A helicopter yesterday afternoon circled over the Medford/Somerville, Boston and Grafton campuses in order to capture video footage and still photographs of the fall foliage surrounding Tufts.
The helicopter footage will be used for various purposes, including as supplemental B-roll footage for video stories produced at Tufts and external media sites hoping to show film of the university, according to Director of Digital Communications Jean Ayers.
In an email sent out to the Tufts community yesterday, the university announced that the helicopter would arrive sometime between 2 p.m. and 5 p.m. The helicopter circled over the Medford and Somerville campus for about 20 minutes around 3:30 p.m. before heading to Boston.
This flyover was a new experience for the university, according to the email.
This will be the first time weve filmed aerial video footage of our Boston and Grafton campuses, and [we] look forward to the opportunity to showcase our campuses during this beautiful time of year, the email said.
Ayers explained that, until recently, the university was unable to gather this footage since it did not have the proper staff to do so.
One of the reasons we havent shot aerial footage of the campus until now is because weve only had a multimedia producer on staff since September 2012, Ayers told the Daily in an email. Now that we regularly produce videos to highlight the people, ideas and accomplishments that make Tufts unique, we wanted to include this type of footage.
Although the university originally planned to shoot the footage last spring, Ayers said that officials decided to wait until the fall season, when there is more color around campus.
Ayers declined to comment on the costs incurred from bringing in the helicopter but noted that the footage was a good investment for the university.
This is a one-time cost, and the footage being taken can be used for years to come for various projects, she said.
