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!