Marketing Department and Job Description

This week I had a few meetings
Saturday 1/16/2016 I met with Zoe and Jack from 10:30am to 12:00pm in order to figure out what My job tasks are, as well as picking up the hard drives from Shannon's office.

Monday 1/18/2016 The marketing team will meet again from 12:00pm to 3:00pm in order to discuss what we are all individually working on.

Research Conducted for this week
What I have mainly researched is different film festival archives, I found five that I like certain parts too and will begin working on a presentation with my findings. I will look through the hard drives I was given this next week in order to see what information is on there and how I could better organize the online database.

Marketing Department and Job Description
The Marketing Department collaborates with many other departments within Visions. Perhaps the department marketing works closest with, is the Art Department. This is because the Art department creates the content which the marketing department is then responsible for distributing. The Marketing Department relies on the deadlines set by the Programming Department in order to ensure that as many people are aware of upcoming events. When events are thrown to raise funds for Visions, the Marketing Department must work with the Development Department to ensure that these events are advertised. Essentially the Marketing Department is the bridge between the general public and the content that is created.

The goal of the Marketing Department is to broaden the awareness of Visions. The audiences that are targeted are very diverse, this is demonstrated by the different avenues taken in order to get their attention. One group is the undergraduate filmmaker or scholar who can be attained through film and/or paper submissions. Another group who is targeted are sponsors, these include businesses and other departments at the university. By knowing our audience, we are better suited to appeal to their needs which will then allow us to find the appropriate and effective method of marketing the festival to them. Some effective tools that work to our advantage are the the use of imagery which is more appealing than simple text. This does not suggest that "written words" are non essential, but the quite the opposite. Language should always be checked for grammatical errors.

Weekly tasks:
Because my job did not exist at the beginning of the semester, I sat down with Zoe and helped determined which type of tasks I will be in charge of. We decided that as an Archivist I will be responsible of attaining and preserving historical documents that pertain to Visions Film Festival and Conference, as well as creating a system by the end of the semester by which future Archivist will follow in order to preserve future documents and files. I look forward to creating a system which future generations will follow and update in order to preserve files, and dare I say, artifacts about Visions Film Festival and Conference.

Festivals of Their Own
One thing I found most interesting about this article was that experimental films, like the work of Maya Deren were exposed at early film festivals. But by the 70's these experimental films were too unmarketable and weren't being selected for these festivals. Sundance Film Festival eventually stopped to cater to low budget films and became an extension of Hollywood; this explosion led to imitation from neighboring festivals like Slamdance which catered to films that could not get into Sundance. As festivals become bigger, they begin to select films more exclusively and create an environment in which other smaller venues can attain the rejected films.
Another thing I found very interesting was the interview section with Josh Koury. When asked about determining which festivals to submit to, he responded realistically by stating that it is impossible to submit to every festival. Not only that, you will not get accepted at every festival, instead you have to submit to festivals that may be interested in your type of film. Sometimes smaller festivals are better for this, because the niche audience they already cater to, are the crowd you may want to see your film. Another thing Koury mentioned was the atmosphere, even at smaller festivals some of the best parts are getting to connect with other filmmakers who have the same interest. By creating a venue of a certain taste, a crowd of people with similar styles will meet and can network, Koury found this to be one of the best reasons to go t o festivals. This is going to be my first Visions Film Festival and Conference class and I am excited to see how the incoming filmmakers react to the mixers and how excited we can make them.