Behind the Scenes: The Making of the RIT Enrollment Video

There is so much that goes into making a short clip that most people don't think about.

• Who do you want to be in the film?
• Where are you going to shoot it?
• What are you going to say?
• What props do you need? 

Just to name a few.

Laura and I worked with a group of students to develop a concept that was both funny and had the ability to get the message across.  For us, we wanted the video to be less of a training video and more of a way to remind people of the old system while create awareness about the new system.  


We also wanted to make people laugh, bringing out highlights of RIT that in some cases only someone who was attending RIT would understand.  We brought one of the guys in the film wearing a hockey helmet and carrying an umbrella, meant to represent the battle of the old SIS.


The project team was able to develop a concept that did everything we wanted to, then it was off to find our actors.


The two guys in the film are Saunders College of Business major Geoffrey Blosat and College of Health and Science Biomedical Science major Jeffrey Henstenburg. Both of these guys were great sports and really ran with our ideas and added their own personal touches.  I have known both of these guys since week one of my RIT experience through the Honors Orientation and the entire project team can't thank them enough for jumping on board and being so flexible with their time.   


We started off filming Geoffrey Blosat who plays the new enrollment student.  We headed off to Saunders college of business and filmed him enrolling in classes.  Then it was off to Barnes and Noble.  We filmed a couple of scenes that didn't make the final cut that included Geoff "shopping" for classes in the book store.  He picked up a lot of interesting books including: Social Media for Dummies, Organic Chemistry, and Statistics.

The next day we filmed Jeff Henstenburg at a Park Point Apartment.  He played the role of the old registration student.  We had him waking up at at 5:55 to go into "battle" with the system and try and beat out the old refreshing page.  The scene showing him preparing to go into battle features a hockey helmet (because we all know hockey is a big deal on campus) and an umbrella (a small play on the RIT Umbrella incident).  We filmed a couple of scenes of his angry fit when he couldn't get into the SIS system since he had woken up so early where he threw a chair, threw things around the apartment, and stomped around the apartment.

We hoped you enjoyed watching the video as much as we enjoyed making it and if you haven't had a chance to watch the video see it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pB_akmLkBe8&feature=youtu.be

Enjoy!