Tell us a bit about your organization and what your specialty is in the film and video space.

We are the fastest growing 4-year university in Louisiana, and the #14 Public Regional Colleges in the South. 100% of our content is produced in-house for social media, advertising, and internal communications.

What is your organization’s ethos and how does it set you apart from industry competitors?

We are completely undergraduate focused, meaning that our primary goal is to grow the workforce of our surrounding communities and our state.

How can people join or learn more about what you do?

LSUA Media is a volunteer team of students working alongside the LSUA Division of Strategic Communications to create content for the university and create opportunities to learn and work in creative fields for our students.

If you are in the Louisiana area, and are looking for help on your photo or video set, our team of students are passionate about creating compelling content at a variety of skill levels.

Tell us about your Telly Award winning piece. What’s the story behind it?

“Are You Ready?” Silver Telly
This intention behind this piece was to share a glimpse into some of the high-impact programs we offer through the voice of a student (who is very involved and recognizable on campus). This was our highest production value piece from last year, taking several weeks of shooting (around Kyrn’s class schedule) and community partners allowing us to shoot at the hospital & agricultural facilities.

“Let’s Get to Work” Silver Telly
This is one piece from a series that highlights community partners and the students who were given internship opportunities. Britni and Mattia were our pilot episode, and gave us the enthusiasm and inspiration to make more of these pieces with our community partners.

What are you most proud of about this piece? What was your biggest challenge during production and how did you solve it?

I am most proud of the total execution of “Are You Ready?” and allowing students who helped with the production to see a concept move from idea, to script, to storyboard, to shooting days, and finally to see the finished product on TV.

For “Let’s Get To Work,” I am incredibly proud of the concept. As we filmed additional interviews, our employers and students fed directly into the theme of our initiative, entirely in their own words. Our community partners were so supportive, allowing us to take up their time and space to build interview sets in their workspaces, give us quiet and controlled sets, and sincerity in their comments.

Do you have any advice to other filmmakers based on your career or your team’s approach to work?

“I’ve never done that before” should empower you, not hold you back.

Can you share a behind the scenes story or fun fact about the making of your piece?

Our Strategic Communications team is highly effective, but very small compared to the universities we are ranking with, especially as we create everything in house. As the only video creator on staff (at a 7,700 student university) I’ve had to be scrappy to get these high production value projects out while balancing the rest of my job duties. Two easter eggs I enjoy pointing out are the two cameos in “Are You Ready?“: My tennis shoes on the stretcher (shooting on my back), and my supervisor (previously an educator) as the professor in the last scene.

My favorite part, to wrap the season of “Are You Ready?” was being able to present a Telly to our student talent, Kyrn. (We have portraits of Kyrn accepting his Telly as a surprise!)

Tell us about the most memorable response you got from this work.

“Are You Ready?”
Initially, the texts I got from our Senior Leadership relaying that THEIR phones blew up from supporters during the first premiere of the ad on television.

From the industry, a local ad agency (and my previous employer) reached out to me to ask which firm I hired to create “Are You Ready?” after seeing it run during a college football broadcast. Letting them know that we produce all of our video products in house is definitely a point of pride.

“Let’s Get To Work”
The outreach from other companies in our are bragging about THEIR LSUA students/graduates echoing the same sentiment confirmed to me that our message was clear and accurate.

Complete this sentence: ‘Great video storytelling is…’

… efficient, effective, and intentional.