Week Ending 4.23.13

Had a brief PTO meeting to discuss any final work/thoughts/reflections and go over the final things to be done for PTO wrap-up.

Wrote long Visions reflection and final crew evals.

Began going through all previous blog entries, meeting minutes, and personal class notes to compile what all was completed throughout the semester to implement into the manual.

Copied all of the files from the first Visions drive to the new 1TB drive. Have been organizing all of my personal files from the year in order to transfer them over to the Visions drive and contacted all of the other ADs requesting that if they had any important files on their personal computer or drive that weren't on dropbox to send them my way. Currently in the process of transferring all of this year's dropbox files to the drive.

Week Ending 4.16.13

Honestly, I spent most of this week recuperating from the previous week and weekend. I didn't have the energy or stamina to do much and in fact had to go see the doctor to get some help with my health, but was still able to use the downtime for reflection.

I did get up with Brandon to work on tallying up registration numbers in accordance with both the physical hand-written copies and the electronic lists. We counted everything but the discrepancy between the numbers indicates something mising - Brandon is continuing to work on this as I archive the drive and work on a few other PTO things.

Gathered all of the physical film and paper submissions and will divide amongst team the workload of scanning in hard-copy submissions and printing electronic ones so that there is a double copy of every submission form. James will work on compiling them in a binder.

Week Ending 4.9.13

Spent an extensive amount of time going through the online registation doc (exported as Excel spreadsheet) to make sure that names weren't repeated twice, that anyone who had registered for more than one guest had the correct number of labels, that all of the faculty, staff, filmmakers/scholars, and volunteers were on the list.
 - Added in Staff members, FST faculty, and volunteers if they hadn't already registered, as well as the two-party filmmaking teams that we're attending
Then created 3 separate Excel spreadsheets which I proceeded to upload to the google drive: Staff, FST faculty, Filmmakers/Scholars & Volunteers; All Other Pre-Registered Guests, and lastly day-of registration with the correct columns removed or added in that we needed.

I then took the first two lists and implemented them into mail merge to make the labels and worked for a long time making sure each label had the correct name and title and that the font was a printable one. Had Pat print the labels out on Thursday.

Picked up badges and badge holders and dropped them off to Brandon and Matt to put lanyards on all the holders and to label each one with numbers.
Had pens, pencils, badges, badge holders, and labels for registration box. Brandon bringing copies of Film Matters and Film Int.

Printed off direction signs (Quite Please, Turn off Electronic Devices, etc. from Appendices from last year) but ultimately forgot to transfer them from my folder to the registration box.

Week Ending 4.2.13

Hung small posters around town

PTO meeting to discuss registration procedures, what we still need to do

Got poster supplies to make the 4 posters on easels to direct people & also worked with Channing and James regarding the easels that would be placed around Fisher - went back multiple times to try and get it sorted out as there was some miscommunication between Campus Life Reservations and us

Began word doc with all the FST faculty with correct address (Dr. or just professor) and title, one with all of the Staff members with their correct titles (will be double checked with program once its received from Jon), one with all of the filmmakers and scholars with their name and correct label (also made sure that staff members who were a part of Visions had two labels to represent both of their functions), and started working on one with Volunteers from the preliminary list I had from Natasha.

Assigned Brandon to pick up copies of Film Int. and Film Matters for the registration table - he would bring that morning

Started working on a document outlining registration procedures but could not complete it yet because waiting for registration to close to that i could align the procedures with everything we had come in from pre-registration and still figuring out the google doc method of tracking registration.

Week Ending 3.26.13

Wednesday - met with Matt and Channing to go over details for the tech run through, as well as our next meeting with Sandra - James will be taking over on tech from here as I work with Brandon on registration, but I'll be available to help with tech in any way that I can

Thursday - compiled list of films for Joey and James to give to professor co-moderators, was missing a few of the links so will work to get those and have the documents ready by next class period

Friday - met with Brandon to discuss registration procedures and registration documents - we will be meeting more in depth to secure everything to be ready for the registration table on the day of, including potentially making it an electronic google doc for guests to type their info into upon arrival

Saturday - emailed Campus Life Reservations to reserve easels, compiled list of what supplies will be needed for the table - will be gather all of those over this coming week and weekend

Sunday - send info regarding Conference Block 2 to Ana Olenina, as per request.

Monday - AD meeting, tied up random loose ends with Channing and PTO team members to make sure everything is on track, made list of all FST faculty and Visions staff members with respective titles for badge labels

Tuesday - presented/plugged Visions to the first block of Palmer's "Contemporary French Cinema" class and Sue Richardson's Feminism class; worked on a few Facilities/tech/registration organizational things (emailing and list-making and confirming)

Week Ending 3.19.13

Wednesday - PTO meeting - discussed logistical stuff for registration table, parking, signs, supplies, tallying numbers, tech run-throughs, etc. Then I worked with Matt on sending out emails to all of the filmmakers with tech spec guidelines for sending in hard copies of their films and scholars with presentation tech details.

Thursday - emailed Sue Richardson, Terry Linehan, Mariana Johnson, and Todd Berliner, Nandana Bose and Ana Olenina inviting them to take part as FST professor hosts for Visions 2013.

Friday - compiled list of film blocks with links to the films for faculty viewing (for Josh and James to give to Chip and Glenn)

Monday - AD meeting; ran registration report, e-mailed Mariana Johnson about being time moderator for Conference Block 1

Tuesday - met with Matt and Channing to discuss: technical details regarding Facilities, meeting with Sandra Jackson again, and then when to do a tech run through.

Week Ending 3.12.13

Wednesday - PTO meeting, divied up the list of films that were not selected into four sections and each team members was assigned a section to send rejection letter to, discussed what's to come for the week ahead, 1 hour

Thursday - went to dat 90's partay ;)

Friday - updated the rejection letter template and uploaded to dropbox, sent out my section of rejection letters, 1.5 hour

SPRING BREAK

Monday - met with the A.D.s, discussed updates, spoke with Shannon to decide all of the co-moderators, then worked on guidelines for co-moderator emails 2.5 hrs

There were some other things I did, but unfortunately Spring Break is causing my mind not to remember them...If there imperative things for next year that need to be notated, I'll put them in my next blog.

Week Ending 2.26.13

Wednesday - 12-12:30 - went into Shannon's office to work on updating some things with the FileMaker doc. PTO meeting 12:30 - 1:15pm. Didn't have too much to discuss since we weren't working on getting any new submissions in. Just talked about what we have upcoming to do.

Between Thursday and Sunday - I re-watched all films and then scored them on Monday night. It came to about 7 hours.

Also, intermittently during that time I have been working on getting all the films from my personal hard drive to the Visions drive since my personal one has been acting funky lately and they all need to be on the Visions drive anyways. Will continue to work on the Visions drive organization. Also sent out my share of submission confirmation emails to those filmmakers who submitted for the late deadline. 2-2.5 hrs.

Will be sending out rejection letters this week, as well as putting into action plans for what to do for after the break, especially regarding day of smoothness of event. Will be working on getting volunteers for the day, also signs for parking and directions to the event, as well as the correct format of films for screening and getting all of the films and presentations submitted to us at least a week before the event so we can have a run through with Lumina.

Week Ending 2.19.13

Wednesday - PTO Meeting and follow-up work with invitationals and submissions 1pm-2:45; meeting with Visions meeting with Sandra Jackson, Channing, and Matt G. 2:45-4pm.

Thursday - contacted any filmmakers who we seriously wanted to submit whom we hadn't been able to get a hold of yet - 45mins-1hr

Saturday - watched films for 1.5 hrs

Sunday - watched films for 3.5 hrs

Monday - watched and scored films for 1.5 hrs

Monday - AD meeting from 12:30-1:30; updated submissions FileMaker file from 2:00-5:00,
worked on uploading new submissions to hard drive from 10pm-12:30am

Week Ending 2.12.13

Tuesday - Formatted and uploaded all paper submissions to hard drive - 2 hours

Wednesday - searched Wesleyan and a bit of Temple for undergrad films from 12pm-2pm (2 hours), then from 2-3:30 (1 & 1/2 hrs) met with PTO team to discuss our plan of action. I spent the majority of that afternoon (6 hours) researching more of Temple/Diamond Screen Film Festival, Columbia/CUNUFF, CalArts, and UT Austin for undergraduate films

Thursday - spent 11am-12pm researching films from Yale and Vanderbilt

Friday - after finding 11 films to invite, I spent three hours of the morning finding as much contact info as possible for those invitationals, then spent 1 hour drafting and sending out emails;
that afternoon, I spent 1 and 1/2 hours reading papers

Sunday - met with Jon and James from 1-2 and starting working on invitationals spreadsheet list, worked on it for two more hours after that. That evening I spent another 2 hours reading paper submissions

Monday/Tuesday - worked on updating all of this week's submissions for the drive (currently #s 31-54, unless we receive two more submissions before class, then I will make it to #56 so that it will be 25 films), also spent 30 minutes calling invitational people who had not yet submitted that we have phone numbers for.

Week Ending 2.3.13

Monday, January 28 - called the 8 abstract submitters to get their full papers sent in to us, left voicemails for most, over course of time contact, continued contact throughout the week, total 2 hrs

Wednesday, January 30 - met with PTO for an hour to discuss sending out second-round invitationals to filmmakers to submit and to draft all of the new submission confirmation emails - 1 hr

Thursday - Friday: unavailable due to hospitalization

Saturday, February 2nd: watched and scored second batch of 15 films - 5 hrs


Will be working on paper formatting and uploading for class to have access to this week on Monday and they'll have access by Tuesday

Week Ending 1.27.13

Monday January 21 - uploaded/created docs for the first batch of 15 films to be watched and scored, and transferred to hard drive; 4 hrs.

Tuesday January 22 - created and uploading film viewing guidelines, transferred first week's 15 to editing lab media drive; 1 hr.

Thursday January 24 - uploaded second week's 15 films to drive; 3 hrs

Friday January 25 - watched first 8 films and kept personal notes for scoring; 2.5-3 hrs

Saturday January 26 - copied all electronic documents from Shannon's computer to Visions drive that I could find, tentatively began the organizing process; watched last seven films, scored and submitted all; 5 hrs

Sunday January 27 - rewrote Visions bio; uploaded final amount of films that have been submitted; 3.5 hrs

Next will upload this week's films to the editing lab, and send submissions confirmation emails to any new film submitters.

Week Ending: 1.20.13

Since the beginning of the Spring semester, my primary focus has been on securing enough abstract submissions for this year's festival, then shifting focus to film submissions, while also re-familiarizing/assimilating my team to prep for the intense semester of programming.

I'm not sure which day it was, but after we left for winter break in Dec, I sent out 300+ emails to all of the schools on the University Master Contact list, informing them of the amended abstract deadline. This took roughly 1&1/2 hrs to 2 hrs.

Sunday, January 6th: double-checked all drafts of abstract requests to be sent out to those invitationals that had not responded/submitted yet, as compiled by the PTO team and saved in my drafts folder. Tweaked and fixed all of the ones that needed work with wording and professionalism with Jon; 2 hrs.

Sunday, Jan 13 & Monday, Jan 14: guided Matt in uploading all of the abstracts to dropbox in correct format, then uploaded the rubric, making sure to create both a pages and word file, and then composed the abstract guideline directions and made them available to the class; 2 hrs. Plugged in all major PTO dates into the class syllabus via google docs, 1&1/2-2hrs.

Tuesday, Jan 15: Created the 2013 abstracts folder with all class members folders and then went through all dropbox folders and files for  2013abstracts, making sure all files/folders were present, accessible, and correctly labeled; 1 hr.

Wednesday: Read and scored 11 abstracts; 1&1/2 hrs. Created Powerpoint with Keynote top selections and sent out to all new Visions students; 30 mins. Sifted through all my different school contact lists, and sent the University Master to Marge with directions on selecting regional schools to be in contact with about video race; 30 mins. Also met with PTO team from 2-3pm.

Thursday: 8 abstracts; emailed Amanda Turner about Bald Head Island room as we've had unsuccessful contact with them last semester; 1 hr total.

Friday: Read and scored 7 abstracts; 1 hr. Went through Drafts folder on submissions@visionsfilm.org checking to make sure that all of the submissions confirmation emails had the correct information, spelling, grammar, and professionalism, and then sent out submissions confirmations emails to all students who have submitted either abstracts or films so far. Will continue to sent these out as we receive submissions; 1&1/2 hrs.

Saturday: transferred all media from my hard drive of Visions 2012 (that Shannon gave to me last semester) on to the new Visions Master Drive and began to organize. Also, uploaded all of Visions 2013 minutes to the drive and began uploading some of my PTO files that I've created/accumulated over the year so far. This is a work in progress and much of my team will be spent on the compilation and organization of this drive. 3 hrs.

Will begin logging all films onto drive in edit lab this Monday.