‘I just turned the camera on, and I just said it,’ said Brown, a sophomore mechanical engineering major. ‘I talked about what was going right in my life and how Syracuse has helped make every one of those things happen for me.’

 

Brown was one of about 25 Syracuse University students who were given video cameras to record their day-to-day lives — anything from classes to partying to being with family and friends. The resulting footage will be used in a recruitment video for prospective students. The project is expected to continue until fall 2011.

 

SU collaborated with local film production and marketing company Solon Quinn Studios. University officials approached the studio with the prospect of creating a new recruitment video, but the company developed a reality-based concept, said Ben Schechter, the producer at Solon Quinn Studios. 

 

Schechter said the main concept is to capture the lives of students in the finished product. He said some videos can come off as a cliché, with students touting the university. 

 

‘We really wanted to get into the lives of the students,’ said Schechter, also an SU alumnus. 

 

Students were chosen by several organizations within the university. The SU admissions office, among other campus organizations, gave the production team a list of students who were said to be reliable and responsible, Schechter said.

 

Nicci Brown, associate vice president of marketing and communications at the university, said the current recruitment video has been used for the past 10 years. Though there have been occasional updates to the video, this is a new realm for a promotional video for SU. 

 

‘I believe most schools have videos of this type, but I’m not aware of a school that is producing its video in this way,’ said Brown in an e-mail interview.

 

Students were instructed to tape anything and everything. Understanding that it’s difficult to have the camera going 24 hours of the day, the production company wanted the students to be frank and not hold themselves back, Schechter said.

 

‘To get someone to be honest and candid with a camera requires a trust that is so fragile that it’s hanging on by a thread,’ he said. ‘So the second that a person feels that they need to censor themselves, even for a moment, immediately that trust is broken, and it becomes cliché.’

 

Some students find that balance tricky. Sierra Fogal, a senior marketing and entrepreneurship and emerging enterprises major, said she’s concerned about portraying herself in a certain light. 

 

‘You don’t know what you should get on the camera or what you shouldn’t get on the camera,’ she said. ‘You think about how you’re coming across.’

 

Solon Quinn Studios contacted students before the end of last semester and informed them that they could pick up a Kodak Zi8 pocket digital camera and start taping their experiences at home. The university purchased most of the cameras, and Kodak donated some of them, Schechter said. 

 

He said it is important for college students to record their lives away from the university because their lives are multidimensional. Even when a student goes home for a holiday, Schechter said, the university is still a part of them. 

 

‘College isn’t just campus, but college is a period of someone’s life,’ Schechter said. ‘So really, SU is in the lives of these students and not just a place that they go to.’

 

Joshua Fishman left for Beijing after picking up his camera. Being in a foreign country gives him an opportunity to show prospective students a different aspect of college. 

 

‘I think it’s an awesome way to show a range of people’s experiences at a university, from sitting in the classroom to being on the other side of the world,’ said Fishman, a junior marketing and entrepreneurship and emerging enterprises major. ‘It’s cool to see that when they’re applying to a university.’ 

 

Fishman said he’s been taping several events during Chinese New Year while traveling in China. He said he captures anything he would usually record with a camera.

 

Other students involved have brought their cameras to basketball games, dining halls, weekend parties and classes, with their professors’ consent. 

 

Students then upload footage to a server created for the project every few days, which makes uploading the film easier than mailing memory cards. Because students will be taping for six to eight months for the video, uploading smaller amounts of footage will help the company sift through it efficiently. 

 

The current recruitment video shows a comprehensive history of the university told by recognizable alumni. The university and Solon Quinn Studios plan for this video project to provide a more human, relatable aspect to university life, Schechter said. 

 

‘What’s happening is an informational video and mixing it with almost like a documentary approach,’ he said. ‘In one end, we know how this product is going to end up. But there will be those magical moments that you only get from real life, and that is what’s most exciting about this.’

 

smtracey@syr.edu