Higher Ed Storytelling University

John Azoni (00:00.251)
right?

Randolph Infinger (00:00.93)
Correct, yep, Randolph and Finger.

John Azoni (00:02.874)
Okay. My guest today is Randolph Infinger, Rand-off. Let me try that again. Rand-off.

Randolph Infinger (00:08.94)
No worries.

I like that, that's cool. A little bit of a pause there.

John Azoni (00:16.348)
Maybe we'll just leave that leave that in. My guest today is Randolph Infinger. Randolph is a Nashville based video producer and director with a love for conceptual storytelling and all things music. He currently serves as the senior video producer at Vanderbilt University. Randolph, welcome to the show.

Randolph Infinger (00:35.63)
Hello, hello, how are you?

John Azoni (00:37.622)
I am doing good. I'm excited to talk to you. know when we had a great conversation in our pre-call and it's, don't know that I've had another video producer on the podcast, so.

Randolph Infinger (00:51.822)
Well, I'm glad to be here. I love talking video and I love thinking about video, especially like, you know, from our side of the world where it's like, you know, the artist side and also like the more like leadership side and the conceptual side. So yeah.

John Azoni (01:05.316)
Yeah, for sure. So I, for our listeners, you know, we're gonna, we're gonna steer the conversation towards like what would be relevant, I think for marketing directors and you know, Markham leaders. And we might get into a little bit of, you know, video bro chat, but you can always fast forward. I'm sure people fast forward through my episodes.

Randolph Infinger (01:25.358)
I love it.

John Azoni (01:33.22)
frequently anyways. Alright, so what's something that people would be surprised to know about you?

Randolph Infinger (01:34.688)
I'm

Randolph Infinger (01:42.638)
You know, so actually I guess something that's kind of interesting is I didn't start being a video producer at all I didn't really like I didn't want to do video I would say at first and I kind of fell in love with it actually from doing digital marketing and a company actually asked me a music record label here in Nashville is like do you know how to make lyric videos and I said sure and so that kind of like jump-started my transition from digital marketing into actually like

videos for myself which is yeah something I love to do and also I really married it something people should know about me and maybe don't is that I love live music and I'm always you know going to concerts I always take a camera and that's yeah kind of married those two loves together and that's where I started

John Azoni (02:30.085)
So are you, so in Nashville, are you in a band or were in a band or anything like that?

Randolph Infinger (02:35.224)
I've been in a lot of what I would just call garage bands, where it's just like me and some guys and we're like, maybe we'll get a gig over here and we might play one or two shows a year, but yeah, nothing super serious. But I do love to play, I play guitar, grew up as a jazz guitarist actually, that was my first kind of love, I guess.

John Azoni (02:55.493)
Cool. Good deal. I'm really into jazz and I mean, I don't know much about it, but like if I'm like cooking or something or just like around the house on a Sunday, I'll have Alexa play a happy jazz playlist. And I just love like just hearing, you know, people noodling on, you know, jazz riffs. And it's just something about that just like, just literally does like boost my mood.

Randolph Infinger (03:11.811)
same.

Randolph Infinger (03:22.19)
Oh yeah, I mean that's what I do when I'm like, know, especially like a creative rut where I'm just like, oh, I don't want to do this anymore. I'll just go and noodle on my guitar and it's the best little like outlet and yeah, love jazz.

John Azoni (03:33.946)
Yeah, one of my clients, are whole sort of look and tone is for the music is is like this sort of upbeat jazz music. And I don't have any other clients that that like that. But they're like, no, we want this one. We want this to be the feel like it's kind of academic, but it's also kind of like, you know, upbeat personality, you know, and I've and ever since then, I've been like, I love.

Randolph Infinger (03:55.118)
Kinda fun, right? yeah.

John Azoni (04:01.709)
I love editing with jazz music. It's just like, it's just, it's, love editing their stuff cause it's like, it's like, I'm happy, man.

Randolph Infinger (04:07.458)
I wouldn't dream.

think we have the same thing, not to get too down this rabbit hole, but yeah, we have a client too that loves jazz for their clients and it just makes so much sense. It's so cool and like, it's kind of elegant in a way too, you know? So it kind of gives off like an elegance as well as like fun and happy. yeah.

John Azoni (04:27.611)
Yeah, think it's a good, know, higher ed loves symphony music, I think, you know? And so I think it's a good, it's a good, you know, veering off of that path. One of my pet peeves as a videographer is like a not, like a video that's like not dramatic at all, like in the messaging, but like a really dramatic, like.

Randolph Infinger (04:32.578)
love strings. Yes.

Randolph Infinger (04:49.483)
I'm here.

the violin is going crazy.

John Azoni (04:52.995)
like water worlds, like Kevin Costner sort of song underneath. And that drives me nuts. anyway, so tell me about Vanderbilt and how your team is structured, skips a little way of the land.

Randolph Infinger (04:57.026)
Yeah. Yeah.

Randolph Infinger (05:11.904)
Yeah, yeah. we, a visual media department, we are, we have our visual media director, John, he's great. We have a project manager that kind of, you know, make sure that we're all able to do our jobs to the best ability. And then in that group, there are four videographers and one photographer, which is great because I'm sure, you know, universities have so much going on all the time. So our in-house team is constantly, constantly doing work.

And that's just the visual media team because our entire creative team, which is even larger, we might be as much as think 50 people now, but that is content. So people who are writing stories, have, what is it? Social media, which is obviously huge for distributing our videos. We have design. You know, we have the whole gambit that we work with on this team, but as a visual media team, we're pretty, pretty locked in with our core, about five or six of us.

John Azoni (06:10.669)
Okay, cool. That's a pretty good amount of people. So are you, do you manage like all the video folks or are you like one of a couple video producers or?

Randolph Infinger (06:23.552)
Yeah, I'm one of the few. we all honestly, we, John is kind of our, our visual media director is kind of like our, overseer, I guess you could say like our, would be our supervisor or manager. And then all of us are basically kind of like video producers, video managers. It's very loose and kind of that sense. And it's really nice because, we all work on different stuff, but also the same kind of stuff. So we're always, you know, helping out on different projects, but also kind of doing our own projects and.

different departments. So it works out really well for us, I think. even with having a huge creative team and like all like four videographers sounds like a lot, we still are like always relying on freelancers and just any kind of help from students to continue to like, you know, make more videos.

John Azoni (07:14.139)
So are you, is our requests from other departments coming through you guys and you guys are sort of triaging projects?

Randolph Infinger (07:21.73)
They do. So we do like, we'll get to this I think later, but we use Wrike as like a project management platform. And so basically we'll have partners across the university and they can submit requests, but we are very, you know, we don't take every request. We want to make sure that we're in line with our entire creative team with like the Vanderbilt brand. So basically in that sense, we will, you know,

take a request and if we say yes, we'll work on it, we'll help conceptualize it, pre-production, all of the stuff. But if we don't, we offer a huge list of Vanderbilt, excuse me, trusted freelancers that we've worked with throughout the year. So yeah, that's our general process.

John Azoni (08:02.991)
Gotcha.

So what kind of projects does your team typically prioritize?

Randolph Infinger (08:11.628)
We prioritize, I would say, we work on a little bit of everything is what I was gonna actually say before you say prioritize, but for priority size, we really want to make sure that we're in line with our big campaigns. So the Dare to Grow campaign is the huge marketing donor campaign we currently have. And that's really fun, because we can get super visual with that. We've done a lot of great videos with Dare to Grow. We also prioritize anything that represents our brand, anything that is like,

very important that will go on social and be very front-facing. We definitely prioritize those. think things that we still want to do a good job of, but we kind of let freelancers handle are events. So a lot of people want event recaps. Event recaps are great, but that's probably not the highest priority for a lot of us, and they don't always perform the best. So yeah, I think the big stories, the things that really...

hit and get feelings going or what we want to tell. So, or prioritize that is.

John Azoni (09:12.963)
Right. Yeah, that's good. And you, I just pulled up your, your LinkedIn here. You guys won an Emmy for

Randolph Infinger (09:23.948)
Yes, we actually won two.

John Azoni (09:26.649)
So tell, all right, so, and you mentioned the Dare to Grow, it was a PSA, so tell me about that project.

Randolph Infinger (09:32.11)
Yeah, so the one that I specifically kind of directed and edited was the 2023, believe it was, Dairy Grow PSA. That was an awesome, awesome project to work on because basically we get for each year we get one institutional spot that's called the PSA. And it's basically a commercial that we are able to put onto like our football games, our basketball games, you know, like as a free kind of like

spot, a promotional spot. And so we make this every year and I got the task to make it in 2023. And it was great because I got to go from like the inception of like the idea of what if we did this project with Enrique Bradfield, the baseball player to the final execution and like seeing it play on TV. So that was awesome. So yeah, very difficult to say the least.

John Azoni (10:21.979)
Mm-hmm.

Randolph Infinger (10:28.546)
to make a 30 second, like really well done commercial completely in house.

John Azoni (10:33.135)
Yeah. Yeah, it's tough. It's a, mean, that commercial approach is very storyboarded and then every, I feel like sometimes documentary stuff is easier. And I find storyboarded stuff can be kind of a beast. you know, I used to be part of a church and the pastor's wife reached out to me and was like, hey, can we do this? you know,

two minute like storyboarded thing like real quick and I'm like actually like if we're doing like a storyboarded thing that's like probably the the more complicated way because like she wanted like a mom like with like kids in the car like coming from hockey practice and so I'm like okay where are we gonna get the hockey equipment where are we gonna get the mom where we're gonna go yeah you gotta you have to you have to nothing is ready-made you have to like make everything from scratch so yeah I totally feel that 30 seconds people think that

Randolph Infinger (11:22.862)
Where are gonna get the car? Like all the things.

John Azoni (11:32.749)
I would just grab some students and film them walking through campus,

Randolph Infinger (11:38.036)
No, it is not that simple. mean, I think that's probably some of the things that we have the toughest part doing or like the logistics. Like that shoot, I think was like, it's a lot of different scenes. So it was, I don't, I want to say like 10 different scenes and to schedule students in their, you know, crazy social lives and they have classes all the time. And then to get leadership involved, it's a, it's a lot to say the least. The shooting is like the easy part. Once you're there, it's just like getting them there. So.

John Azoni (12:03.674)
Yeah.

John Azoni (12:07.439)
Getting, yeah, the scheduling is a beast. And I found we recently are, we're working on some faculty stories and for one university. And we're usually do student and alumni stories, but the template that we had for scheduling students.

just did not fit the faculty at all. it was just like, learned, it like such a splash of cold water of like, okay, faculty is like a whole different beast. So we just shot this thing. We had a crew down in Ohio shooting this yesterday and the scheduling for that was all me. And it was just like so hard to get, like, we're like, okay, go to this end of campus and catch like 20 minutes of B-roll with this professor and then get to the other end of campus for,

you know, 30 minute interview. And it's like, it was just, it's crazy when you get faculty involved, but.

Randolph Infinger (13:05.484)
they have crazy, crazy schedules and very often they'll come into our studio and they'll say, we have five minutes and I'm gone. And it's like, okay, well we've got five minutes, let's go. So it can be kind of fun and it's also incredibly stressful sometimes. So just depending on the day.

John Azoni (13:15.429)
Yeah.

John Azoni (13:21.807)
Yeah, sometimes those constraints can be helpful.

Randolph Infinger (13:27.009)
Yeah.

John Azoni (13:28.695)
So talk about, you know, I know one of the things that seems to be true about Vanderbilt is leadership really embracing storytelling. And I know that's not the case for every institution. know, I hear a lot of, you know, MarCom leaders that wish they, like they know the kind of storytelling that they would like to be doing, but like they just can't get the buy-in to do it. like, tell me what's...

what's different at Vanderbilt that.

Randolph Infinger (14:00.962)
think the biggest thing that we do is we look at numbers and like what really is, what's really hitting. We'll even do focus groups, you know, like we want to make sure that we are constantly raising the bar and showing that, you know.

Vanderbilt raises the bar and our video production goes with that. I mean, storytelling is just something that we've had to gain trust over time with, right? Like it definitely has not been like that forever, but we've done a ton of great work, you know, year over year, we've won Emmys, we've won like, you know, different UPAA awards, and it's just really kind of, it's gaining that trust is, you know, what needs to happen with MarCom leaders and...

I think we're really lucky that we're in that position. Another huge thing I will say that we've done to gain that trust is that we do a ton of pre-production and we lay everything out for people. We as artists know what we see in our head and we can kind of visualize it, but other people, sometimes these leaders, they don't get it. So we really want to make sure that we're...

John Azoni (15:03.984)
Mm-hmm.

Randolph Infinger (15:06.394)
giving pitch decks with like a treatment and then maybe even a previs, a previsualization with an iPhone kind of movie to make sure that we get that buy in.

John Azoni (15:18.233)
When you say pre-visualization with an iPhone, are you literally recording just a scratch storyboard?

Randolph Infinger (15:23.906)
Yeah. To help people understand, we've done this recently for, we did something in our bell tower where someone, you know, was like, what do you mean you're going to like see the bell tower gong? And so we went up, it was crazy. First of all, we were in like the 1897 bell tower of Vanderbilt, but we made like a short video, obviously not super edited of like what it would look like just with our phone really quickly, just to get them an idea. And that kind of helped spark the, I get it now. Kind of like.

John Azoni (15:53.443)
Yeah.

Randolph Infinger (15:54.036)
I can see the vision, go for it.

John Azoni (15:57.112)
One of the best, like, you know, those masterclass things. there was, I've watched it twice now. There's one with the two creative directors that run the ad agency that did the Got Milk campaign. And they talk a lot of, I mean, it's like more like agency, like creative concepting type stuff. But one of the things he said was like, he makes everybody that submits an ad.

Randolph Infinger (16:01.365)
Mm-hmm.

John Azoni (16:24.635)
You know, because they do a lot of Super Bowl ads and that's like their their thing. He's like he's going to add you got to draw the storyboard out and like I don't use a stick figures, whatever, and then literally film with your iPhone, the storyboard and say the lines that you envision. He's like because you're going to see that you think it's 30 seconds, but it's actually 50 seconds. And so now you have to edit this thing. So I just thought that was like a really interesting way to communicate a vision just like.

Randolph Infinger (16:27.757)
Mm-hmm.

Randolph Infinger (16:46.413)
Yep.

John Azoni (16:54.331)
Stick figures and then actually make the video in this really very rudimentary way and you can kind of see Does this actually story makes sense? Does the story make sense? Does the Is it the length that it needs to be? But yeah, that's a that's a great idea. How much do you guys use? um if at all like ai for Any storyboarding have you ever like played around with like trying to generate ai clips?

Randolph Infinger (16:58.275)
Yeah.

Randolph Infinger (17:05.259)
Mm-hmm.

Randolph Infinger (17:18.496)
Yeah.

I think that's like, you know, maybe one of the good, AI is a weird subject for artists, I think. And I think ways that we can use it as a tool are, you know, becoming really kind of fruit, like fruitful. I think, yeah, that's a great way to do it. And we've actually done it recently where we needed like a building that hadn't even been built in the background of somewhere. And so to visualize that we used AI. I think before AI, we would just do like stick figures and stuff. And this helps us kind of take it to like that next level. So yeah, I think.

People should use AI for storyboarding and I think I'm going to more in the future probably too.

John Azoni (17:55.642)
Yeah, I've I've I player I played around with some of the video stuff I've what was the what's like the main one? Gosh. We have mid so mid journey I've done the photo they are like the still.

Randolph Infinger (18:06.337)
Ed.

I'm done like mid-journey? I don't know.

That's more photo based though.

John Azoni (18:17.691)
There's one, can't, Runway, Runway ML. So that's the, that one couldn't get anything usable out of that. I tried Sora and honestly, like I thought, you with all the hype around Sora, I thought it was going to be worlds better than Runway, but it was like the same. It was like.

Randolph Infinger (18:20.616)
yeah.

Randolph Infinger (18:37.26)
Yeah, the video AI stuff's not quite there it seems. Like the photo stuff is great and I feel like I had so much luck like getting what I need out of those but yeah the video has got some ways to go.

John Azoni (18:48.643)
Yeah, it's it's but I like the potential. You know, I love to get and again, I mean, yeah, it's a touchy subject for for artists because but I just think I just don't see a world where we're firing the video team because of AI like I just like someone's got to use that someone has to know how to use this. It's not like because, you know, quicken was invented that we just fired the accounting team, you know.

Randolph Infinger (19:05.098)
No, me neither. I would love it.

Randolph Infinger (19:16.33)
Exactly, it's just a tool. Somebody's still gotta use the tool. So I think if anything, it's like good to embrace it and be like, okay, well, how can I learn to add this to my workflow now instead of like, know, rejecting it as if it's like the internet or digital cameras or something coming to be, so.

John Azoni (19:18.629)
Yeah.

John Azoni (19:33.795)
Yeah, but it'd be great. It would be great if you could actually start to like build scenes like backgrounds, like based on your buildings and then have students, know, AI generated students, you know, interacting within the scenes. you know. Yeah.

Randolph Infinger (19:42.286)
Mm-hmm.

Randolph Infinger (19:50.668)
That would be cool. Yeah, I've not seen that. I have seen really quickly one interesting thing is I don't know if you've seen this like LED light walls or like LED. So basically we went to a studio in Nashville where it's this huge room filled with like LEDs and some sort of video board basically and they use Unreal Engine to create scenes and so they created a Vanderbilt scene for us and we're like, here you go. Here's Vanderbilt and it was.

pretty wild to see. That could be a huge future too, but crazy.

John Azoni (20:22.255)
Yeah, that's crazy. Yeah. So what's, let's see. talk about, know, this is, this is as, you know, gear focus as I think we'll get, but talk about the gear that you guys have invested in. And I want to, I want to spin this in a way that's relevant for the audience, because I think that we're just coming off an episode last, the episode before that just

Randolph Infinger (20:31.65)
Thanks.

Okay.

John Azoni (20:50.605)
launched a couple weeks ago was about in-house versus outsourcing videography and one of the things to consider is gear. know, we think like, well, if we hire someone in-house, then it's a $70,000 salary and that's where the costs end. But I want to hear from you guys, like, what does it take just on an equipment level to do things at the level that you guys are producing them at?

Randolph Infinger (21:10.924)
Nullball.

Randolph Infinger (21:19.82)
Yeah, from a very kind of layman's basic level, I'm very much of the mindset that the gear does not make the videographer right. I think you can use kind of whatever's at your disposal to create what you need. But that being said, I do think it's incredibly important to have good glass and shoot with decent lights. We use aperture lights because they're pretty...

They're not like, you the best of the best, but they get the job done. I don't think like your camera body is the biggest issue. Like we're still delivering a ton of content in HD. Don't need to worry so much about 4K. We do like to shoot in 4K, but yeah, I think.

I would say if you were starting off in-house and you needed something, obviously you need a camera, buy decent glass that can be versatile and light. I'm sorry, yeah, I'm using too many lenses and it doesn't have to be the fastest 2.0 lens. think kit lenses from Sony are still really versatile and good. But yeah, I think that's the two things I would say is your glass and.

John Azoni (22:17.179)
When you say glass, you mean lenses.

Hahaha

John Azoni (22:31.386)
Mm-hmm.

Randolph Infinger (22:36.972)
Lighting is a huge thing. I don't think that I could do what I do without proper lighting.

John Azoni (22:42.543)
Yeah, definitely. There's there's a difference between I mean, you see work coming out of in-house teams and you could kind of just immediately tell the level that they're operating under because it really has to do with the lighting. Someone I mean, audio too. Yeah.

Randolph Infinger (23:00.974)
Definitely. And audio. want to, I'm sorry, I, audios, I forgot. think sometimes when I, the first thing I notice in, in videos that are under produced are, is the audio. I think lighting as a cinematographer, love thinking about and looking at lighting, but yeah, audio too. That's, you could shoot with an iPhone and have great audio and be fine. But yeah.

John Azoni (23:22.275)
Right. Yeah, that's the, it's highly underestimated how important the audio is. And yeah, I agree. Like the number one thing that will make me, well, there's probably other things, but like, but like what immediately turns me off about a lo-fi video is terrible audio. so, it,

Randolph Infinger (23:41.998)
You can tell it's like the onboard video like it was just captured on the camera and that little tiny super small video thing. Yeah

John Azoni (23:48.749)
Yeah. Yeah, yeah, always got to have a microphone near near people's mouths in some and

Randolph Infinger (23:57.048)
I even tell people, like, you know, we do a lot of Zoom calls where we'll record Zoom calls. Just use your iPhone, Apple, AirPod, or your earbuds. They have that little microphone. Like, even that's better sometimes than nothing, so.

John Azoni (24:08.079)
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, but I think that people don't think that you're about lighting as much too. It's that like, okay, let's just turn some lights on. And that's like one thing that I look for when I'm vetting freelancers and like crews and stuff. That's like the thing that immediately I'm like, did they light this or not? And if they didn't, then I'm like immediately out.

Randolph Infinger (24:22.126)
Yeah.

John Azoni (24:37.935)
Like if you think it's okay to like not light something, not light an interview and just put someone under like an overhead light, that's just an indicator of quality that I can't risk.

Randolph Infinger (24:44.546)
Yeah.

Randolph Infinger (24:50.764)
Yeah, and I think even someone in the audience would be able to, like obviously as videographers or video producers, we see that, but even the, you know, the person viewing would be like, I think turned off. And that's the thing is I think there's a lot of videographers I see that do so well with natural light, but lighting scenes is a completely different story and it is very important and just takes practice. So.

John Azoni (25:12.783)
For sure, it does. How much, talk about like your post-production workflow too, cause that's a whole other beast that I think schools should be aware of. And I honestly didn't, we didn't talk about this. I don't think at all. And I should have talked about this in the episode about in-house versus outsourcing, but the entire IT workflow of a video production, like in-house video production suite, it's a whole thing. mean, like I used to work at a production company.

and we were constantly trying to figure out how to open up bottlenecks that were just causing like really slow computer operations. I mean, it's all this techy stuff and like servers and backup drives and systems and things like that. How have you guys managed to navigate that? What does your post workflow look like?

Randolph Infinger (25:52.621)
Mm-hmm.

Randolph Infinger (26:00.642)
you

Randolph Infinger (26:06.754)
So for post workflow, I will say you mentioned servers. Like if we didn't have the current server we have right now, which is, I think it's through Facilis and we use Iconic to like find things in there. But if we didn't have that, we would be just not able to do the level of work we do, I think, because everything we do goes in there. Everything is logged. We keep melts in there of like our highlights, the best of the best of what we have. It's just generally where everything lives. also, for post-production,

like after we're done shooting, everything is categorized and tracked in Wrike, which is our project management platform. And so there we can see, okay, we're done with the production of this, we're gonna move this now into our post-production column. And so from there, we kind of have like basically a list of tasks that need to happen. So obviously the editing has to happen, then it has to go through approvals.

After it goes through approvals, has to go through a copy editing approval to make sure that the captions are correct. After that, we make sure to get all of the stuff uploaded. It's a ton of steps, but we have it all kind of laid out so that even if someone joined us as a videographer tomorrow, they would be able to go in and look at our project management and say, okay, I've got to do this, this, this, and this. But yeah, think that's the biggest thing is having that centralized server because we all pull

from the same kind of clips. We all need what each other shoots. And if we didn't have access to that, we would just not be able to do our work.

John Azoni (27:38.81)
Yeah. And I think that's, that's the way that in-house should be done. And I, and it seems like you guys are really firing on all cylinders with, cause I, cause like, honestly, like if, you know, I, I'm like a huge advocate for, yeah, building in-house team. mean, it's like, yeah, it's great. I mean, if you can afford it and you're going to do it right.

Randolph Infinger (27:57.782)
It's definitely not easy, but it's like we are basically an in-house production company. know, like whether that's for photo, video, or design, we kind of like, we're kind of like an agency within the university almost. It's really, really like a great system that we've gotten into now.

John Azoni (28:02.585)
Yeah.

John Azoni (28:13.381)
So what are some of your favorite videos that you worked on? we talked a little about the Dare to Grow PSA. are some others that have come up for you?

Randolph Infinger (28:24.066)
Another favorite one actually I just did, this was this past October, was I got to do a documentary on Jeff Coffin, who is, he is the saxophone player for the Dave Matthews band, and he also is a professor at...

Blair as a jazz professor. so obviously, as we heard earlier, I'm a huge jazz nerd. So he has played in a ton of bands that I love, including Dave Matthews Band. played in Bella Fleck and the Fleck Tones. So we did a profile on him for him.

John Azoni (28:45.499)
Mm-hmm.

Randolph Infinger (28:55.394)
being inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. And so while I didn't get to go to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, was just, I mean, it was so cool to like, you know, follow him around to local venues in Nashville and, you know, film his sets, get to talk with him and his bandmates, also see him do his thing with students at Vanderbilt. Like that was, I mean, that's like the dream honestly, as a video producer is to get to shoot something you love and also create a great story and like, you know.

hit all the goals for the university at the same time.

John Azoni (29:25.539)
Yeah. So he's a, he teaches at Vanderbilt.

Randolph Infinger (29:28.492)
He does, he teaches a jazz, I wanna say he teaches a jazz performance class, but I'd have to get back to you on that. He does, we have some great B-roll of him. It's not like Whiplash, if you've ever seen Whiplash, not quite like that. He's a really, yeah. He's a great guy, he's not throwing symbols in anybody's heads, so.

John Azoni (29:41.179)
seen it twice.

John Azoni (29:49.148)
I'm actually not, contrary to popular belief, I'm not a movie guy. And Whiplash is one of the few movies I've seen more than once.

Randolph Infinger (29:55.414)
Yeah, me neither.

Randolph Infinger (30:01.696)
It takes a lot for me to get, like, people all, my claim to fame, maybe I should have said something that people don't know about me, is I've never seen all the original Star Wars and I don't really care to. Like, I'm just, I'm not a movie person, but I love video. That sounds weird, but it's just who I am.

John Azoni (30:10.403)
Me either.

John Azoni (30:14.212)
Yeah.

People ask me, like, what's your favorite movie? And I'm like, I don't know, but that Gabby Petito documentary, on Netflix, was pretty fascinating.

Randolph Infinger (30:23.49)
Yeah. Have you seen Hero Dreams of Sushi? Cause that was really good. Or this random YouTube video. Like I don't know. I love the gambit of video that doesn't necessarily have to be like artsy cinema. So.

John Azoni (30:28.665)
Yeah. Yeah.

John Azoni (30:37.571)
Yeah, for sure. So what's your what's your opinion on what what makes a good story? What how do you guys think about how do you guide storytelling from a creative perspective at Vandy?

Randolph Infinger (30:50.616)
I think, know, it can be, storytelling is not easy. I think you know that very well. But we really, you know, just want to make viewers feel all the emotions and really like, we don't want to tell people what they should be feeling when they're watching our videos, but we want to really drive emotion.

So I think a good place to start is like, we try to figure out like, is there like a conflict or like a hook that really makes this story something interesting? And how can we look to, you know, kind of portray that and show that? I think a really good example I wish I had sent to you earlier was we have a new school at Vanderbilt called the Roberts Academy for Dyslexia. And we actually went to,

the people who gave the gift to start this academy. We went to their farm and did a little documentary on why they wanted to do this, why they wanted to start this school. And I mean, by the end of it, everyone watching it was in tears. mean, these people are so passionate about dyslexia and helping others. And the visuals matching with that story are just like, it just drives that feeling of just something you can't even describe. So I think.

John Azoni (32:05.082)
Yeah.

Randolph Infinger (32:06.636)
Yeah, storytelling is hard though, you You don't always have the best story to tell and you have to figure out like a good hook for it, but... yeah.

John Azoni (32:12.761)
Yeah. Yeah, it's hard. It's and I say, you know, I beat the storytelling drum a lot and, you know, starting with a good story and conflict and all this stuff. But like sometimes it's it's it's it's totally it's a good message to have someone that's just like, here's this thing. And I liked it, you know, you know, like, know, it doesn't always have to be like this really deep story. But like, yeah, when you can when

Randolph Infinger (32:32.194)
Right. Right.

John Azoni (32:42.527)
That's why I I really encourage schools to collect stories and like start a story collection initiative because I think when you wait to till you need stories to go out and find them, you're probably going to get very surface level ones that get submitted to you. But when you are constantly have your ear to the ground and are having people submit, you know, stories, then then you're going to then you're going to

Randolph Infinger (33:00.014)
Right.

John Azoni (33:10.233)
your team's gonna get excited and like get chills around certain ones that come up and it's like, yes, let's go after that one.

Randolph Infinger (33:17.326)
100%. We often have like a brainstorm meeting once a month and we'd rely on our MarCom partners to bring us those stories. And it is so cool when you get like a, did you hear that so-and-so was doing, you know, a project about weighing squirrels? And you're like, wait, what? They're going to weigh squirrels with like peanuts on the lawn? It's like, yeah, it's an engineering project. like, you know, stuff like that just pops up from our partners and...

John Azoni (33:32.987)
Ha

Randolph Infinger (33:44.086)
It's like, okay, wait, we gotta figure out how to get a story out on this. So yeah, that's another interesting thing is that universities are huge. How do you find those cool stories? You have to lean on others, definitely.

John Azoni (33:56.464)
For sure. Yeah, we just finished casting for an engineering school. And one of the stories that, cause we have a whole system where we give our clients like a email, like a series of email copy that they can send out and adjust however they need to. And then there's like a link and then people submit a video of themselves telling their story. So it just becomes this kind of big database of collecting these video submissions.

Randolph Infinger (34:23.48)
Mm-hmm.

John Azoni (34:23.643)
One of them that came through was this girl that she had graduated, she had a bachelor's in some completely unrelated field and had an idea for an app for some problem that she wanted to solve. And then something about COVID and funding got taken away. so she had to figure out, she was basically like, well, I'm gonna go to this engineering master's program and just figure out.

how to be a software engineer and she graduated and built the app herself. I'm like, those are the stories that are just like, that are just gold when, when, and then someone might not be, you know, a department head or something might not be thinking about that, you know, like that might just not be top of mind. If you were to ask someone on a random day, put them on the spot, they might just think like, who's like,

Randolph Infinger (35:02.894)
Right.

Randolph Infinger (35:21.838)
That's so true. Yeah. No, that's super interesting though.

John Azoni (35:26.139)
So what time, what type of, so you mentioned Wrike for people to submit, departments to submit stuff. What other tools do you guys have in place that's been crucial for your workflow?

Randolph Infinger (35:32.174)
Mm-hmm.

Randolph Infinger (35:41.142)
Yeah, so we have Wrike obviously as project management. use Facilis as our video, like I guess you'd call that a MAM, a media asset manager. And then we have a DAM, a digital asset manager that is, houses all of our photos. It archives, you know, basically any kind of digital assets, mostly for photos though. Those are huge for gathering content.

John Azoni (35:51.16)
Okay.

Randolph Infinger (36:05.91)
And then also one piece of software that I love to tell other creatives about, especially video creatives, I think a lot of them probably use this, but Milanote is something that we use constantly for storyboarding, for pre-production, shot lists, kind of gathering ideas. It just is like a really great visually perfect kind of app to use for storyboarding.

John Azoni (36:31.461)
milla note. Let look this up.

Randolph Infinger (36:32.876)
Yeah, Mila Note is great. I actually found it, there's a YouTuber I love, his name is Danny Gurvitz on YouTube. He does really great stuff. And yeah, he had like an ad for it I was like, I'll try it out and I ended up loving it. we used that.

John Azoni (36:48.322)
yeah, I see how this could be cool for storyboarding.

Randolph Infinger (36:52.864)
It's great and you can use it for just any kind of like, you know, creative kind of project management kind of thing. Because Reich is great, but it's very left brained, right? So Milanote allows me to kind of visually take all of everything in Reich and be like, okay, well, how am going to make this shot list? How are we going to lay out the shots? And I can add notes anywhere. So those are, those are all crucial things. And we use Adobe Suite for editing.

John Azoni (37:19.483)
Okay, got it, cool. Do you guys, so for project management, do you guys use, is that what you use Wrike for or do you have like something separate?

Randolph Infinger (37:28.566)
Yes. Yeah, Wrike is our project management. where we can have people request stuff and we also do all of our proofing in there. So any kind of reviews or approvals go through Wrike.

John Azoni (37:42.085)
Cool, so talk about having a centralized, I imagine you guys have a centralized B-roll library. do you guys manage other departments accessing that or is it pretty much just you guys accessing it and kind of repurposing that content?

Randolph Infinger (37:56.886)
Yeah, it's mostly us accessing it and repurposing that content. We're kind of the general, we're the main video people on campus. However, some colleges do have their own videographers, albeit probably not as production status as us. However, we do keep a centralized B-roll on our Facila server, mostly of melts. So two to three minute highlights of the best of the best of campus, drone of campus.

know, students interacting on campus, classrooms, labs, anything that, you know, is kind of general that people might need. We get requests all the time to use stuff like that. We'll keep that in our central kind of melts folder on Facilis and send that out to people that need it.

John Azoni (38:41.243)
So melt, I've never heard that term. That's just kind of like a selects, like just like the best of the best kind of thing.

Randolph Infinger (38:45.76)
Yeah, you know, I don't know where I think I picked up on that term from the sports guys at Vanderbilt. We do a lot of we have a separate video team that does sports, but yeah, a melt is just like it's a melt of all the footage. So think about, know, like, yeah, if you shoot a football game, you only want the best shots and the best like highlights. So you put all that together and then in an instant, someone can just take that. They don't know if they don't know how to color anything. They don't edit anything. They have the good clip to be able to use.

John Azoni (39:15.065)
Yeah, yeah, for sure. Do you guys do you guys shoot in in? is a technical question. Do you guys shoot in log for that reason? OK.

Randolph Infinger (39:22.638)
We do. Yeah, we shoot and log 95 % of the time, I would say.

John Azoni (39:28.283)
And then you color everything before it gets to...

Randolph Infinger (39:33.254)
Most of the time, almost always, unless people specifically ask for because we're a little bit different in that maybe like a private corporation wouldn't give out raw footage, but being a university, we're a little bit more open with our footage and we will give you or like we'll give our partners at the university raws. But a lot of times they come back and they're like, we don't know how to use this. So we just color it and give them the best of the best so they don't have to worry about it.

John Azoni (39:52.376)
Yeah.

John Azoni (39:57.722)
Yeah, for people listening, if you ever get a clip, clips from a videographer and they're like really washed out and desaturated, that's on purpose. That's just how it looks coming out of the camera. And then you got to actually process it. That's why it's, you know, sometimes it's an extra step in managing a B-roll library is, you know, centralized B-roll library is processing that stuff so that it's usable for other people.

Randolph Infinger (40:23.082)
Exactly. And it's not a huge deal to process it for us, but yeah, definitely an extra step.

John Azoni (40:28.377)
So what do you want, what would you want, know, marketing communications leaders to know about working with in-house teams? I've heard the gamut of, you know, people who love their jobs and then people who are very disillusioned or whatever the word is with working in-house video at higher edge, just being overloaded with work, people not understanding storytelling, not.

not having any strategy for marketing and just making random video requests and stuff like that. like, would be, what do, what do MarCom leaders need to know about working, about bringing video in-house in terms of like what you need to do your job well?

Randolph Infinger (41:16.108)
Definitely. think it all starts with trust. think like I need to be trusted to do this job. And I think it starts there. And then also, I think it also starts with strategy. Like we have to have a strategy, have goals going into a project. Like I think the way in my head, if it was perfect every single time is that a MarCom leader would come to me and say, we have a problem. And I would say, okay, we're going to find you a creative solution.

and give me everything, give me a creative brief, give me everything you can about the project and we will find that creative solution and bring it back to you. We will work with you. It's so much about communication. I think a lot of times people just want to request a video and say, get this done for me. And they don't think about the different steps we need to take about securing students, securing props. There's a million steps to take and it's very collaborative. So yeah, definitely need a strategy.

need to trust us and work with us. Let's talk, let's be communicative and not just, don't just hand it off.

John Azoni (42:23.609)
Right, yeah, I hear that from time and time too that like other departments need to understand that you need to slow down and there's decisions that need to be made if they want the quality that they're expecting or to have it be done on time or whatever else. It's not as simple as just like, yeah, I'll just grab your camera and show up. don't think about like...

Randolph Infinger (42:33.411)
Definitely.

Randolph Infinger (42:47.214)
Right.

John Azoni (42:48.901)
How are you gonna get, who's gonna be in the video? How are you gonna get them there? You know, if they're gonna be...

Randolph Infinger (42:53.326)
and who are we trying to target with this video? I mean, that's another thing we think about, like the audience, like students, parents, alumni, like there's like, those are three different groups that we completely change our tone for depending on who we're talking to. So, yeah.

John Azoni (43:07.235)
Yeah, absolutely. All right, man, this has been great. Great having you on. Love talking about the video stuff with you. Where can people see you guys work at and connect with you at?

Randolph Infinger (43:14.03)
was awesome.

Randolph Infinger (43:22.39)
Yeah, so you can find all of my work on my website at rand.media. I also would implore everybody to subscribe to the Vanderbilt University YouTube channel. Feel free to check us out there as well as all the Vanderbilt University socials. We do a lot of social videos too that are not quite as produced as a lot of the stuff that I do. So check us out.

John Azoni (43:42.797)
Alright, I'm gonna subscribe. You have one extra subscriber today.

Randolph Infinger (43:44.558)
Please do.

If I did anything today I got one subscriber on my YouTube channel. That growth coming in.

John Azoni (43:51.803)
There we go one at a time. All right, man. Appreciate you haven't appreciate having you on

Randolph Infinger (43:57.368)
Well, thank you so much. I appreciate it. Thanks for talking.