CDS Drone Video Receives a 2025 Gold Telly Award
Excerpt from BU Today | By: Madyline Swearing (COM’26) | May 30, 2025 | Photo: Cydney Scott
BU Productions, Boston University’s in-house video production team, took home two gold statuettes at the annual national Telly Awards competition: for a video about the inauguration of President Melissa Gilliam and a drone video inside the Duan Family Center for Computing & Data Sciences....
BU Production’s other win explores the ins and outs of the 19-story, 380,000-square-foot Duan Family Center for Computing & Data Sciences building, which opened in 2022.
The drone video was commissioned by the Faculty of Computing & Data Sciences and produced jointly with BU Productions and Above Summit, a video production studio specializing in drone photography. It highlights the Data Sciences Student Pavilion, the BU Spark! Innovation and Experiential Learning Center, CDS classrooms and research labs, and the 17th-floor patio and conference center.
“We wanted to create something that felt immersive and alive—something that reflected the energy of our faculty and students and the innovation this space makes possible,” says Maureen McCarthy, CDS director of communications. “Receiving a Gold Telly is a testament to the creativity, storytelling, and collaboration that brought it all to life.”
The drone video was filmed over several weeks, and the production team faced a unique challenge: how to fly a drone through a busy academic building without disrupting the activity—or catching everyone looking up at the drone. The CDS communications team devised a creative solution: printing more than 1,000 business cards, which were distributed throughout the building during interior filming. The goal was to minimize distractions, according to McCarthy.
The message? “Drone video production in progress. Don’t look up.”