Welcome to the University of Szeged
"The first impressions are always important"
Just like every higher education institution, the application period is a significant event in the life of the University of Szeged. As being a participant in the market, SZTE needs to keep up with its changes, accommodate and construct the enrolment of the students, and take care of addressing them in modern ways, suiting the image of the university. Today’s generation is used to the fast flow of information, thus they mostly communicate through online platforms, typically preferring short multimedia content. Our task was to prepare a video in English and in Hungarian, which projects the adventures freshly enrolled students are going to experience through their university studies, from their arrival, until graduation.
A city in a city – this is one of the numerous nicknames of the University of Szeged, as it highly influences the milieu with its 24.000 active students and its numerous significant architecture in the city. The population of the city is continuously changing thanks to the university: approximately 7000 first-year students start their studies at SZTE. Szeged is a real university city and tourist destination. In 2014 at the CondéNastTraveler webpage it was one of the 10 best European university cities, along with prestigious ones such as Heidelberg, Krakow, Leuven, or the famous Oxford.
Besides the ‘best practice’ analyses, before the project, a focus group research was carried out, in which the current students expressed their opinions and reasons behind choosing the University of Szeged for their higher studies. After the evaluation of the research, we concluded that not only the education and its high standard are attractive for the students, but also the diversity of the city of Szeged. We created the concept of the video, chose the scenes and planned the final content, based on this conclusion. We worked with SZTE students, as we believe that they are the ones who are most capable of mediating the spirit the freshly enrolled student will face in Szeged.
Our aim was to introduce SZTE and the city of Szeged from the most possible angles. We paid special attention to having the simplest possible storyline showing as many places and students as possible, highlighting the diversity of the city, the university and its students. The video introduces the university life, using ‘keywords’ concentrating on the most typical experiences at the university: from students’ arrival to the city, until graduation – only in 90 seconds. During the shaping of the visual elements, we preferred the warm colors with the aim of creating a positive, friendly impact of the city and the university, strengthening the message. We also paid special attention to the voices used in the video. The person responsible for the voice and the sound design is Janó Tóth. For the narration of the Hungarian version, we chose Ágnes Szabados, who is a former student of the SZTE, and is currently working as a host at the Hungarian television channel RTL Klub. The English version is narrated by an American actress.
The final version of the video has reached its present form after four months of planning, shooting and editing. The video, consisting of 131 cuts, masking, and cross connecting, has been a resounding success not only among the citizens and current students of the University of Szeged, but also among the professionals and the target audience.
In our opinion, we managed to create a video in such a peculiar style containing the messages that could help those in the decision-making, who are planning their future studies.
