold shot long enough for text to be read.  Cut to the following final shot.  Depending on how the filming goes, we might cut from here to a quick outtake just for an accent, e.g. a messed-up take on the iPhone with a voice laughing and saying, "I can't type on this thing fast enough." We'll need some sort of simple soundtrack, especially for the text-heavy parts, and I think this should be similar to what you and Kevin did for the video we show our visitors. As you know, the aesthetic inspiration for this is a piece called "The Machine is Us/ing Us" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6gmP4nk0EOE). That style of music works very well. HB http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6gmP4nk0EOEhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6gmP4nk0EOEshapeimage_2_link_0shapeimage_2_link_1