Friday 30 May 2014

Back in the office..

Source: http://wheninlawschool.tumblr.com/


The last exams of my life are finally over! No time to celebrate though. I have been away from work for the last two weeks, and so I had to catch up. The festival is only two weeks away and there are still lots that need to be done. Unfortunately, the programming part of the festival is more or less over, so now I got assigned different tasks that related to the job that I did before but at the same time offered a better insight into different parts of organising a film festival. It was also interesting to work closely with more people from the team, which keeps on getting bigger and bigger the closer we get to the festival.

So now, for the next weeks, my tasks will be to work along with the Film Coordinator in order to help him arrange print traffic (mostly for the films that I helped securing), find and contact potential hosts for various Q&As, help out with hospitality (for filmmakers whose invitations I handled) and help curate the activities of One Stop Film Shop, a special pop-up space that the festival will be running from 9-15 June with Little White Lies Magazine, one of the UK's most respected film magazines. The shop is located at Old Street Station and will act as a hub for festival guests, cinephiles and Londoners to alight for short conversations and film screenings.


Let's see how this will go...

Friday 16 May 2014

Locking this year's line-up

Taken from the festival's website

The closer we get to the announcement of this year's festival programme, the more hectic my days in the office are. My last day in the office, before my studying-for-the-exams break, coincided with the day that we were locking the programme and I had to finish all of my tasks before leaving. We had to confirm in about 24 hours all of the "pending" titles, which, unfortunately, were a lot. 

Source: http://www.afluffygirl.com/2013_09_01_archive.html

About 10 titles got cancelled in the last minute, which made me realise that nothing is really certain in this job and that you always need to have a plan B. Maybe it was even an issue of lack of organisation. If we have confirmed more of the films earlier, then we would not have to be so stressed in the last minute. It was quite crazy during the last hours before the announcement and I gladly stayed over for more than 7 hours (which is the amount of hours that I usually work) to help out. It was as stressful as it was exciting; a very good chance to test my ability to work under pressure and manage my time, and, once again, I proved to myself and to my colleagues, that I, somehow, work better under pressure. I tend to be more organised and concentrated, which is a good asset if you seek employment in the cultural and creative industries.

Taken from the festival's website

All's Well That Ends WellIt's so exciting seeing all of your hard work getting out there for the world to enjoy! As far as the programme is concerned, there are some parts that I am really proud of. For instance, the Grits 'n' Gravy line-up looks amazing; Grits 'n' Gravy is a special part of the festival that was presented last year for the first time, and celebrates the films and music from the Deep South of the USA. I worked really hard on this so I am really looking forward to see how it will turn out. Then, there is the special event about Palestinian films, for which I chased all the copies and arranged traffic; the exceptional Palo Alto with James Franco (one of the "Coming of Age" films that we are doing this year, since the festival is also becoming a teenager); Hong Khaou's Lilting, one of the (unfortunately) few, but absolutely mesmerizing LGBT films of this year's line-up; Mistaken for Strangers, a really entertaining documentary about the relationship between the lead singer of National, Matt Berninger, and his brother Tom, the director of the film; and The Golden Dream, by far my favourite from the Mexican Focus that we are co-curating with last year's winner Sebastian Hoffman.

Monday 12 May 2014

WE MADE IT!



The last couple of days were crazy in the office and it's amazing what coordinated, team effort can do. Half of the money for the EEFF's first crowd funding campaign was raised in the last two days! And just 12 minutes before the end, the campaign reached its goal! Well, that was intense!

Apart from the fact that a strong, cooperative team is key for any cultural business that wishes to survive and prosper, the EEFF's crowd funding campaign is also an apparent example of how increasingly important social media are in modern marketing, especially for small businesses that cannot afford the extremely costly traditional advertising of print, radio and TV. 

Social media marketing refers to the creation of online content that aims to grasp the audience's attention and urge them to share that contact in their social networks (Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, Google+, Tumblr, Flickr, etc), blogs and websites, thus creating what Jan Kietzmann and Ana Canhoto describe (2013) as "electronic word of mouth". In the last hours of the EEFF crowd funding campaign, tweets and re-tweets were crucial, as they generated this electronic word of mouth which resulted in drawing a lot of attention in the campaign and helping EEFF to reach its goal.


Taken from EEFF's twitter

The value of social media originates on the collective and the individual, instead of the mass (Evans, 2012). Nancy R. Jones (2013) highlights the assets of social media marketing by pointing out:

a) its ability to target large audiences quickly and cost-effectively, and enable branding
b) how it enables direct feedback through interactive procedures such as polls, comments on facebook posts, and Q&As on twitter
c) the exposure that social media offer, bearing in mind that most people in developed countries uses social media today

The EEFF team is heavily using facebook and twitter as its main marketing tools, for all of the reasons above. Also, it is pretty obvious that, because of the festival's financial situation, it is impossible for EEFF to afford a lot of traditional advertising.



The efforts of the EEFF team escalated in the last few hours before the end of the kickstarter campaign. The marketing team was on fire, and anyone else did their best by tweeting about it, sharing the campaign on facebook, and practically forcing their friends, relatives, and former colleagues to share and donate.



Congrats team. Now let's go organise this festival!

References

  • Evans, D., (2012) Social Media Marketing: An Hour a Day. Indianapolis: John Wiley & Sons
  • Jones, N., (2013) Importance of Social Media Marketing Among Small Businesses. Available at: http://www.bizible.com/blog/bid/343058/Importance-of-Social-Media-Marketing-Among-Small-Businesses [Accessed 11 May 2014].
  • Kietzmann, J., Canhoto, A. (2013) Bittersweet! Understanding and Managing Electronic Word of Mouth. Available at: http://beedie.sfu.ca/files/Research/Journal_Articles/Journal_Articles_2013/Bittersweet_Understanding_and_managing_electronic_word_of_mouth.pdf [Accessed 11 May 2014].