Utah Valley University’s Drive-In Commencement and Convocation

Now playing at the drive-in: caps and gowns. As students returned to campus for fall semester, the team at Utah Valley University got creative with drive-in commencement and convocation ceremonies to celebrate 2020 grads and mark the start of a new school year. The day included everything from drive-through graduation ceremonies to a concert and fireworks.

UVU Director of Photography August Miller and his team were tasked with capturing and sharing the magic of this celebration no one could have pictured just a few months ago.

At 2:30pm, August and his team fanned out across campus to cover each college’s individual graduation ceremony.

“Our team of six photographers were able to send photos from our six separate convocations (individual colleges graduations) that were held on parking lots around campus via our cameras directly into PhotoShelter where our editor selected images, cropped, toned and prepped them and put them in a separate gallery for our broadcast team to pull and create the slideshow,” August explains.

As soon as the ceremonies were over, the images were broadcast on big screens all over campus until the start of the main commencement celebration at 7pm. Once again, August’s team captured the moment, and the images were turned around at lightning-speed.

“At the end of the Commencement, images we had taken during the Commencement program were played as a slideshow during the fireworks at the end of the ceremony,” says August.

UVU’s social media team also shared photos in real time throughout the day on social media, helping students, families and alumni near and far feel connected to the celebration.

 

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It’s a party. Love seeing the many ways that we see you and your families celebrating your graduation. So proud of the Wolverine Nation! #uvugrad

A post shared by UVU | Utah Valley University (@utah.valley.university) on Aug 19, 2020 at 6:58pm PDT

Up next, the team at UVU is reimagining another tradition, the university’s Scholarship Ball. Rather than attending a black tie gala with a seven course meal, guests will celebrate Grease Lightning style with vintage cars and culinary arts students acting as car hops.

Once again, August and his team will be transmitting photos into PhotoShelter in real time – and this time, guests will have the opportunity to download the images on their phones and share on their own social media channels in real time.

Download our FileFlow mobile app today to see how it works, and book a training session with our team to set up a real-time workflow like this one.

Want to learn more about UVU’s creative workflow?

In our latest on-demand webinar about PhotoShelter’s new collaboration tool, Workspaces, August shares an inside look at how his team is collaborating remotely.

“Being able to coordinate that through Workspaces has been a godsend during this COVID time,” says August.

Check out the clip below, and watch the full on-demand webinar with Q&A here.