Week Sixteen: Visions 5 (Last Week!)

It's the last week of the semester for Visions, but that doesn't mean that I am going to stop! I already have a list of things that I need to do over break to bring the next semester in. First, and foremost, getting some contributors to the Indiegogo campaign! Then, I need to focus on research for Hootsuite and other programs that are similar (that I don't have to pay for).  The reason I didn't utilize it beforehand was because Facebook was the main outlet for social media and it already gave me the option to schedule posts ahead of time.  If I knew that I was going to be away from my computer, I would schedule posts.  I am going to do some more research about how to properly and effectively use Twitter and try to make that happen again.

Other than that, I am really exited to meet some new members at the social (which will also give us some great opportunities for social media ideas) and I am excited to really get into the grind of things next semester!

Week Fifteen: Visions 5 (through Thanksgiving and Party)

Over the break I worked on making and promoting the party event on Facebook, twitter and instagram! I was really excited that Ally was the first person to actually use the social media request. Indiegogo and party promotions continued.  I am researching more into Hootsuite now that facebook has taken away my ability to pre-schedule posts (something that was difficult to manage over the break).  I need to do some more research on twitter and how to market better with it. 

The party was great! I have still very few pictures (that haven't already gone up on social media). 

Week Fourtheen: Visions 5 (ends with Thanksgiving Break)

Things have not really changed for social media, other than promoting the party and promoting the Indiegogo.  I assigned everyone to promote their reasons for why people should donate on their personal pages.  I think that the Facebook likes are slowing down, we reached a really high number really fast and we have plateaued.  Twitter is not as popular, so I wanted to have a discussion about what we wanted to do with it.  Instagram is getting more popular, we just need to post more pictures and use more hashtags! 

Week Thirteen: Visions 5

We did not have a department meeting this past week, due to all the fun of Cucalorus! I slacked a bit on posting this past week, however, this week will continue full speed with posts about Cucalorus, and promotions for our new Indiegogo! I am going to speak to all of the classes this week as well, hoping to show our amazing Indiegogo and help spread the word about Visions! 

Shona Thompson Presentation Response

I really liked the portion about the silent cinema festival.  Honestly, I am not a huge fan of Silent Cinema but the way she presented how the festival works was very interesting.  I think that it is amazing to have a live band play with the film; I would definitely want to go see something like that. I think bringing back all of the traditions from that time and focusing on the history is also very important and really interesting.

            Shona said her main goal was building a community; that is really something that I hope happens with Visions, but specifically on my area of social media.  I think that having discussions about the films that we are watching and the relevant subjects in film.  She also gave really good advice for what you need to do when working with a film festival while she presented her Feasibility study.  She talked about all of the ins and outs of what you need to know before, what you need to plan and what you need to do after.  One thing that she stated was most important is knowing what film festivals are around you and what they are doing as well. I think it is important to know how other festivals work in order to gather ideas for what we want in our festival and how we want to improve. 

            Due to a meeting and time conflicts, I was unable to attend Shona’s presentation, though I wish that I could have! The film that we watched in class was very interesting.  I thought it was really cool to see how Wilmington had progressed over the years and to hear how the people around here had perceived those changes. And, of course, because it was more about film, it was interesting to hear the different venues that existed and how the traditions for movie-going has changed, as well.

Week Twelve: Visions 5

These past two weeks I am picking up the social media game.  I have been doing posts on Facebook, few on instagram (which I will pick up more this week).  I want to have a discussion about twitter, until then, it is reserved for announcements, while the other two sites fuel discussions.  Other than just posting and finding things to engage the followers, nothing much has changed!

Week Ten & Eleven: Visions 5

These past two weeks I have been working on getting more likes to the page and posting about our events! Our goal is to reach 1,000 likes by the end of this semester.  We have reached over 900, as of today, and it is time to start posting polls, questions and discussion topics! For this week, I will post at least twice to create interaction on the page, as well as a followup for the bake sale! I am emailing the Film Studies social media site updates as well!

When Should You Post To Social Media?

This is a really great link that breaks down social media posting, by outlet, about what times are the best and the worst to post.  Previous research (which I cannot find at the moment) and personal experience have led me to believe that the best times to reach college students is early in the morning (because our generation is glued to our phones and we make checking social media a part of our morning routine) and early to late evening (because we are doing homework and social media is the most common way to distract us).  For those not in college, the best times are mid afternoon (phones come out during lunch breaks) and after normal work times or early evenings (right after work and before dinner time).

Week Nine: Visions 5

This week was very productive! We officially launched social media and call for entries.  We are slowly building, one two posts a week and then more and more.  Right now we are just on the barebones.  This wee I will try to start more discussion on Facebook and take some pictures during class, or as instagram will know it as "staff meetings."  During our weekly meeting, we mostly discussed those steps and more about logos, the theme and the website!

Week Eight: Visions 5

This week was very productive! We got a lot finished regarding the social media campaign and set schedules for our posts.  We hope to successfully carry out our goals.  I uploaded a draft of the next few weeks of posts (not including those that are requested) to the virtual class drive and I am eager to hear feedback so I can make this a successful year for social media!

Effective Social Media Use!

11 Unusual Social Media Tips!

Above linked is a really awesome article that I found that is going to help me out a lot this semester! The ideas presented are really great, some of which we have already thought of.

The tips and my thoughts on them:

1. Create custom-formatted tweets.
• I don't know how to do this, but I have seen it before. I will need to learn and get on that! 
2. Write longer posts.
• As a person who likes to read short things, I don't know how much I agree that this would help, but it is worth a shot! 
3. Build Facebook Groups.
• We have a page, but maybe a group too?
4. Insert embedded call to actions. 
• Already thought of this! Links will be posted on a lot of discussion postings! 
5. Market across many social platforms.
• Already have Instagram, Facebook and Twitter on our books! 
6. Facilitate meaningful connections. 
• This is something that we talked about really early on.  It is really important for us to build a community on our social media; our posts about discussions is really going to (hopefully) help with this. 
7. Crowdsource user-generated content. 
• hmmmm
8. Be a little weird. 
• Posting about Superhero things! 
9. Stand behind your actions. 
• Always! 
10. Put a positive spin on things. 
• Being negative doesn't really attract anyone. 
11. Provide a bit of structure. 
• Opening up conversations is going to help with this! 

Week Seven: Visions 5

This week was very productive! LOGO IS DONE! So we are making really good headway on our theme for the website and that in relation to our social media campaign.  We have some really good ideas for the campaign and we are just waiting on some class input to get those started.  We are going to be working with some really nerdy things (fitting with the superhero theme) on our social media sites: tag lines, catch phrases, sayings, etc.  My goal for this week is to continue working on drafting some posts, find some cool articles and get access to the accounts!

Festival Interviews: Most Interesting, Most Helpful

After reading through all of the festival interviews and making note of all of the interesting things (which, soooo many!) I think that one of the most helpful things came from Kevin's interview with the Screenwriting Competition.  I really appreciate that value of someone's work and sometimes, knowing who submitted something gets in the way of scoring (we are all human, we have human biases).  The process used here is a blind submission; this means that they don't have names or any identifying features of the submitters. I think that could be really useful, especially since we were talking about the personality blurbs in class.  Someone's work should stand for itself!

Week Six: Visions 5

Our weekly meeting was very productive.  We were able to discuss our plans for the website and our social media/marketing campaigns more in depth because we have not locked down a theme (hooray for superheroes!) Most of our time was just spent discussing ideas for the website, how we can find a proper logo, and what we can start teasing for social media. 

"Event Budgets…" "Top Ten Event Management Tips" Response

I think that the “event budgets” reading was very helpful, simple and straight to the point.  I’ve only ever had to manage a small budget for each committee or officer position that I have held, but even then, we put our budgets together like this.  All possible costs, all possible profit, all possible income, etc. 

I could not find the "top ten event management tips," however, Hillary found an article that was in replacement to that one! I have had experience with major event planning, so these steps weren't a big surprise.  I think it is really important to follow every tip that they have given to hold a successful event.  There are many facets that you don't even think of that you really need. 

Week Five: Visions 5

This week we were able to accomplish a lot of different things, especially gearing up to present our ideas to the class.  I spent a lot of time before the weekly meeting on Thursday getting ideas organized for goals for social media, including themes, polls, and random discussion topics that we could use on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.  I spent a lot of time trying to find out what film communities we are already engaged with on each outlet (however, I could not find specifics on Facebook without login information).  I was able to make a solid 12 step list for this semesters social media (which I have posted).  We spent more time discussing findings and coming up with more ideas during the weekly meeting. We started an outline of what we are going to be talking about in class and presenting.  We met again Monday night to go over our talking points.

12 Steps for Success: Social Media Efforts

12 Steps for Success: Social Media Efforts

1.     Objectives

.        To build a stronger following base on all social media outlets; to involve followers in conversation along with providing them with informational tid-bits throughout the festival process.

2.     Customers

.        Visions staff, visions goers, students, filmmakers, scholars

3.     Results

.        Create a small online community for film conversations

.        Create a larger following base

4.     Budget

.        n/a: social media should not require money to be spent

5.     How Long

.        All semester

6.     Skills

.        The obvious tech. savvy

.        Ability to be concise

.        Communication

.        Interpersonal (even if we are reaching people behind a computer)

7.     Needed Resources

.        Computers

.        Media website logins

8.     Team

.        Rika: Managing all outlets

.        Hillary/Luqi: giving Rika updates and ideas

9.     Schedule

.        Start posting teasers until the theme is announced (after week 5)

.        Post 3 times a week, every week, and possibly more leading up to and during the festival

10. Risks

.        No one wants to communicate on the new outlets and on the discussions

11. Communication

.        Meetings, phones, social media, email

12. Success

.        More followers, more attendees and more communication on the outlets

Research Assignment 1: Festival and Conference Management Styles (PART II)

1. How many entries did they get this year? For films make sure to ask them to distinguish between features and shorts.

We are mid-process right now, almost halfway and we have about 1800 entries. We anticipate over three thousand. 

2. How many films do they aim to screen each year? How many papers/presentations do they accept?

We screen about 280 films; we consolidate all our presentations.  We are expanding frames, so about 11 papers and presentations.

3. What is their pre-screening process?

We have a series of people who will pre-screen for round one, and they look for films in the ballpark for the program.  We have a standardized form of rating and comments.  Then for the second round, we only have about one or two people working on the same form. They look at the work more critically.  Then the narrowed down pieces go to the screening committee of about nine people who work every night to review the work.  The program director manages the whole project, looks at all the comments and feedback and makes sure to decide what to bring the final decision.  Most final decisions are the same as the committee. 

4. How many pre-screeners do they have each year?

About 50 people.

5. Who is typically chosen as a pre-screener?

We make sure that people are familiar with the festival, have attended at least 2 to 3 years, to screen at the first level.  They are expected to make a commitment to review at least 3 “cases” of 40 films each. 

6. How do they score entries? Do they use a scoring template/rubric? Are there scoring guidelines?

Scored by a definitely, yes, maybe, no, definitely not selection. Then there are comments.  Then a rating of 1-10 on originality and concept, technical quality and merit, artistic value and merit, compelling and engaging, and then another section of comments.  Then questions: what is what film trying to do? How well does it work? And a yes, no vote.

7. Do you have a jury after the pre-screening process has ended?

We being in three judges every year who sit and watch all of the competition screenings and also material that didn’t get programmed.

8. How far in advance do they send out their call for entries? How do entries typically roll in? Early? Late? In waves?

About a week before the first early deadline.

9. How many paid employees do they have each year? How many volunteers?

Three full time employees year round, 18 contract employees with varying degrees of responsibility and up to 100 volunteers. 

10. Do you use specific programming, trafficking, budgeting software? Do you like it?

We use filemaker pro-custom databases for screening tracking and filmmaker databases.  We use quickbooks for accounting and google spreadsheet for budgeting.  They work!

11. What community outreach do you do outside of your festival season to keep your event on the public's radar and/or to raise funds? (Workshops, mini-festivals, fundraiser dinners, etc.)

One of the primary areas that we spend time and energy on during events is rebuilding membership.  We have a touring program, so we will have a tour kick-off party that is open to the public.  We have a DVD series.  We have a partnership with the local college radio station.  We do movie nights and DVD release parties with the college as well.  A local dentist is also a major sponsor, and we work together with them.  We go in a few weeks before the festival and have a Q&A with the patients and the staff.  The touring program is also a big outreach branch because it goes around nationally and internationally. 

12. Do you give out swag bags to visiting filmmakers? Presenters? Guests? If so, what type of items do you include in those bags?

There will be a map or Ann Arbor, information for the filmmakers and about special events in the bag/folder.  There could also be discount for local businesses and buttons. 

13. Do presenter/filmmaker pay registration to attend?

Filmmakers who have a film being screened to not have to pay to attend, just as the presenters.

14. Are you able to provide presenters/filmmakers with funds to cover travel or lodging?

We try to offer housing for filmmakers; people in Ann Arbor volunteer to host filmmakers.  We plan their stay and they pay for the plane ticket. 

15. What "perks" do your filmmakers/scholars enjoy at your festival/conference? What else do you encourage them to do while they're in town? m(Free dinners, tours, exclusive activities…in Wilm, we'd try to take them to the beach, Screen Gems tour, etc.)

Last year it was a last minute mad dash to local restaurants, a local record store that gives us a discount, a comic book store, a greenroom.  We usually have a filmmaker happy hour, a filmmaker lounge at a downtown deli, restaurant or coffee shop.  There is a special filmmaker dinner hosted by a restaurant that has been there since 1963 (a big supporter of the festival).

16. Do you have special donor perks during the event? Or how do you thank them?

            Donors get passes; depending on the levels they donate at, they are invited to special events, special private parties and allowed for programs to be named after them.

17. What do they wish they had done differently or better when they were first starting out? What do you wish you knew then that you know now?

I wish we had a general background in non-profit management; the three staff are artist and we bring in interns from art and film school; we have started to look into arts management interns. 

18. If it’s a festival or conference that no longer is in existence…why did it end?

19. Any other ideas or advice that we haven’t thought to ask about?

One thing that distinguishes this festival from others is the commitment to the avant-garde, especially in the last decade.  So much success came from our supporters, it could have taken a turn towards a different area of focus; it says a lot to have maintained it’s identity through the years.