Video

Interviews will be a primary source of content for your video projects. When filming an interview, it’s important to be intentional about the way the subject is framed: where they are looking, how they are placed in the shot, and how the visual setup informs the scene.

Camera Awareness

Some videos are better suited by the interview subject looking into the camera, while others benefit from interview-style framing with the subject speaking to an off-screen interviewer. Generally, looking into the camera works best only when the subject is directly addressing information or making an appeal to the audience, such as a welcome video for incoming students, or a video meant to recruit attendees for an upcoming event. Interview-style framing is more appropriate for subjects talking more generally about something, but not to the audience directly.

Rule of Thirds

One of the primary guidelines of still photography composition, the Rule of Thirds applies to video as well. Instead of placing your subject in the center of the frame, position them closer to the left or right sides. An exception to this is if the subject is speaking directly to the audience, where centering them may be more appropriate — however, even camera-aware subjects can benefit from Rule of Thirds framing.

All footage, interview and otherwise, should be filmed horizontally. If the video will be used on social media, keep in mind how the video will translate to a vertical orientation. 

Environment

The environment behind and around your subject provides visual context to their words; make sure it is appropriate to — and doesn’t distract from — the intention of the video’s message. For example, the dean addressing a government agency might be best filmed behind a desk in the dean’s office, or in a classical room like Eliot Lyman or Special Collections; a student describing an educational software project might be better served by filming in a computer lab or a modern-looking classroom. Ideally, the subject will be subtly separated visually from the background by careful use of depth of field.

Headroom

Provide an appropriate amount of space above the top of your subject’s head; too little and they’ll look too big for the frame, too much and they’ll appear visually diminished.

B-Roll, or any footage not of an interview subject, should follow these basic guidelines:

Stability

Whenever possible, avoid filming handheld. Use a tripod, or other stabilization device such as a slider or shoulder mount.

Action

Generally speaking, movement is more interesting to watch than something still — it is what distinguishes the medium of video from photography. When filming people, show them doing something rather than sitting still. When filming non-living subjects, such as buildings, include something moving in the frame — a car, a tree blowing in the wind, or a person walking by. When filming a time-lapse outside, maximize the opportunity for movement — for example, film on a moderately cloudy day instead of a sunny or overcast day, to capture the movement of the clouds over and around your subject.

Motion

Adding motion is another way of making a shot with little action in it more interesting. Panning the camera over a subject, using a slider or dolly to move the camera past it, or keeping the camera still while racking focus through the scene are all ways to add visual interest and momentum to a scene.

Diversity

When filming in group or crowd environments, make sure there is a reasonable amount of diversity represented in your shots. The HGSE community represents diversity across many spectra, including race, age, and gender. We want to showcase this diversity in the videos we produce.

When creating video, it’s important to capture quality sounding audio. Audio in video should be crisp, clean sounding, with minimal background noise to convey the message to the audience. Consider filming locations in advance and how the noise might impede your recording. Try to find locations that limit noise interference. 

Tips for audio

Equipment

Rode mics and boom setups can capture clear audio, along with wireless lav mics. A Zoom H6 audio recorder also comes in handy with recording interviews. 

Testing

Record tests with interview subject beforehand. Capture a few sentences of them speaking in normal voice. Adjust the levels on the recorder as needed, -12dB consistently. 

Adobe Audition

A useful tool in tweaking audio and making it clearer. Here’s a rundown of adjustments to make:

• Filter and EQ – Parametric Equalizer – Loudness Maximizer
• Amplitude and Compression – Normalize –  95.8 
• Amplitude and Compression – Dynamics Processing – Smooth Vocal    
• Amplitude and Compression – Normalize – 95.8

After those adjustments, if there is still noise explore the options on Audition such as adaptative noise reduction or capture noise print + noise reduction tool under the noise reduction/restoration tab.

All HGSE video and multimedia content appearing on Harvard websites and ANY Harvard digital channels including social media must be accessible to everyone.

Multimedia content must include captioning, transcriptions, and audio descriptions as appropriate. There are many services available to support this in the most accurate ways.

• Harvard University recommends 3Play Media for this service.
• Other reputable services include Rev. 

All Harvard video channels, including HGSE’s YouTube channel, are routinely monitored and reviewed by Harvard University to ensure compliance with multimedia accessibility requirements. For most multimedia, this means taking steps to be sure that the video content is designed with accessibility in mind, and includes one or more of the following: 

• Captions
• Transcriptions
• Audio Descriptions

For more information and specific guidance about multimedia accessibility, visit: Harvard's Digital Accessibility site.

When planning to film on HGSE campus, please notify the Office of Communications and Marketing at the Harvard Graduate School of Education.

We encourage all video creators to follow good practices while filming on campus. 

Among those good practices includes making the effort to appropriately notify all relevant parties and audiences of the filming in advance, providing opportunities for students, faculty, and staff to opt out of filming. When such permission is not possible, then refrain from filming people in ways that single out individuals or show faces in identifiable ways. 

Additionally, please have interview subjects and other main subjects featured in a video to sign waivers. It is especially incumbent that waivers are always signed by anyone featured in a video who is NOT a part of the Harvard Graduate School of Education community. 

Do not film anyone under 18 in a video without appropriate permission and waivers signed by the child’s parent or guardian. 

Be mindful of how colors appear in your videos. Differences in lighting can significantly alter the color balance of your shots, and while manually adjusting the white balance settings on your camera can greatly help reestablish a normal palette, some additional adjustments in postproduction can go a long way.

General Tips

Many of the lights in HGSE’s buildings give a yellowish cast to video, which will be especially apparent in skin tone highlights. Color correction software allows you to not only add certain color hues, but also subtract them — lowering the yellow/orange levels of your midtones and highlights is often a good first step. 

Color correction isn’t just about fixing inaccuracies, it’s also about making your footage look its best. Adding subtle amounts of contrast (by darkening the shadows and elevating the midtones/highlights) and increasing the color saturation of shadows and highlights can help make footage pop without sacrificing realism. Small exposure adjustments can also re-balance the lighting in the scene.

The design of our lower third subtitles emphasize simplicity and readability/accessibility. It is simple to create in your video editing software.

Content

The subtitle should consist of three lines:

• Name
• Title
• Name of Organization/Affiliation

*More information on captioning individuals can be found in the next section.

Placement

Subtitles should be placed mid-screen and justified right or left in relation to the subject speaking in the video. For example, if your interview subject is positioned toward the right side of the frame, the corresponding subtitle should appear on the left side midscreen, with its text left-justified.

The design of our lower third subtitles emphasize simplicity, readability, and accessibility. It is simple to create in your video editing software. 

Formatting

• The font used for the subtitle is Roboto.

• The top line is BLACK (weight) of the font at size 45, the Bottom two lines are BOLD (weight) at size 35.

• Text is left-justified against the inner Title Safe guide. 

• Behind the text is a midnight blue (#1e3155) solid, set to 65% Opacity and trimmed to leave a small buffer on the top, bottom and end side of the text. 

Video is different from other media, in that identifying individuals usually occurs simultaneously with something else happening on-screen (for example, the individual is speaking while their subtitle appears). As such, it is important that subtitles identify the subject as quickly as possible, to not distract from the primary content at that moment.

Many of the people you caption will have multiple titles, and those titles may be lengthy. Here are some basic rules to keep subtitles from becoming unwieldy and distracting:

General

• Subtitles should take up no more than half the horizontal length of the frame. Subtly shrinking font size is acceptable if needed to fit a longer name on the screen but should not be more than a few size points to maintain legibility and visual consistency between subjects.

First Line

• The top line features the individual’s name. The only item you may add is HGSE degree information, which is formatted as the abbreviation of their degree and a shortened rendition of the year it was received (with no spaces): Ed.M.’98, Ed.D.’12
• Only identify HGSE degrees for alumni and VIP – NOT faculty; we do not include degrees from other universities.

Second line

The second line features the individual’s title. If the person has more than one title, pick the one that is most relevant to the context in which they are being featured in the video. If you are not sure, ask the subject when you are interviewing them which title they would prefer.

• Faculty titles should include the category of instructor (Senior Lecturer, Professor, etc.); the field in which they teach (Human Development Program, Teaching and Teacher Leadership Program, etc.) is generally not included. 
• Do not include named professorships in faculty titles, except in rare cases where the named professorship is relevant to the video. (For example, the title “Ford Foundation Professor of Practice in International Education” would be shortened to “Professor”). 
• Do not include degrees of faculty even if they graduated HGSE.
• Keep subtitles to three lines (name + title + organization) when possible. In the rare case that a subject’s title will not fit on one line, continuing to a fourth line is allowed. Make sure the length of the transparent solid behind the subtitle is adjusted accordingly.

Every video HGSE releases includes school branding. This takes the form of a sequence of short animations (called a video bumper) at the end of the video, showcasing the school’s vertical logo, followed by the credits page. 

When Editing

Generally, the format for sequence of animation at the ending is as follows:

[Cross dissolve]
Blue screen ( HEX #1e3155)
[fade in  LOGO] for a duration of two seconds 
Hold logo for three seconds [fade out – LOGO for a duration of two seconds
[cut (no animation)]
Credits page

For the beginning of the video, if branding is to be used the format is as follows:

Blue screen (HEX #1e3155)
Fade in – LOGO over a duration of 00:10 seconds
HOLD logo for two seconds
Fade out – LOGO over a duration of 00:10 seconds
Blue screen – cross dissolve to video 

Special Cases

There will be times when a video is seen as coming from more than just the Ed School, and co-branding will be required. This is rare, but when it happens, you can create a new bumper animation with all logos featured. The format for a custom bumper ending should be:

Blue screen
All logos cross dissolve on together [00:10 sec.]
Logos stay on screen [2 sec.]
Logos cross dissolve off, leaving white background [00:10 sec.]
Cuts to credit page [2 sec.]

Video content endings consists of two cards: one screen with the logo and one screen with proper credits as follows:

Placement

• A blue screen is cross-faded at the end of the video. Then the HGSE logo fades in (one second) and holds for two more seconds. The first card solely featured a faded-in HGSE shield/logo at a size of 125 px throughout. It is centered on a BLUE (HEX #1e3155) card with no other content on the page at the same time. The top of the word “Harvard” in the logo should not go outside of the Title Safe area.
• Directly following the logo card is another full screen devoted to credits, which are formatted in the center of a BLUE (HEX  #1e3155) screen with the top line in Roboto BOLD size 35, and bottom like Roboto BLACK size 40. The second line is where naming goes. 

Formatting

• Credits are written in Roboto, which matches the font used in subtitles, and in the color white. Rare exceptions can be made for stylistic reasons, as long as it is an approved font from our HGSE Brand Guidelines. 
• Credits are cut in and the video ends on credit.

Always use these fonts, except for rare instances when an alternate font (within HGSE’s guidelines) would better fit your video’s design.

Standard Fonts

• The most commonly used fonts in HGSE videos are: Sans Serif: Roboto
• Use the Bold (size 35) or Black (size 40) versions of these fonts.

Accepted Fonts and Colors 

The fonts used in HGSE’s videos are in line with the approved fonts in HGSE’s Brand and Visual Identity Guidelines, as well as those approved for use in media for the Campaign for HGSE. View the acceptable HGSE color palettes.

The standard format is white text on a midnight blue (HEX #1e3155) background. 

Layout

Keep text to a minimum amount. Avoid clumping large amounts of text together; find ways to break them up to help viewers read more quickly. Selective use of varying typeface heaviness can draw attention to key names and phrases.

Music plays an integral role in setting a mood for your video. It also helps create a feeling of cohesion and can be used to seamlessly transition between story acts.

Harvard University offers limited membership access to Extreme Music, an online music library with a range of high-quality original content across a range of genres and instrumentation. This is the HGSE Marketing and Communications Office primary source for music for video.

Part of the agreement with Extreme Music includes crediting every track in the video itself. The formatting for this credit is:

• Roboto (black) size  40: "Name of Song" by "Artist Name"
• Roboto (bold) size 35: "Courtesy of Extreme Music"

Levels

Music levels on a video should be adjusted to be somewhere between -18 and -24 dB so the audio from the interview or voiceover can be heard clearly. 

Copyright

The most important thing to note is the copyright of the music you are using. Video producers should be aware that using any recognizable song or any clip from another media source is a probable copyright violation, and it should be avoided. If you specifically need to use a previously published piece of music for some reason, it is likely to require a paid licensing agreement; it is vital to ensure such an agreement is in place before a video is released. Note: Even though Harvard is a nonprofit educational institution, we cannot cite the education clause of "Fair Use" law as justification to use copyrighted music without permission. 

HGSE recommends that producers avoid copyrighted music and find music that is made available under Creative Commons or Public Domain licensing, which allows it to be used for free, without prior permission. Make sure that your use of this material is in line with the specific version of the license under which it was released; for example, many Creative Commons-licensed songs require attribution (including the song and artist in the credits of your video).