Week 13

Meeting with Jack

This week was a short one. We had a meeting about the Oped Piece and social media and how that should be handled. Jack and I talked about how we would hope to use it in the spring and what we can do to beef up our posts a little and create some better tone. 

Meeting with James and Rebecca 

James, Rebecca, and I went over the Galaxy Quest idea and they were able to put in their ideas about how we should handle the race. We went over the locations that we found and found more locations in Fisher when we met up. We also went over the Powerpoint and what they would need to discuss. 

Oped Piece

It's been hard to find direction with the oped piece, but I think I know how I'm going to try to tie in Visions and technology and millennials. It's definitely going to be a work in progress, but you have to start somewhere. I think once we write it, and everyone gives feedback it will really get the ball rolling. 

Cucalorus Paper

Films I saw:

1. Princess

2. Trinidad Shorts

3. 10X10 Connect commercials

4. The Devil's Candy

5. TAG

6.Wilmington on Fire

7. Hazing: How Badly Do You Want In? 

I had a Pegasaurus pass for last year’s Cucalorus, so I was able to see clearly that they must have lost a sponsor, and I thought the way they handled that was interesting. The swag bags took a hit – last year a t-shirt was included and the tote was a better quality. The food, beverages, and venue also took a hit. It didn’t seem like a bad thing, but it changed the tone of the festival. The open bar, and the amount of food they served would not work for visions.

I talked to a lot of the members of the staff, as well as Dan for a short period of time. The staff didn’t feel as though they had specific jobs, and that the animations and bumpers didn’t have a strong theme. I thought this was weird to say, because their art was similar to past years. They had red solo cups that they sold which played off the fact that it was their 21^st anniversary. I saw that they had a lot of different aspects that they pulled from, and this year’s theme didn’t seem as fully developed as last year’s “Chicken & Waffles” theme. I think it worked for them though, because the festival is already out there and weird.  

I spent a good amount of time in the lounge this year between screenings. They had popcorn all weekend and the same drinks. The atmosphere was laid back, but not many people were mingling. It broke off into cliques pretty quickly, which was not good for connecting. You kind of had to force your way into the conversations. Michelle and I developed a strategy at Virginia where you made up a ridiculously dressed person and open up the conversation by asking if they had seen him around. It was a good way in, and we always left a business card at the end. ($8 for 250 @Staples). I think for Visions we should have the Visions staff be the people who make others (as well as themselves) mingle at the after party. I also like that we have forced bonding time with the video race. Cucalorus does similar bonding with their connect sessions.

I would not like to be a mediator.  I feel like people would talk over me and we would never get anywhere, ever. Maybe I would like to be an usher? I honestly wouldn’t like to have any job at the festival the day of besides talking to people and getting them comfortable, or being stationed somewhere to make sure people get where they need to go – making sure people are where they need to be is my thing. I think I enjoy the back work of the festival atmosphere more.  

Week 11 Update

Departmental Meeting

Jack and I met for thirty minutes on Wednesday, and then during Cucalorus weekend 30 minutes before Wilmington on Fire. We troubleshooted how he might go about making a shares and likes calendar for the V6 team. We then talked about making posts and how he would need to divide those up between us. 

Animation Meeting with Tyler

Tyler and I met and talked about the animations left for this semester. I told him that in each animation there needs to be Cosmo, the planet, and #boldlygo, as well as keeping it in the same environment. Tyler seemed to be in agreement and I messaged Grace to keep me involved with developments for new ideas so we can keep the marketing and art department talking. 

Oped Piece

I talked with my dad and gleaned some experiences he had as a journalist. He had an oped piece published when he was around my age too! He said that it's a great idea, and even if it doesn't get published it's good experience and can be easily transformed into a blog post to go on other film blogs or less prestigious newspapers. He said that the millennial basis for the piece was an interesting and relevant topic, and that he's seen a lot of pieces about the same kind of stuff so it has a good chance of being published. He also said I need to develop a cover letter for it before sending it out, and that he would be happy to help edit it! He also said to not only attach the press release but to also put it in the body of the email. 

I've also been talking with my friends and one has a cousin at Huffington Post, so hopefully I can finagle my way in there. 

Research

How to write Op-ed Columns - The Earth Institute - Columbia ...

https://www.natcom.org/uploadedFiles/Public_Engagement/Writing%20and%20Submitting%20an%20Opinion%20Piece.pdf

You can only send an oped piece to one publication at a time!

"If your op-ed does not get accepted, but still concerns a topic of current concern and has been recently covered, you might consider shortening it and resubmitting as a letter to the editor."

http://www.dailyoped.com

Week 10 Update

Departmental Meeting

Jack and I moved our meeting to Wednesday at 1:30 because of VAFF. We talked about Jack taking over the social media page and I walked him through how I did the marketing action plan for October and the social media calendar. We agreed that he would take over for social media and make the calendar and we would collaborate on making the posts.

VAFF

I went to Virginia Film Festival this weekend and paid a lot of attention to how they marketed the festival. The thing that was really cool and made me want to go to the festival the most was the MoxBox which was just a camera in a box with a large LCD screen so you could see all the pics and they posted them straight to Facebook so that you had to log on to get your picture - and you can save your picture from there! That was so cool because it kind of forced people to log on and follow. On their Facebook page : https://www.facebook.com/virginiafilmfestival/?fref=ts. They had a lot of podcasts that people could "check out." I don't think that would go over as well with our audience though.

They handed out sheets of paper that you could tear at the top to rate the film you watched on a scale of 1-5. I thought this was really awesome because it made it so you didn't have to pass out pencils to everyone. 

They had a lot of hors d'oeuvre and free drinks which got everyone a little looser to mingle around and added a very fancy tone to the party - since their audience was not ours I thought that was a good touch. Our audience I saw at the party was mildly uncomfortable at the party. 

On their instagram, they were posting interviews with directors and their pics... I found this strange for instagram because it had a lot of info on a small platform. I also noticed they had "Takeover" days during the festival where they would pass around the instagram to different people like interns or one day it was the festival director. I've never seen this done before, but I'm not sure if I like it or not. They also got together with their partners to do Facebook giveaway contests. They did film of the day staff picks. We might be able to do that too! 

All of their stuff obviously had their name and little bird on it. They had stickers, pamphlets, brochures, magnets, shirts, beanies, sweatshirts, bags, wine toppers, water bottles, koozies. All really cool and all really expensive.

Everything they did felt big and expensive, and I think that's why it came off as big and expensive. However, I think it also made some of the younger people slightly more uncomfortable, and that's not what we want for our festival. I think I need to ride a fine line between inspirational without making it feel unattainable. 

I wish they had had better maps. We got lost a lot and the parking was atrocious.

Update on Marketing Action Plan

I am currently working on the Marketing Action plan for November. Here is my research for that. We are going to try to focus on getting something published in a big time magazine - who knows. 

http://www.carefulcents.com/get-published-on-the-huffington-post/

After reading this maybe we should go after popular blogs!

Less editing means more likely to be published!

Send in headshot and bio with it

http://newsoffice.duke.edu/duke_resources/oped

op-ed piece?

750 words!

http://www.theopedproject.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=67&Itemid=79

advice

http://abovethelaw.com/2013/12/how-to-get-published-in-the-new-york-times/

Pitching a news story to NPR 

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5170632