Video & Audio Recording Policy
The primary focus of the College Communications office is telling the Davidson story, advancing the Davidson brand, and strategically promoting the college’s people, programs, ideals and mission to an array of audiences in a compelling and effective way.
We produce marketing content in a variety of formats, including written stories, photography, video and audio, to help engage prospective students and their families, current students, alumni, donors and friends of the college on a broad scale.
Because the primary focus of our office is to create content that supports the institution’s marketing, branding, student recruitment and fundraising goals, we do not have the resources to devote to filming and/or audio recording the vast majority of college events. The marquee lectures we do record are: the Wearn, Reynolds, Smith and Conarroe lectures. Decisions regarding other recording requests rest with the College Communications staff.
Our office does not record events for archival or classroom instructional purposes as those do not fit within our primary purpose.
Video Recording Requests
If your event has broad distribution potential and you would like to discuss the possibility of recording, please contact Lisa Patterson at lipatterson@davidson.edu and Alex Smith at awsmith@davidson.edu. We will then discuss with you the nature of the project, and if we agree to move forward, we will ask you to complete a video questionnaire, provided by Lisa Patterson via email. The completed questionnaire will provide all necessary information to move forward with scheduling and filming.
Examples of marketing video projects that fit within the primary purpose of College Communications include but are not limited to: messages about fundraising priorities (i.e. the Academic Neighborhood, scholarships, athletics), thank-you and stewardship videos to donors, Reunion promotional pieces and student testimonials for admission purposes.
If you feel your event should be considered as a marquee event with broad distribution potential, and you would like to request that it be recorded, please contact Lisa Patterson at lipatterson@davidson.edu or 704-894-2130, and provide the necessary information.
Recording for Academic or Instructional Purposes
Video and audio recordings for instruction and research should be directed to the Library’s Digital Learning team. Academic multimedia services are limited to blended learning, multimedia development for digital scholarship and in-class instruction for digital storytelling. Academic departments needing to archive external events are advised to partner with work-study students for those recordings. Those preferring professional video productions can outsource the work to freelance operations in the area.
Recording & Editing Your Own Audio
Departments that have frequent needs to audio record events may want to consider purchasing digital audio recorders.
Free or low-cost audio editing software is available, including Audacity (Windows and Mac) and GarageBand (Mac). LinkedIn Learning courses are available for free to all Davidson employees and students and offers instructions on how to edit audio using Audacity and GarageBand.
Captioning & Transcripts
All videos posted to the Davidson website or to associated college social media and video sites are required by federal accessibility requirements to include captions so they are accessible to the hearing impaired.
Like video, all audio or audio podcasts added to the Davidson website or associated college social media or audio sites must be fully accessible to the hearing impaired. All audio files must include text transcripts so they comply with federal accessibility requirements.
A captioned version of a live streamed video should be made available within 24 hours of when the original stream was live.
The additional benefit of offering captioned videos and audio transcripts is that the video is searchable and the content typically ranks higher in search results due to improved search engine optimization.