Media Industries 2 – Seminar Involvement Week 3

During the week 3 meeting the Women in Media group established a few more seminar concept ideas as well as options for the seminar title. After being informed of the seminar series theme ‘wanted’ we attempted to adjust our ideas accordingly which proved to be slightly difficult. We wanted to incorporate the words ‘women’ or ‘woman’, something to do with media or film whilst having a criminal edge. After much deliberation, we decided to go with simply ‘Femme Fatale’, thanks to Zoe’s suggestion. Our tagline will be ‘Why Gender Equality in Media is the New Black’, thanks to Stephanie.

Contribution & Collaboration

Some of the suggestions I came up with included:

• Chicks in Flicks
• Girls on Film
• Femme in Film
• Lights, camera, ladies?
• Media, she-media (Shmedia)
• Flim Fairness over Femme Fatales
• Femme Fatale Facts
• Scones with Jam and Screen

Proactive Learning

I asked everyone to fill in the skills and preferred roles table I created the previous week within the Google Doc meeting minutes. I took responsibility for delegating roles according to the task sheet provided by Shelley. I went into specific detail listing the roles from early development including research to the late stages including editing the recorded event content. I listed names next to the roles according to what people had listed as their preferences in the skills and preferred responsibilities table (below). I contacted a few people the following day to chase up their preferences. I then added their details to the table so I could get started on this task. Below is a screen shot of part of the skills and preferred responsibilities table…

I posted the final table (below) on the Facebook page along with this note to group members.

This is a draft of the group roles, so please add/remove your name to any section. We’ve got a lot of people wanting to help with certain roles and not enough in others so we’ll have to adjust this. We should aim to be responsible for an even amount of tasks, obviously some will take up more time than others, so let’s try to keep it balanced. Oh and please let me know if I’ve missed out on any important jobs that need doing!
Once the roles are consolidated we can start delegating the tasks and get this thing going.

 

Within the class meeting I read the long list of names of the varied media professionals that our group had collated and thought would suit our seminar. Shelley questioned why we had so many comedians and actresses, as they’re not the roles we’re wanting to do ourselves. We agreed that we may only have one guest from on screen (purely for entertainment and also to comment on the lack of female roles within scripts) and the rest would be behind the scenes. We agreed that we needed to think about the structure and what guests would compliment it. There was discussion of a male guest as well. We reminded ourselves that our audience was in fact our peers and we needed to refer to the list of information they wanted to learn and skills they wanted to acquire before graduation and align that with our presentation.

Participation

I suggested the concept of a theatrical court room set up in which the guests would be questioned on the stand. There would be a judge, jury and lawyers who would be asking the questions. This idea might require rehearsal from the guests so it was added to the ‘maybe’ pile. We all decided we were most keen on the high-tea and conversation style concept whilst incorporating a questionnaire at the start.

After discussing presents for the guests in the first part of the class, I suggested we decorate the wine bottle with girly bows, sparkles and diamond stickers to ‘bling it up’. We agreed we would need to discuss an extra gift and few more ideas were suggested such as mix CD of empowering female songs, thanks to Line.

I suggested the poster incorporate a femme fatale mugshot. I sourced a few inspirational images including these…

The issue of catering was also raised and most agreed that scones with jam, cream and doilies would suit. The set up would include white table cloths, a couch for the discussion and potentially matching waitress/waiter uniforms for our group members.

The conversation about how to entice men to show up so there was an even spread of gender was brought up again. We need to be careful about using the word ‘feminism’ so we don’t turn away people that associate negative connotations.

After brainstorming further ideas our meeting was drawing to a close. We agreed that our next stage will be to consolidate the concept for the seminar and refine the guest list.

Georgia and I kept the meeting minutes through out the whole meeting.

I suggested a meeting after class next Friday and agenda items that I added into the Google Doc meeting minutes. Some of these included:

• Title and Tagline Sorted: Femme Fatale: Gender equality in media is the new black
• Seminar concept established (refer to ideas from last week) -A brief history of women in the media, highlight issues (questionnaire at the start – draw attention to how much of an issue it is), bring hope, educate our audience- let’s change their mind about feminism & women working in media.
• Read document about what peers want to learn from this course (available through blackboard)
• Create priority list of guests (order from most wanted to least wanted)- who has the connection with this person?
• Find regular meeting time outside of class
• Discuss promotion campaign- how are we going to get people to show up?
• Potential Promo Song Femme Fatale
• Roles finalised and tasks delegated: Line will establish email template, start emailing/contacting guests, researchers start researching, seminar plan developed (write rundown etc), poster design – concept needed.