Emails, emails, emails

When Chloe and the others went to see the students and give them the invitations and posters on the 29th (unfortunately I couldn't go because I had work commitments, so sent another member of my team instead), they got all the names and emails of everyone in the class. I made a facebook event and invited all the students using their emails that Chloe sent to me, seen below.



Chloe asked me if it would also be possible to send each student a personal email with the invitation attached, along with asking them to bring their own USB stick in case we can't get any free ones and to bring an idea for a simple drawing for an animation activity we will be doing on the day. Here is an example of what I sent them:

Hi Melissa,

Attached is the official invitation to our media event we're producing for you and everyone on your course. We hope you'll be able to make it since we have a lot of great things planned. Since some of these will involve producing a final project that you can keep, we're asking everyone to please bring your own USB stick and an idea of something simple to draw for an animation focused activity on the day. Please email if you have any questions, look forward to seeing you there!

Cheers,

Esther (on behalf of all Year 2 Creative Media Practice students at Bath Spa University)



We also needed to send out the finished press release to the press straight away, so I delegated all the other media sources to the contacting people on my team and emailed my contact at the Bath Chronicle, Graham Holburn. As I'm doing my work placement there in April, I thought this would be a good way to contact them since they asked me to email them with ideas of stories that I would like to work on during my placement. Here is a copy of the email I sent to him:




Hi Graham,

Hope you're doing well! I thought that I would get in contact again as it's coming close to the time that I start my placement with you. I'm really looking forward to starting and I had some questions about the placement. I also wanted to let you know an idea I had regarding a possible story for the Chronicle.

Since you mentioned about thinking of ideas for stories for my placement, I was wondering if you would be interested in something that has come up now. I know it's before my actual placement, but on April 8th, students at Bath Spa University are putting on a media event for students at Bath City College to encourage them to come to university despite rising fees. We've been in contact with Don Foster, who gives his endorsement and whilst he unfortunately cannot come since he was already fully booked on the day, he is going to prerecord a statement showing his support for students in Bath for us. We are also getting guest speakers in such as Gemma Hunt, a presenter for the CBBC who has also done presenting work for BBC One and BBC Two, and Andy Roberts, a former freelance cameraman who now works for the BBC. In the welcome pack you sent, it said to e-mail you with any ideas about stories I would like to pursue during my placement, and I think this could be an interesting story about how different students are reacting to the current and controversial issue of the rising university fees.

I can send you the press release we've written up for it if you would be interested in featuring this in the Bath Chronicle at any point. I would also be happy to pursue a follow-up story during my placement about what students in Bath think of this controversial issue or anything along those lines.

About my placement - I believe you said that my placement would be different to the one outlined in the welcome pack you sent me, in that I would have one week in the photography department and one week on the news desk with reporters. I was wondering if I will need to bring my own camera for the week in the photography department and if this would be the first week or the second week of the placement?

Thank you, looking forward to working with you!

Best,

Esther

Press Release

The next thing we had to do was design a press release and contact the media to ask them to come and cover the event. I delegated the writing of the press release to Simon, since he has had experience in writing them in the past and volunteered to do it. This is the text he came up with:

"I'm writing to you on behalf of a group of students at Bath Spa University to officially invite you to attend an event at the University.

This is a very unique event in the sense that it is being organised entirely by the Creative Media Practice Students in order to encourage others to take up the course and pursue their ambitions through University.

In a time of rising fees and increased difficulties in attending University we hope that hearing from the students viewpoint will encourage others that Higher Education is a worthwile and rewarding path to take.

The event being held is for a group of media students at Bath College and will be being held on the Newton Park Campus between 10-3.

The event will be split up into small workshops were the students will get to participate in activities such as working with the green screen, shooting a scene in sequence and 'the big draw'."

I then finished writing the content, changed much of it, edited it and then designed the first draft along with Leonie, and sent to Lesley to run it past her. She said she thought the content was good, but it needed to be more eye-catching and appealing (see this post about researching media event invitations - much of it applies to press releases as well). Leonie and I worked on it on Wednesday and came up with a design for it (seen below).



Lesley also said we should run it past the marketing department at the university just in case to get their permission, so I did and when she wrote back she highlighted that we had forgotten to put the date of the event on it!! I have no idea how all of us had missed it, but it's a good thing we sent it to them first so they could catch it for us!

She also suggested changing some of the text and moving it around, which we took on board for the final product. I finished it off with the new changes using Adobe Illustrator. This is the design of the final press release we will soon be sending to the press:

Free goodies!

On Friday, Claire, Leonie and I went on a massive trek around the university to find everything we could to put in the information packs and the goody bags we're giving to the students at the end of the day. We went to the marketing department, the careers department and the Student Union offices and hit the jackpot! We were able to get everything we needed and more:

• Free Bath Spa Uni and Grad South West pens
• Free Grad South West pads
• Brown paper bags that have Bath Spa Uni's logo on them with the words 'Let's change your future', perfect to go with the theme of the event
• Black plastic bags that say 'in the bag'
• New 2012 university prospectuses
• Open Day bookmarks
• Information about the university
• Course outline booklets

...and more! The best part was we then went to the SU offices and asked if they had anything they could give us. He came back with his arms full of Bath Spa Uni t-shirts, enough for our entire class, that we said we could have for free! So now we don't have to worry about getting t-shirts made, since we have ones that we can all wear on the day and keep afterwards as a souvenir.

The only disappointing thing about the day was that we weren't able to track down the free Bath Spa Uni USB sticks that they were handing out during the Fresher's Fair - none of the departments had any idea where that could have originated from. We have one more lead, the environmental department's email, but we thought if we can't get them we can always ask the students to bring their own USB sticks on the day. It would be a bit frustrating, since they would be perfect to be able to give them something tangible to take home with them of everything they do on the day that would remind them of the university...but I guess you can't win them all.

Media Event Invitation Research

Our next task that we have to complete before we go to meet the students on the 29th is creating invitations to take to them and a poster for them to put up in their classroom. I did some research on media event invitations, seen below:

From this we can see that most media event invitations have a catchy slogan used to draw you in, with the information found below in smaller text. We wanted to make it look colourful and appealing to a young demographic. First we had to nail down the logo, which we did! Here is the finished logo design, incorporating the 3-D look with a media theme:

The second thing we had to do was nail down the text on the invitation. We worked together on this, coming up with this wording for the final one:

Undecided on university?
Uni fees going up?
Don't let it get you down!

Join us for a media event, tailored especially for you. Featuring special guest speakers, hands-on activities and the opportunity to see all the facilities available at Bath Spa University, this event will give you the chance to see the benefits that studying at university can bring you.

Where: Bath Spa University, Newton Park Campus
When: Friday, April 8th, 9:30 AM – 3:00 PM

Refreshments provided, bring your own lunch - free giveaways available at the end of the day!

Produced by Creative Media Practice students at Bath Spa University.



The next thing we had to do was create the design. Here were some of the ideas Lee and Leonie made for invitations and the posters:












I met with Chloe and Brad and we decided that liked elements of both final designs, the typography of Leonie's design and the clapperboard logo with the squares motif of Lee's design, so I combined the two in Adobe Illustrater, seen below:



I also incorporated the two to make the final design for the poster:



All ready to take to them on Tuesday!

No Don Foster + logo ideas.

I got a reply back from Don Foster saying that sadly, he'd have loved to be a part of it but his schedule was already packed for that day. He did offer to pre-record a talk though that we can show at the event, so at least we can still tell the media that we have an endorsement from Don Foster and hopefully hook them in that way. I'm going to call his PA and set up a time to do as soon as I find out when people would be available to come and film.

I also got a reply back from Chris Hill, who unfortunately is also away on that date. We decided that we are going to try to get Gemma Hunt, a presenter for CBBC and who the people in the group who did the behind the scenes documentary Aladdin have had contact with before, and Andy Roberts, a friend of James' who used to be a freelance cameraman and now works for the BBC.

On Friday, Leonie and Lee both came to class with several ideas for logos:









While we liked Leonie's 3-D inspired colourful BSU logo, we also like Lee's more media-related ideas, so I've asked them to work together to see if they can combine the two.

Getting Don Foster!

We've decided that the most important thing to get done now is to nail down the guest speakers and any thing that would make it appealing for media coverage, such as getting local MP Don Foster to come and give his endorsement. I've now written an email to send him which I will copy onto here:


Hello,

My name is Esther Moore and I am a student at Bath Spa University doing a Creative Media Practice course. As part of the course, we are producing and hosting a media event on the Newton St. Loe campus to encourage students at Bath City College to come to university. As many students are now hesitant about coming to university with the rising tuition fees, this event will be produced with the aim of showing the students that it is still worth obtaining a university degree despite the rising fees.

As we are producing this event with the aim of positively responding to a current political issue, we would like to invite you as our local MP to make an appearance if you are available and perhaps give an endorsement of the importance of going to university despite the controversy surrounding it at the moment. We feel this could show your party's support for future university students and as we are currently speaking to the Bath Chronicle to come and cover the event, this could be a platform to show support for all university students in the city.

The event is on April 8th, and we will do our best to accommodate any time that would be best for you if you are available. The event begins at 9:00 AM and if you were available at that time, we would be delighted for you to open the event with a short 5 - 10 minute talk showing your support of gaining a university degree. If you are not available, we would greatly appreciate if there is someone else in your office that you think would be suitable and that you could recommend to come and give a talk in your place. Please let us know if you would be interested and available to be involved in this event.

Thank you, we hope to hear from you soon!

Regards,

Esther Moore

Media Event Research

For our class today, we had to make a presentation of research that we did of a specific media event. After some deliberation I decided to do mine on the Live G8 Concerts in 2005, which massive media publicity was generated for and was focused on doing it for a good cause. Here is the link attached:




I also gave everyone in the marketing team briefs to have done by next week, seen here:

Design team:

Claire, thanks for looking into the tshirts/hoodies - if you can bring some ideas and designs on Friday that would be ace.

Leonie - If possible, it'd be great if you can bring in initial sketches/design ideas for the logo that we can all look at and decide which one would work best. It'd be good to bring in a few so we can have some different options to look at and decide on. Also, might be a good idea to discuss colour scheme with Claire to make sure it would go well on the shirts.

Lee - Can you liaise with Leonie about ideas for the logo and see if it would be possible to use and tranfer logo onto the graphics for information packs, tshirts, goody bags, etc. If you'd like to start some initial design ideas for the information packs that'd be great too!

Contacting/organising:

Patrick - It'd be so good if on Friday we could have a rough version of a schedule of what needs to get done when - we can meet or chat on here about each deadline. Otherwise if you could write up one of those spreadsheets you mentioned last time that we could have ready to put in all the deadlines, we can all discuss and come up with it, hopefully have it set in stone and ready to move on by the end of the day.

Ed - Could you research how it would be best to contact a local MP (ideally Don Foster) and get them on board if possible, we won't do it yet but then we'll have an idea of the steps we need to take. Also if you can think of any accessible guest speakers we could have come in on the day it'd be brill!

Simon - Can you get quotes of prices from your contact in the printing company and bring some to compare for the tshirts, information packs, etc. Also, can you look into who we would need to talk to in the SU to see if we can get some free giveaway bath spa things for the goody bags/information packs? Don't know if there's a manager or someone in charge of it, but if we can find out who it is we can get on it straight away.

We also came up with a schedule for the day:

8-9: Rigging
9.15: Ice breaker for the students
9.30: First Activity
10.15: Second Activity
11.00: Third Activity
11.45: Walk/tour to Moreton
12.00: Lunch/technical de-rig
12.30: Finish lunch
12.45: Guest speakers (lunch for tech team)
13.45: Evaluation
13.50: Goodbyes, goody bags, take students to bus stop.

We talked about which guest speakers we are going to try to have for the event, as we need people who actually work in the media industry who have gone to university and can say how important it is in the media world to have a degree. We want to get someone who is accessible, interesting and who the students would get a lot out of.

One of the people I thought is someone I know named Chris Hill who is one of the script writers for the popular TV show Skins. Everyone would know what it is and would hopefully be interested and get a lot out of what he has to say. He's young, in his twenties and recently finished university so I think he would be perfect for the event. I'm going to contact him and ask him to come, hopefully we'll get him!

Event planning - activities and the angle!

This week, Chloe, James and I had another meeting to talk about planning the event - unfortunately, Brad couldn't participate since he was in London doing his work placement, but we had a productive chat and made a lot of good decisions in my opinion that enabled us to start moving forward. The first thing we realised we had to do was come up with 3 solid activities so that we could start planning what we would need for each one. We were going to wait until we were able to get the questionnaires back from the students to find out what areas they were most interested in, but we haven't had an answer back yet so we decided to go ahead and use our class as a basis of what most people would be interested doing a media course. Using our course as a starting point, most are interested in doing film and television, with a small number interested in photography, graphics or animation so we decided to plan the activities correspondingly.

The first activity we decided on was one called 'The Big Draw'. This is an animation/stop motion focused activity that Brad suggested and had done before, where you get several people to all draw on a large sheet of paper either with charcoal, pencils or markers, and take photographs continuously to create the illusion of movement. The way this is executed is that each person draws about an inch at a time, then steps out of the shot and a photograph is taken of the piece of paper. This is repeated every ten seconds, then all the photos are put together in a stop motion sequence to look like the drawing is growing on the paper. An example of this is show below:

We thought this would be a good activity since it would be fun, it would get everyone involved and it would give everyone something to take home with them at the end of the day. We thought we could have two cameras, one taking photos for the stop motion and the other continuously taking photos of everyone drawing to show the process and the progression of the animation.

To do this we would split them into three groups, then each group would do the activity for 45 minutes, continuing on from what the group before drew to create a final piece. Photos of process and final product would be given to them at the end of the day either on DVD or a bath spa USB stick if we are able to acquire some to give them in the goody bags.

The second activity we decided to do was a short film sequence, using either people in our class as the actors or the students themselves and basing it on the final duel scene in the western shoot-out film 'The Good, the Bad and the Ugly' (seen below).

We thought that a scene like this would be interesting for them to plan out and film, and would give them something else they could take home with them at the end of the day. With the variety of shots that are found in this one clip, such as establishing wide angle shots, medium close ups and extreme close ups of their eyes and expressions, we thought this would give them a good basis of making their own western shoot-out film sequence.

To do this this we thought we could have two sections: acting, directing and producing, and the technical side - cameras, lighting and sound. We would go through the basics with them but they would have to come up with their own ideas of style, action, etc, then do it all themselves. The final product of each group would be given at the end on same DVD/USB stick.



The third activity we decided to do was a Green Screen activity. We had three ideas for this and we need to decide on one of them:

First idea: Get costumes and have backgrounds to go with the costumes, then have them do the technical side of how to use a green screen and take turns being in the shot and doing the work behind it.

Second idea: Shoot an interview with someone, maybe Gemma Hunt (who the group who did the Aladdin pantomime have as a contact), then have them do the technical stuff ie camera, sound, lighting, etc.

Third idea: Do a weatherman/news report and see how it's done in the real world. They would take turns in front of the green screen and operating the equipment.

We decided we would send these ideas to everyone in the class and have everyone give in their input on what they think would work best.


The other thing we came up during our meeting was the angle for the event - one for the students, and one for the media coverage we're hoping to get to come to the event.

The angle for the students would be doing the event 'Apprentice' style - having them work against the clock to do each activity in the form a task they need to work together to complete, as it is on the popular BBC show 'The Apprentice' with Lord Alan Sugar (shown right). As part of this we would give them roles and maybe even have a board room-type thing for them at the end, although we wouldn't have any of them fired - we don't want them to leave the event with a complex!

The angle we would have for the event, which our marketing team came up with originally and which was defined and finalised in our team leaders meeting, is to have the event be put on in a way that would show that we are taking a different, positive approach to the university fees rising and are encouraging students to come to university despite rising fees. We want to show that it's still worth gaining a university degree, despite the current controversial issue of cutting university funding that many students are revolting about. We are hoping we can use this angle to perhaps get a local MP, hopefully Don Foster, to come and give an endorsement which we are sure would reel in the media coverage. We're going to confirm all of this on Friday with the rest of the class, but we feel confident about the planning of the event so far!

Media Event

Bath Spa University Media Event!
April 8th, 2011

This year, we've now started our final project in the core module Commissioning and Employment in the Media. We've been commissioned to produce a media event to encourage media students at Bath City College that it's worth going to university through giving them a glimpse of what we do in our course.

The first thing we did to start planning was brainstorm ideas for activities for the students to do, such as the Big Draw (a stop motion/animation activity), a photo marathon, a green screen activity or a multi-camera shoot. We then decided who was going to be the executive producer of the entire event through 3 rounds of ballot voting, which culminated with Chloe being our fearless leader!

Chloe chose 3 deputies to help her organise, plan and lead the event. I was one of the deputies chosen, along with Brad and James. We had our first meeting at my flat on the morning of Wednesday, February 16th. The first thing we did was decide that we needed to write up a questionnaire for the student to fill out to get some guidance on how they would like the media event to be. We all came up with different questions, but here is a list of the questions I came up with:

1. What area of media interests you the most?

A. Film
B. TV
C. Radio
D. Broadcast/journalism
E. Print media/publishing (magazines, newspapers, books, etc)
F. Graphics/animation/web design
G. Photography

2. What aspect of media would you most enjoy learning about and be able to see in action?

3. If you could be anything, what would be your dream media-related job?

4. Out of these options of media-related activities, which one would you most like to participate in? (Optional question)

A. The Big Draw (animation/stop motion focus)
B. Photo marathon/scavenger hunt
C. Multi-camera shoot

D. Green Screen activity
(list of possible activities...this way we could have an estimate of how many students would be in each group, etc)

We then decided that the class needed to be divided up into 3 sections, each one led by one of the deputies with Chloe's oversight - a marketing team, an organising team and a technical team. We decided James would be head of the technical team since that is his specialised area, Brad would be head of the ideas organising with an overlap of using his graphic design skills in the marketing area, and I would be head of the marketing team. We established that the marketing team would be in charge of pre-production items such as designing and creating T-shirts with our names and what area of media we specialise in for the students to come up and talk to us they want to; information packs to be given to each of the students when they arrive; and goody bags for them to take home with them full of Bath Spa Uni paraphernalia. We decided the items that would go in each would be as follows:

Information Pack:

- Itinerary/schedule of the day

- Course booklets, outlining each module

- Map of Bath Spa Uni, directions on how to get to the different rooms

- Invitation – ‘Welcome to Bath Spa University’

- Profiles of everyone’s names, pictures on the course + the areas they specialise in

- How to enrol at Bath Spa, the registration process

- Profiles of speakers we get to come in

Giveaway Bag: (need to contact SU to see how much we can get for free!)

- DVD or Bath Spa Uni flash drive of each group doing the big draw

- Pens/pencils

- I heart Bath Spa bags

- Free issue of Milk Magazine

- Free issue of Spa Life Magazine

- Milk stickers

I contacted Rosanna, the chief editor of Bath Spa Uni Milk Magazine, to see if we would be able to get free magazines to give to each of the students which she then said would be fine. She also said she would be happy to come and give a talk to the students if any of them are interested in magazine publication and everything that goes into it. We'll find out if we need her to after we get the questionnaires back from the students. I also asked Lee, who works for Spa Life magazine if we can get any free issues of those and he said it wouldn't be a problem - two things sorted!

After this meeting, Chloe created a facebook group for everyone to post the areas they would like to be involved in. From this, I was able to divide up the class into 3 groups of 6, depending on what they said they would like to do balanced with the talents and skills we've seen in the past. This is how I divided up the sections:

Marketing (Esther)	Organising (Brad)	Technical (James)
Patrick (photography)	Annie (paperwork)	Ant (filming/editing)
Claire (design)	Keiran (ideas)	Mike (filming/editing)
Lee (graphics)	Ross (technical)	Mandy (filming/setting up)
Leonie (illustration)	Rachel (ideas)	Harry (editing)
Ed (Contacting)	Kirsty (admin)	Tom (setting up)
Simon (meet&greet)	Carlina (ideas)	Edem (sound)

At the next lesson (25.2.11), we asked if everyone was happy with where they were put and everyone said they were. After this we split up into our teams and established the areas we would be in charge of, key roles for everyone in the team and ideas for our area of the event. We decided that within the marketing team, there would be two sub-teams: Design and Contacting/Organising. I allocated three people to each group according to what they would like to contribute, along with their key roles within that group:

Design Team:	Roles:	Contacting/ Organising Team	Roles:
Claire Hurst	- T-shirts - Goody bags - Photography	Patrick Bethell	- Contacting people, chasing up - Main organiser - Photographer on the day
Lee Evans	- Graphics - Information packs	Ed Whicher	- People person - Contacting - Meet & greet
Leonie Hunt	- Illustration - Logo - Putting together packs	Simon Partington	- Meet & greet - Talking to contacts - Comp airing on the day if needed

We also were given the task to begin thinking about media angles for the event to attract media attention from local newspapers and magazines. We came up with the angle of the rising university fees; that while most students are protesting violently against them, we're trying to provide a positive outcome by throwing a media event to encourage prospective students that it's still worth applying to university despite the rising tuition fees. We also thought if there was any way we could get a local MP such as Don Foster to come and give his endorsement, this would be a guaranteed way to attract media attention.

After this, all the groups came together and we all decided on a structure of the outline of the day. After much debate and changing things around, this is what we came up with:

We were happy with our progress and everyone has something that they are currently working on in their area and key role. I'm excited about this event, everyone seems to be involved and happy in their respective roles. There is a LOT of work to get done, but if we all stay involved I think this could be a great event.