Aki's Placement Blog

 The most important clips I was to get would be from Claire and Kema. We organised a quick meeting to get the key points down, and I directed them by asking leading questions that let them say the points I wanted in their own words. I split the rough explanations 50/50, with Kema describing the project and Claire describing the company. I felt this gave a good account of the process and where it came from, particularly with Kema's 'on-the-ground' experience collaborating with members of the public, like a little boy in hospital who he was writing a rap with. It was these kinds of personal epithets that I thought would clip best, so I encouraged both people to elaborate more on personal connections, like Claire's personal story with a Bosnian refugee, who she had kept in touch with since the Balkans conflict. Claire and Kema also went on to sing parts of the song they had written together too! While this wasn't anything that I had scripted I was more than happy to go...

Today's Reaching Out meeting was really helpful in providing updates as to where everybody across the whole team is at. As a member of the management team helping Claire, it was great to hear where the different artists were at with their projects, and giving them a little kick up the bum to go faster! Kema and Sheryl, both so important to my work too, came in for the first half of the meeting. They are both managing other commitments, with teaching, and it just goes to show how multi-tasking this kind of business is. Sheryl is being tasked with animating the entire songbook too, but naturally she has to wait for the pieces to be finished first!  This was a good platform for me to update about the trailer too. Most people had already received appointment emails from me, but I made clear that I would confirm every single one to follow them up. Everybody was on board with my concepts which was encouraging. We couldn't talk about the trailer all the time though, as I had to take o...

 I have spent the whole weekend going into great depth researching good trailers, and putting together a very wide-ranging palette of opportunities to script. I am very anxious that I don't want to box myself in to any one particular kind of trailer, so am looking for a great deal of content from a great deal of people! My further thoughts as part of the marketing team is that, anything that isn't used in the trailer can be used in smaller clips to promote the programme nearer to the event. I have seen this work very well in bigger organisations, and am excited about translating that here. Working with film is going to be a lot harder with everything having to be done over zoom. The previous trailer for the Imagine Your Seat project bore this in mind though, with the screen-recorded zoom clips floating in animated clouds. I presume Sheryl will do something similar here, but I want much faster cuts to add an element of theatricality and professionalism. One thing that I absolute...

 January 7. Zoom. Trailer meeting. Today was my chance to pitch my basic ideas for the trailer. I worked from the brief I had been set, and sought to try and get across the energy and diversity that Skimstone has to offer. Diversity was a key buzzword for Claire, and thankfully the range of cooperation that Skimstone plays host to made it very easy to comply. I told everyone that I would be arranging short 10-15 minute slots to get clips off of them over the first few days of next week. As this time was paid time for the people taking part, it was important to extract maximum value from them, and avoid wasting time. It was a little bit reminiscent of the enterprise challenge that we had as stage 2 SELL students last year. I built more feedback as today's session went on, and incorporated it into my scripting. Claire wanted herself and Kema (the hosts of the show) to anchor the trailer, but have lots of other voices in it too. I'm planning something with fast cuts. Speaking to C...

January 6. Zoom. Had another very productive meeting today. It seems it wasn't just me who's output slowed towards the end of last year, but Claire laid out a workable plan to get us to delivery with clear goals. On a company-wide level, we were introduced to Claire Cockroft, the new Marketing and Comms manager - I am to liaise with her closely regarding messaging, and making sure it is aligned across all platforms. It feels strange no longer being the new kid any more! We developed a much clearer strategy to get the animated songbook together, and afterwards Claire had a 1-to-1 meeting with me. There she asked me to develop and direct a trailer for the project, to go out on social media channels. I was happy to be taking personal responsibility for a project, and quickly accepted the challenge. Claire felt that we shared an understanding of the core messaging she wanted to portray, allowing me to follow my own artistic decisions in the direction. After the 1-to-1, we came back...

 This year I am somewhat better than how I ended the last, and am nonetheless determined to push through and make a lasting impact here at Skimstone. Having left things in the last week before Christmas off work, I'm a bit unclear as to exactly what my immediate aims and priorities are, so have shot off an in-depth email to Claire and Peter. I have dedicated the month to Skimstone as well so I can get this done and see out the project to completion at the end of the month. I have arranged a meeting with a social media 'expert', who runs social media accounts with over 25 000 followers to discuss how to increase analytics on the Skimstone channels. This will form part of my recommendations for the social media team in general.

Things have deteriorated again in my personal life, to the extent that my work is affected. On the 14th and 16th I am in communication with Claire and Peter, who offer sympathy and support. As an organisation, Skimstone also offers personal support which I look to take up. Work-wise though, things are on hold essentially until New Year.  Looking back again on what I have already done though, progress is going well on the factual research I am doing on social media, though we are now looking at doing an animated songbook with the help of the in-house animator at Skimstone, instead of using issuu. I am now in the Comms Team, and while it is a bit difficult as I still haven't met a couple of the others involved, and Cristina is only working about one day a week at the moment, it gives me more chance to run with my ideas and cover more ground. I would like to see stronger engagement with the stories feature on Instagram, and am reassured that we will do this in the run up to the next p...