How Assumption High School sparked fireworks with an out-of-the-box video

By | September 20, 2012 | Comment |
Posted in: Admission, Best Practices, Case Studies, Communications, Community, Featured, How-to, Interview, Q&A, Social Media in Education Blog

Imagine if you hit a “home run” as an enrollment manager: Would your picture-perfect scenario generate more than 45,000 video views, 17 pages of alumni comments, and oh, 30+ additional students in your freshman class? Impossible you say? Not for Elisabeth Russo at Assumption High School in Louisville, Kentucky. Her team created a knock-out lip-dub music video to Katy Perry’s “Firework” that generated the perfect scenario for a private school.

I recently caught up with the music video’s leader, Elisabeth Russo, Assumption’s Enrollment Director/Graphic Designer, to talk about the viral video that private school folks are talking about. We first heard it from the great Ian Symmonds at the edSocialMedia Summit. I was amazed with the process he described, so I had to hear it myself.

Hear how her school made it all just happen in two, 1.5-hour sessions, led by the students. A one-on-one interview here:

See the original Lip Dub music video here:

Here’s more from Behind the Scenes.

She’s going to try and get there again this year. Want to watch this year’s recruiting video? Here’s their latest rendition, an original composition focusing on their newest themes, “Imagine.”

What’s your home run? What have you done to knock it out of the park?

Related posts:

  1. 3 Ingredients of Your School’s Social Strategy: Part One
  2. 3 Ingredients of Your School’s Social Strategy: Part Two
  3. Ian Symmonds: Viral Video: Bringing Culture to the Curb
  4. I’m not addicted to Twitter – I’m addicted to ideas
  5. How to Pitch Social Media to Your Boss
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About the Author

Madeline Riley

Madeline Riley (formerly Senkosky) spends her days organizing events and trainings as the edSocialMedia community manager. Prior to ESM, she was the Director of Publications at Stratton Mountain School, a ski and snowboard academy in southern Vermont. When she's not using social media, she's often doing something active, whether it be yoga, biking, and/or running.

  • http://www.facebook.com/jess.vancuren Jess Van Curen

    These videos are truly incredible!! I am so impressed with with Elisabeth’s execution and the participation from students. I do marketing and advertising at Admiral Farragut Academy in St Pete, Florida http://www.farragut.org and I would love to do this with our students. I do feel like it may be more challenging for us in that we are a PreK-12th boys and girls, boarding school (7-12th grade) which also has an naval jr. ROTC program in high school…. but you’ve really got me thinking. Thank you for this!!! Love it! :)
    I do have a couple questions:
    1. Who did your videography and editing? Did you have to hire someone?
    2. It looks like you just carried that boom box around and everyone could hear when it was their part, is this true? Did you add music over it during the editing stage or use what was heard from only the girls singing and the boom box only?
    3. Did you have to buy rights to the song “fireworks”?

    I really appreciate your answers!

  • http://twitter.com/KAC_at_SSATB Kate Auger-Campbell

    These videos are great! With so many students involved I can’t believe it only took 3 hours to shoot. Compliments to Elizabeth for the vision of a finished piece and to including her students in the creation process. Talk about whole school admissions perspective!
    Did they hire someone to do the filming? I think I might have missed that in the interview.

  • http://twitter.com/madelinesen Madeline S. Riley

    I think I may have removed that line in the interview, but yes, she did
    hire someone local to do the filming. Then, they worked together to
    produce the vision she had.

  • http://twitter.com/madelinesen Madeline S. Riley

    Thanks for the comment, Kate!

  • http://twitter.com/madelinesen Madeline S. Riley

    Hi Jess,
    Thanks for the comments! I’ve asked Elisabeth to come respond. She’s visiting schools this week, but she said she will answer as soon as she’s able. Thanks for your patience!

  • Elisabeth Russo

    Hi Jess, I am so sorry I answered your questions this weekend but when I checked back today it was gone! Let’s try this again, and I hope this works this time…

    Thank you for watching the videos! I think that it would be a lot of fun to try to do a video with a wide range of ages, and it would give them the opportunity to really work together.

    To answer your questions…
    1. We did hire someone to do the videography and editing. We used Dustin Davidson of Cool World Productions here in Louisville.

    2. I did just carry around the boom box. It actually was a ipod dock that played the music really loud. The louder the better because it gets the kids more active and involved and less afraid of singing! We had the song on the ipod, which made it easy to switch to the different parts of the song when needed.

    3. We did not have to buy the rights to the song, because the only place the the video appeared was on youtube. We included the rights and licensing information there so we did not have to worry about that. We were unable to embed the video into our website or use any of the footage for our commercial because we did not have rights to the song. Which is another reason we wrote our own original song this year!

    If you have any other questions you are more than welcome to contact me!

  • Pingback: Elisabeth Russo | edSocialMedia Summit — April 2, 2013

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