Photo & Video

Like other branded promotional materials, photos and videos produced by and for units within the Division of Student Affairs should be of the highest quality to properly represent not only individual units, but also the division and Rutgers University at large.

Photography

Photography is one of the best opportunities to convey the personality of your unit, the division, and our university. A good image is the opening sentence of your story, grabbing people’s attention and imprinting itself into a person’s memory.

Good photography evokes emotions and reactions before anything is even said or written. Getting a good image requires careful planning, execution, and selection.

The photographs we use should reflect and reinforce our focus on our students, their experiences, their development, and their well-being – while also highlighting the work that we do in Student Affairs. Our images should be clean, compelling and real.

Video

When producing videos make sure that the quality of the recording is crisp and clean. All videos should be recorded in HD at no lower than 1080p. Clean, clear audio is essential. Background noise should be eliminated or minimized as much as possible.

Some things to consider deciding if you need a video:

• Action: Is anything going on, or is this just a “talking head?” If no other footage can be incorporated, maybe some other form of media may be a better option.
• B-roll: What opportunities are there to use other footage to illustrate the story? What flavor can be added to your video outside of just spoken accounts?
• Timeliness and turnaround time: How quickly can you reasonably produce the video, and is there a need to turn it quickly? Will it be done by the specific time you are hoping to use it?

Consistent with the university policy for videos, the Rutgers Student Affairs Logo must appear prominently at or near the opening or closing of a Rutgers video. The full name of the university must appear visually or in the audio track somewhere in the course of the video.

To simplify the implementation of this, the Marketing, Communications, and Innovative Technologies team has created the following still that can be added to the end of all videos to fulfill the requirements of the university policy.

Model Release Forms

Model release forms must be obtained from people you are photographing or videotaping. These forms are required to use their image in any medium for educational, promotional, advertising, or other purposes. For public events, releases are not required; but it is strongly encouraged that model releases are signed by all subjects. For minors we have a specific model release form that must be completed by a parent or guardian. All model release forms can be found on the University Communications and Marketing website.

As a health care provider, Rutgers must protect the privacy of our patients. When capturing images or obtaining other personal information from patients, we are required under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) to obtain their permission to use the information or images by completing the HIPAA Authorization form, available here.

Additionally, NCAA guidelines restrict how images of student-athletes can be used. Contact the Scarlet Knights’ communications department at 732-445-4200, for information regarding NCAA guidelines and the use of video involving student-athletes.