Direction, Interviewing & Production: Saint Louis University "What Is a Billiken?" Combo Video
Having one of the nation's most unique mascots is cool, but trying to explain what a Billiken is sure can be difficult. The "What Is a Billiken?" video tries like heck to get the point across, though.
I originally conceived this project to be a simple video about what being a Billiken means to SLU students in terms that echoed the school's traditional, somewhat serious brand language, knowing that the video would be posted on the Be a Billiken website as well as SLU's main site (See my work on SLU's viewbook: https://www.behance.net/gallery/3051691/Saint-Louis-University-Viewbook). However, after interviewing the cast about a variety of topics and reviewing the footage, I realized that we could do something a little more special and fun. Working with a local video production company, I put together a video about the what a Billiken literally - not figuratively - was. In short, cast members didn't really know, which made for interesting soundbites. I presented that video to leadership as a counterpart to the serious definition of "Billiken," but they were wary of being too flip about the school mascot. As a compromise, I suggested attaching the "fun" video to the "serious" video and making it all available via a QR code on the back of the university's viewbook (the main print piece for student recruitment). The video was a hit and had more than 900 QR code views upon the viewbook's fall release - a great bonus for tech that we hadn't even planned to use.
Below: Watch part one of the video. Click the thumbnail.
Below: Watch part two of the video. Click the thumbnail.
