Unleashing our Creativity: Recruitment films for colleges that stand-out

Cheadle and Marple College Network

Paper Films have worked on many films for the private education and university sector, but when we were approached by a local state college network to make a recruitment film, we were excited to see how we could deliver complex creative ideas within a tighter budget.

We are passionate about education films, and didn’t want to make a bog-standard recruitment film, with long interviews, generic cut-aways of sports and lessons and sleepy music. We wanted something youthful, fresh and fun. Students are super media-savvy and devour user-created content which is why we knew we needed to make something that stood out and made them want to go to Cheadle and Marple College.

Ultimately, we developed two ideas over a two-year period. Each one putting the students front and centre and featuring an unusual camera technique.

As a Manchester based video production agency some of our favourite projects are those where we feel we’re working within our local community and working with the young people of our city made us feel proud to be a Northwest production agency.

How did we make the films?

In the first film we used a stop-motion video effect; allowing us to swap backgrounds, change people’s outfits and much more. We worked with a group of students over three days during the school holidays, following two students through their entire CAMs experience – from their first day to a post-exam festival celebration. We created two versions, one featuring a boy as the main actor, the other a girl. These films used a lot of the same content, but small tweaks allowed us to maximise value for the client and create two films.

The video production for this project was complicated, each shot had to be precisely situated, measured and matched to the previous shot, this required attention to detail and careful management of the cast to keep them upbeat and engaged throughout.

We worked with a local unsigned band who had attended the college and using a real track gave the film an unmistakably authentic vibe.

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This recruitment film turned out to be the highlight of the college’s outreach days and a few years later the college asked us to make a follow-up. The second film had the same brief but needed to feel fresh and different. We developed a ‘walking’ technique where a diverse range of students walked towards camera dramatically.

The backgrounds shifted and changed behind them as they walked, and punchy modern graphics appeared with an inspiring list of possible careers. Some of these careers were reflected in the sequences we filmed, showing students as prospective photographers, scientists, actors, sportspeople, politicians and much more. The tagline was ‘What do you want to be’ - positioning the college as the ideal destination for achieving a range of possibilities.