In a world of mass production, Australian Catholic Universities (ACU) stand for meaningful education, rewarding research, and life-changing community engagement. ACU offers a variety of tertiary education pathways across capital city and regional catchments on Australia’s East Coast.
ACU offer an access program called Uni Step Up for students in regional, rural and remote areas. The program provides these students the opportunity to experience university life while still in high school, for free. Giving students who otherwise wouldn’t have seen uni as an option, a low-risk chance to see what their future could hold beyond high school.
The Uni-Step Up Program has historically relied on face to face networking to gain interest and applicants. Spreading the initiative and creating more impact required creating a reinvigorated digital strategy.
Our brief was to craft a series of relatable and inspiring commercial-style assets for marketing to schools across regional Australia.
ShareStory worked directly with the university and alumni of the program to craft an informed story that resonated with what their ideal student experiences. Using commercial video production we brought the vision of the program to life across a two day intensive shoot.
Working with actual USU students the ShareStory team learnt about the restrictions stopping access to tertiary education.
The final concept centres around a rural student at home who discovers a portal to a new world. This portal sends them on a captivating journey, exploring an ACU Campus and providing a glimpse into university life through the eyes of teachers, students and available faculties.
Not all ideas translate for each stakeholder. Through clear pre-production workshops We were able to give visibility on each of the key narrative elements via thorough storyboarding and pre-visualisation to ensure brand consistency.
Leveraging cutting-edge AI-powered tools assisted in trialling voiceover scripts, life-like storyboards and other creative elements to create an immersive and shared vision of the project before it went to production.
VFX played a pivotal role in the video's introduction, acting as our metaphorical teleportation to a bright new world of opportunity. This visual effect aimed to convincingly convey the transition from the target applicant’s regional life to a tertiary opportunity at ACU. Our team meticulously managed lighting, framing, and brand guidelines to achieve the impactful shot seen in the final piece.
