Media Industries 2 – Seminar Involvement Week 5

Contribution & Collaboration

After attending the Non-Fiction seminar it clarified what I want to present our audience with; an engaging, informative and fun event. I was able to share my thoughts with our group after the seminar.

As an audience member I was also able to pick up on a few aspects of the event that I will do differently. These include a maximum of three guests, visually appealing staging with lots of decorations to transform the room to suit our film noir concept, no lighting over the audience so the guests are the focus (like a cinema), personal engagement with the audience during the Q & A rather than using twitter, provide substantial food and drink during the break, dedicating one group member to usher late comers in between questions (so there are no distractions), play music before and after the seminar, show stock footage of film noir images on screen, better positioning of cameras to avoid obstructing the audience’s view, a stage for the guests so the audience can see them better from the seating, better seating for the guests so they are comfortable, more conversational questions with the guests, less time dedicated to introductions and provide water the audience.

Some ideas I would like to borrow from this seminar include introductory slides for the guests, having a sound mixer, an audio-visual controller and personalised food (similar to the tags used on the trail mix packets).

Participation

During the group meeting we started brainstorming some potential questions. We want to ensure every question relates back to media and doesn’t end up solely being about feminism. Some ideas that I came up with include:

• What are the female dominated roles within your field and what roles significantly lack females? Why do you think this is? What needs to happen for this to change?
• Why are there a lack of female characters being represented in film?

Proactive Learning

After some group members had a disagreement over the title ‘Femme Fatale’ due to it’s seductive nature, ‘Wonder Women’ was suggested as a positive alternative. I got in touch with the steering committee who informed me we could in fact change the name because the poster needed to be reprinted. I told the group about the two names and I organised a  vote. ‘Femme Fatale’ won because most agreed that we had already started planning a lot of the promotional material.

Now that the title had been locked in, Jono and I brainstormed new taglines and a blurb to ensure we were accurately advertising the seminar about women destroying the stereotypes of women as Femme Fatales. What we came up with: Femme Fatale: women killing it in the media industry. A chat with media’s leading ladies in film, radio and online. We’ll talk reality, challenges and opportunities providing key insights into the futures we’re creating.

We also realised we are faced with the challenge of not having many males attend this seminar and we discussed ways of preventing this. I suggested that we draw attention to the fact that it’s a seminar for women and that we really want males to come too. Jono then suggested mentioning on the poster that Men get in for free and in fine print: *Women get in for free also. We still need to develop some further strategies to have an equal gender balance in the audience.

With only a few weeks until the seminar, we all agreed we needed to make progress with the guest invitations and get at least one locked in. We also agreed that we wanted to cover all areas of media by inviting a guest from film or TV, radio and online media. Jenni Tosi has shown interest, but is yet to confirm. Myf Warhust is unavailable as is Jane Turner. I suggested we contact Brodie Lancaster (not aware she was in the seminar only last year). Sarah and I discussed what it is that we want Brodie to discuss and I provided Sarah with her details. She responded quickly and we were able to lock her in as guest number one. I had a discussion with Sarah about sending a friendly reminder email to Jenni and provided her with an idea about what to say. Jenni confirmed a day later. Virginia Trioli is yet to confirm. If we did get Virginia, we will achieve our mix of media professionals. I don’t think that Brodie being in a previous seminar will effect our marks because it will mostly be a different audience and we will focus on different issues.

I took responsibility for organising the film and photo shoot. I cleared out a room in my house and filled it with vintage props and furniture. I source costumes and old cameras as well. I set up my camera and some lights to get the classic venetian blind lighting effect from Film Noir movies.  Melissa and I developed the idea of the women being filmed seductively whilst getting ready, all in extreme close ups. Zoe, Line & I acted. Melissa shot the film, Ai Vee photographed and Jono assisted Melissa with direction. I sourced a royalty free film noir sounding track of which we will use the first 30 seconds for the promo video. After packing up the shoot and equipment, I viewed the rushes and will aim to get started on either the poster or editing the video after my career portfolio is submitted.

I suggested female themed cupcakes (female logo or pink bow topper), that the event team group members bring a plate of savory food and a budget of $20.