This entry outlines my involvement within specific areas of pre-production and how they both added and detracted from festival operations and thus festival outcome. I would also like to address my involvement with the establishment of the festival back-end including; website, design & asset management, search engine optimisation, drive management and email.

As this was my last studio for the course; I actively tried to take on a facilitatory role within the group. Listening to Sowata’s talk I realised quickly that functional groups were going to be necessary for the festival to move forward. I wanted to use the opportunity of this studio to develop processes not dissimilar to my previous internship, I was interested in following my previous colleagues model of project management and group development. On a personal level, I wanted to develop skills surrounding web management which would ultimately assist me in future business endeavours.

Unfortunately the rate of group development was inherently slow from the outset, with major goals not being established after the festival conceptualisation. I assume that these issues steamed from group size, lack of a command group, role ambiguity and not being task orientated. I tried developing the ‘action responsibilities ongoing’ sheet as a way to create individual sub deliverables which would shape precedence for the overarching project. However, as nobody was bound to a specific areas of work, there was no repercussions of not actioning tasks. Therefore disparate interest groups and friendship groups took precedence, with many class members taking groupthink approach and free-riding the course. Definitive task groups would have been much better due to our time constraints and reliance on other teams for project deliverables (eg. website waiting for copy, facebook waiting for logos etc).

I believe that the drive and professional mail functions were extremely solidifying tools. They allowed work functions to naturally develop once individuals learned how to utilise the technology. Groups established their own processes (rather messily) within the drive once core goals were established.

One particular task I wish I personally established earlier was website optimisation, SEO and analytics. This data could have advised other processes within the festival (eg. advertising, marketing, facebook engagement). Looking at the results below, our limited ad spend could have been much more strategic. For example social media at 43.67%, direct at 41.07%, organic search function at 12.13% and referrals/publicity at 3.12%. Rather than putting all of our eggs in one basket with our social media engagement. Social Media Managers did extremely well with generating unique posts with backlinks back to the website, thus building brand recognition and placing MIYFF second on Google search.

Analytics All Web Site Data Channels 20190501-20190531

Melbourne International Youth Film Festival Website

Overall I was relatively pleased with the outcomes the above mentioned work, however I do recognise that my project management, web design/wordpress and web optimisation skills need further refinement.