Graduation, With a Twist
RMIT University | Produced with The Production Place
How do you get graduating students to pay attention to the instructions?
Give them someone worth watching.
Over three years, we collaborated with event organisers The Production Place to create three graduation information campaigns for RMIT University.
Two drag queens, a superhero and an enthusiastic television shopping duo each took a turn guiding students towards their big day.
The information was practical. Apply, collect your gown, check your ticket, find your seat and arrive in time. Our job was to turn those essential steps into entertaining, clearly scripted content that worked within a university budget.
At a glance
3 campaigns across 3 years
Produced with The Production Place for RMIT University
Original concepts + scripted comedy
Drag performance, superhero adventure + shopping-channel parody
Location + studio production
Costume, props, visual effects + information graphics
Student communications / Graduation preparation
The Client Brief
An important day. Quite a few things to remember. Over 10,000 students need to know what to do.
Graduation involves more preparation than finding a cap and practising your wave.
Students need to understand what to organise beforehand, where to go and what happens when they arrive. For the event organisers, communicating those details clearly is part of helping the day run smoothly.
Across three campaigns, we gave that information a fresh creative treatment, building each film around characters, situations and jokes that could carry the message.
The Three Concepts
Two queens. One big day.
The first campaign followed drag queens Polly and Philmah as they prepared for graduation.
Their journey took them through the campus, onto public transport and into the stadium, with banter, distractions and wardrobe dilemmas along the way.
Academic dress became an opportunity for physical comedy. Directions became part of the journey. Ceremony etiquette gave the pair plenty to disagree about.
Filming in the actual locations helped students recognise where they needed to go, while on-screen information reinforced the practical details.
Supergraduate to the rescue
For the next campaign, graduation preparation became a superhero mission.
Supergraduate appeared whenever a student needed help, bringing extraordinary confidence to everyday tasks. Applying online, collecting a gown and catching a tram all received the full superhero treatment.
A bold costume, playful visual effects, comic-book graphics and dramatic narration created the world around her. Students became part of the action as she guided them from uncertainty towards graduation.
The humour came from treating each small task as a heroic achievement. The instructions were built into every rescue.
Welcome to RMITVSN
The third campaign borrowed the familiar language of television shopping.
Our presenters showcased graduation essentials with lavish enthusiasm, turning gowns, tickets and the ceremony itself into must-have offerings.
A lanyard became an accessory deserving close inspection. Academic dress received a fashion presentation. The hosts’ sales patter and increasingly strained exchanges kept the films moving.
Shopping-channel graphics gave dates, collection details and reminders a natural place on screen. The format allowed the essential information to remain visible while the comedy unfolded beside it.
Making the idea work on a budget
Each campaign was built around a clear comic premise that could do plenty of work.
Strong performers, purposeful scripts and a few carefully chosen costumes and props gave the films their personality. Campus and stadium locations provided recognisable settings, while the shopping-channel concept brought the action into a studio.
Graphics served both the joke and the message, creating superhero interventions in one campaign and retail-style information panels in another.
This approach let us put the production effort where audiences would notice it most — performance, timing and a visual idea they could quickly understand.
The Outcome
Across three years, RMIT’s graduation information took on three distinct personalities.
Working with The Production Place, we turned event requirements into scenes, demonstrations and comic exchanges designed for a student audience.
The films show how much creative scope there can be in an everyday communications brief, even when the ultimate goal is simply getting everyone to the right place, correctly dressed and on time.
