After receiving confirmation that philanthropist Jon M. Huntsman intended to give a $25 million donation to Utah State University’s College of Business, the college immediately began making plans to honor him and his wife for their generosity. Included in those plans was a short video that they hoped would reinforce the upward and accelerated movement the college was experiencing. The USU marketing department called on Advent Creative to capture that momentum and refine it into a 3 to 4 minute piece that could be shown at a special banquet for dignitaries and posted on the college’s website.
The challenge we faced was to capture that sense of movement and momentum in a video comprised largely of talking heads. To accomplish this, we decided that each and every shot needed to be in motion in some way, including any on-camera interviews. We developed a dolly rig that allowed us to do 180-degree dollies around each interview subject while they gave their performance. We complemented this technique with sweeping jib moves, dollying b-roll and a number of time-lapse shots that carried the energy of the message from scene to scene.
The college hoped to portray a number of key messages in this video so we also chose to integrate keywords into select scenes in 3D. This drove those points home in a creative and noticeable fashion.
The video premiered on a large projection screen at the official announcement banquet to an audience of over 300 people, including many university and Utah dignitaries. The video was also on the front page of the college’s website for nearly a year.