John Zhu

How many PhDs does it take to put on a cape? More than you might think. Each year, the Duke Graduate School holds a commencement ceremony in which more than 200 graduating PhD students go on stage and their faculty advisers place the hood (a fancy cape) over their shoulders, signifying their new status as holders of doctoral degrees. Each year, however, a number of students and faculty struggle with the actual act of placing the hood.

Before the 2019 hooding ceremony, I created a short video demonstrating proper hooding technique, as well as pitfalls to avoid. There are other videos out there on the topic, but they tend to be pretty dull. I knew I wanted to take a different approach and make something that's informative AND fun. Also, the video needed to communicate its key points without sound, because we wanted to play it on a silent screen at the ceremony venue. Filmed and edited in less than a week, this old-timey final cut was well-received. It was also purposefully shot in a way that made it easy to crop the video to square dimensions for Instagram.

Watch the video