Cucalorus

Cucalorus was awesome. It was a fantastic experience to attend a festival of its size in an all-access capacity in my own town. I was fortunate enough to have a pretty free schedule and spent most of my week downtown at festival events. I really enjoyed the attitudes and professional behavior of the Cucalorus staff. Most of the folks we interacted with were volunteers, as most of their staff are volunteers or seasonal employees. Everyone was very friendly, very willing to help you enjoy your festival experience. They also worked seamlessly with the staff of the different venues that festival events occupied. The employees of different theaters and bars all seemed to know at least the basics of what was going on with the festival and were mostly able to answer questions. Visions takes place over a single day and mostly in one specific location, so this doesn’t quite apply to us in the exact same fashion, but something we should definitely strive for is open communication between departments and a basic understanding of all events, schedules, and locations among all festival staff. I really enjoyed the Filmmakers Lounge, it was a good time. We don’t really have enough time in our festival for the filmmakers to make good use of a dedicated lounge, but it might be worth looking into the creation of a lounge for the filmmakers and sponsors only, for networking purposes and to provide guests who can’t really go home if they get tired or need to take a break with a place to go chill out. Another lesson we can take from the filmmakers lounge centers around booze. I learned, through my thorough investigation of the complimentary bars of cucalorus, that stocking can be an issue. at several points throughout the festival, they ran out of stuff. I spoke with someone who was in charge of stocking the liquor that they were giving out for free, and they said that the festival hadn’t bought as much as she thought they should have, and that the festival had to send someone to buy more liquor on the third day of the festival.

week 13

This week has been slow for me, Visions wise. I’ve been getting increasingly more swamped in my other classes, and Visions has taken somewhat of a backseat since I am not as busy as I could be with departmental work right now. I did enjoy helping the development team film the promotional video for our upcoming Indiegogo campaign. I love film production, and it is always a good time when I get to work on a project. Aside from that, I’ve just been assisting in departmental work, like helping Kevin address envelopes to send call for entries posters to selected schools from our address database. I also sent a few emails this week to some people I met at Virginia Film Festival and Cucalorus Film Festival who I had noticed either were undergrads or had recently graduated and made a film during their college career to encourage them to submit to Visions through the website. I am looking forward to working with my new department crew next semester. This weekend I met in person the only one I had not yet been introduced to, and it looks like I got a really great group of people to work with in the spring.

Week 12

What is free time? I have randomly become so busy at the end of the semester; I am no longer on top of my work in most classes. I am still pretty on top of my Visions responsibilities, but in my other classes I am just putting out fires. Unfortunately, I copped out and had Shannon contact Felix for me for the initial contact, though I will take over the communication after that. I am checking many travel sites to try and gauge the cost of flying someone from New York to Wilmington for a weekend, and once I have that, I will share with the class and get some funds marked out for it on the budget. I’ve barely had time to eat and sleep, and I realize that my job isn’t even a particularly strenuous one within our staff, so I can’t imagine what other department’s workload is like right now, considering their other classes. Cucalorus was a nice break. It was a great research opportunity, as well as a good lesson in time management. For example, I spent every possible moment at the festival, which I do not regret, but it did fill three days worth of time that I could have been working on homework projects. The end of the semester will be a struggle, but I have a clear plan for completing my assignments.

Week 11

This week was totally awesome. I was lucky enough to travel with a group of Visions directors and staff to Charlottesville, Virginia, to attend the Virginia Film Festival. It was the second major festival I have attended, and the first time I have attended a festival at an all-access, industry level capacity. It was an amazing opportunity for learning festival management tips and techniques, as well as for enrichment of life and cultivating future career opportunities. I was lucky enough to meet the director and actors of a particularly funny short film and hang out with them over the weekend, as well as learn from Billy Ray, an Oscar winning director. We also attended a secret screening that turned out to be a pre-premiere of “Secrets In Their Eyes,” and a Q&A afterwards that was amazing. One of the best aspects of the festival was the filmmakers and sponsors lounge. It was in a bar called the Whiskey Jar that was just my kind of place. We had the opportunity there to meet many festival workers, other filmmakers, and patrons of film. The food was also really good too. Some things I noticed for my job as Operations Director involved transportation and technical things during exhibition. Some off-site screenings were very hard to get to, and there were some occasional issues with mic’s and subtitles that my team will prepare for.

Week 10

This week was exhausting. I was still pretty sick with my mystery illness, which made me miss and skip a bunch of stuff throughout my weekly schedule. We also had the first fundraiser party, which was fun, but also kinda miserable whilst sick. The venue was cool, and the planning was good, and all team members were on point. It went really well. My shooting gallery game worked out really nicely, and James and I were coming up with some adaptations for the future, should we decide to use it again. We also had the bake sale, which was very successful even after meeting with some setbacks with weather and scheduling (and sunlight melting cookies). But despite any perceived problems, a good chunk of change was made. As for my personal job, I’ve been drafting a new email to send to our first prospective keynote speaker, Felix Thompson, and will be sending it to the programming department to look over and give suggestions on before sending it to Felix himself. From there, I will provide him with any additional information he needs until he either agrees to or declines the offer. If that happens, I’ll do the same with our other two “top two” options until we get somebody committed.