As you’ve hopefully noticed we’ve recently launched the Schools Plus YouTube Channel, which we’ve been steadily populating with our Virtual Tours. These brief videos give you a tour around one of our partner schools, with an emphasis on showcasing the range of impressive facilities available for hire at the site.
A Virtual Tour around Knights Academy.
We’ve loved the process of seeing these videos grow from a simple idea to a working production and we’re thrilled with the end results. This blog, written in part with The Collective who produced the videos for us, will give you a glimpse into the creative journey along with including some of our favourite videos so far.
First, let’s start with where the original idea came from. We’re always keen to show off our wonderful schools anyway we can to our customers. Across our website each of our schools has their own microsite, which we populate with as many images of their facilities and venues as possible.
As proud as we are of these images, they sometimes alone don’t tell the whole story of a facility. This is where we had the idea to include walk through video tours of the schools. The videos we envisioned to be hosted on each school’s microsites so that visitors can see clearly what is available at each school to hire.
The beauty of using video rather than just a list of facilities or photographs is that our customers can get a feel for how large the sports hall is, or how the dance studio is set up, just by viewing the video, and therefore feel confident to make a booking.
With the idea now in mind we looked to find a professional video production company to partner with who shared our vision and were excited enough by the project to fully commit to it. The Collective, based in Poole, Dorset, just down the road from us in Bournemouth, ticked all these boxes.
The Collective are a professional video production and marketing agency who have been working within the education sector for many years. They are very familiar with working within a school’s environment, which was a big plus for this project as they know how to navigate the delicate issues you can face when filming in these locations.
The first video we collaborated on together was a virtual tour around Copthall School. We were instantly blown away by the quality and the pace of the video. Also impressive was the mixture of different shots used including the use of a drone to provide aerial footage over the school’s sports fields.
A Virtual Tour around Copthall School.
During one of our initial planning meetings with The Collective, they approached us with the idea of creating 360 images for each of the facilities along with the virtual tour video. We loved the idea and immediately went ahead with it.
Having immersive clickable 360 images for each facility really gives our customers a true feel for the venue and again deals with the issue of a flat image giving little sense of size or space.
After the success of the first video we instantly went back to The Collective to put a plan in place to film further schools across the Schools Plus estate.
The planning of these shoots was perhaps the trickiest part, as due to the busy school week all video footage must be shot either at weekends or during school holidays to minimise any disruption to school activities.
On all our filming shoots we are lucky to have our trusted Venue Managers are on hand to co-ordinate the day and ensure the facilities are looking their very best.
We’re proud to say as of April 2019 we’ve managed to produce and upload four Virtual Tour videos that currently sit on our Youtube Channel. We’re very happy with how each of these have turned out and the quality of The Collective’s work on them.
Please keep an eye on our Youtube Channel for further updates as we look forward to uploading videos frequently throughout the year.
If you’re interested in finding out more from The Collective and seeing if they could help with your video marketing requirements, then please visit their website – https://www.thecollectivegroup.co.uk/
Contact Us –
Phone – 0345 222 2323 | Web – http://www.schoolsplus.co.uk/ | Email -enquiries@schoolsplus.co.uk
Virtual Tour Videos – Schools Plus working with The Collective Group