I have to commit

I basically took Thanksgiving to rest my mind and figure out how to go about sponsorships. When I was making my presentation today for class tomorrow, I wanted to make it clear that I miscalculated my sponsorship plan to not take into account the fact that companies do not have money this time of year and that it will cause us to not bring in as many guests as we wanted. I was looking up tips on how to get corporate sponsors, and basically everything that I came across was keep following up. What worries me about this was that I have been doing that. My new follow up strategy is to ask those that have said they don't have money right now, if I contact them again in January, will it be possible to sponsor us then. I feel like I need to be more aggressive and bolder (but in a good way) about the follow ups, but I am wondering if I am not going about this in the right way. I really want the class to give me feedback on this strategy and give me knew ideas to gain interest in Visions sponsorship.

I am also going to take December and January to commit to Visions. During the fall semester, Visions was a priority in my classes, but it wasn't the only priority. I let myself get distracted and I didn't realize the full time commitment I needed for sponsorships. This caused me to get behind, and now I find myself in my current predicament. I honestly hate that this will cause us to lose guests, but all I can do is try my best to make up for it. I still have good leads that I am in contact with, and I am not going to give up on sponsorships. My favorite quote from my research on sponsorships was "don't take no as a rejection." Whenever companies are not responding to me or saying not right now, I have to be bold and make them give me a concrete answer (preferably yes).  I can't let myself get discouraged because it makes me get behind. I am determined to make this work and get more than just 2 sponsorships.

Indiegogo and Sponsorships

The Indiegogo video has been filmed! Michelle, Zoë, and the rest of the class really knocked it out of the park. Zoë made the script work well and marketable, Michelle made the filming go smoothly and we actually finished filming earlier than we expected. The class helped a lot with actors and crew members. I had to be the main actor, but I still think it is going to be a good pitch video. This week I am going to work on revising the pitch and perk descriptions that I showed everyone last week so they are ready to go when we get back from Thanksgiving. When I get back from Thanksgiving, the only thing I will have left to do is meet with social media to go over the update schedule and the book fee schedule. So far Indiegogo preparation is under control, so hopefully it will reflect when it comes time to launching the campaign.

The sponsorships are not going as well. I still only have 2 confirmed sponsorships from before. I have gotten multiple replies saying that they don't have money left in their donation budget and/or that I should check back with them in January. I am incredibly worried about sponsorships and I am not sure what I need to do. I am going to make sure the person that has my job after me does not make this same mistake! Sponsorships NEED to be started IMMEDIATELY in the fall or even started in May. For now, I am going to have to figure out a new plan and make the best out of the situation.

Ahh Cucalorus...

This week was Cucalorus! Five days of great films, fun panels, and fantastic parties! The biggest thing that I paid attention to during Cucalorus were the sponsors. Even before the festival started, I was going through their schedule and circling the sponsors that I could approach. Since I am currently trying to get cash sponsorships, I was tried to distinguish which sponsors were most likely cash sponsors and which were most likely in-kind or media sponsors. I have compiled a list of those that I think are cash sponsors and they will be receiving an email from me this week!

One thing I noticed about the sponsors was that on the pre-screening slides, it felt like those were thrown together at the last minute. Harsh, but still true. When they advertised the private donors, I wanted those slides to have more on them. It was only the Cucalorus logo and the donor’s name. I think those were donors from their Kickstarter page, but I wanted there to be more to the slides. I also noticed the slides with sponsor logos were not evenly spaced so there were some slides that had 4 logo spots on it, but only 2 spaces were filled so there were 2 empty spaces on the slide. That bothered me. 

Even though I am not in charge of parties, I still paid attention to the way they set up their parties and what they included at each party. I liked that at each featured party, there was some other big event that was happening as well. For instance, the visual sound walls, DJ and VJ events, and karaoke at the wrap party. At the visual sound walls party, I liked how they gave out 3D glasses to people as an added gift or prop. I thought that was really smart and good way to get people more involved in the party. One thing that I did not like about the parties, mainly the parties that took place at Ziggys, were that I felt like they did not think through the flow of the room. The bottom floor of Ziggys was completely cramped and hard to move and mingle with people. The music was also way too loud and made it hard to hear people. On the second floor and balcony it was much easier to talk to people. However, when I went to events at the Ironclad Brewery, the space was much nicer and clean, with plenty of space to mingle and talk on both the first and second floors. 

So this is what exhaustion is like!

My week revolved around Cucalorus. I was there all evening Wednesday and Thursday, but had to cut down on how long I was there Friday, Saturday, and Sunday because I did have work to do! When I wasn't at Cucalorus, I was preparing stuff for the Indiegogo launch! I spent today making the pitch and perks for our Indiegogo home page and preparing it for the class on Tuesday. I also talked to Devin, Michelle, and Zoë and we are meeting tomorrow evening to make sure everything is concise and going along with their art/marketing plans. Devin and I decided that we will have to film the video Thursday night, so tomorrow I am reserving King 101 for that evening and sending out the equipment request. Everything seems to be staying on schedule in terms of Indiegogo so that's nice!

In sponsorship news, WE GOT ANOTHER SPONSOR! This time it was from Southeastern Camera Co. I also paid very close attention to the law firms, banks, and insurance agencies that sponsored Cucalorus so they will be receiving an email in the next couple days from me!

WE GOT A SPONSOR!!!

This week was mainly spent shaking down potential sponsors. AND THAT WORK PAID OFF! Simone and I got a sponsor from Coastal Select Properties! GO US! Unfortunately we have not received the other 2 that we need by Tuesday. I have spent the weekend trying to figure out why we are not getting firm commitments from sponsors and I think I have come up with the reason and a solution. We are mainly targeting stores and restaurants right now. A lot of the places that have rejected us said no because they just don't have the cash flow right now. Yellow Dog Discs actually told us that if we come back in a few weeks, then they probably will have money to give us. The places that we are going after have seasonal cash flow. Once Black Friday passes and the holiday season officially begins, they will have more money to donate. For right now, we need to go after businesses that have a more consistent cash flow such as insurance agents, banks, car dealerships, and law firms. Luckily, we have leads of that nature that seem very interested in sponsoring us so Simone and I will be following up hard on them as well as building a new contact sheet.

Sponsorship Dirty Dozen

1. What is the project supposed to achieve?
Raise money for the festival, form relationships and partnerships with businesses within the Wilmington community and nationwide, promote Visions with a wide audience.

2. Who is the customer?
We are targeting businesses in the local Wilmington area as well as some national businesses.

It is for the betterment of the festival in general and our guests.

3. What are the deliverables of the project?
Donations (monetary and in-kind), advertisement space, donated products (raffles, awards, food, etc)

4. What is the budget?
Will mainly consist of emails and me literally driving places to talk to people. 

We will be printing sponsorship brochures and letters which will cost money (that budget is still in the works)

5. How long will it take?
I am going to be doing this over the next few months and most likely into the spring. 

6. What specific skills are needed?
Organizational skills, timeliness, creativity, being persuasive, being outgoing, being sincere, being trustworthy, professionalism

7. What special resources are needed?
Contacts of local businesses the class thinks would be willing to donate. 

Printing paper for the letters and brochures 

8. Who is working the project? What is each person's job?
Shannon B. and me! Since development and hospitality have to work so closely anyway, she and I are going to tag-team the sponsorships. She and I will work together to go into the community to find our sponsors

9. What is the schedule?
Shannon B. and I have not talked about this in detail yet, but I have a rough schedule in my head.

9/23 - meet with Shannon B. to talk and plan out our attack strategy

By 9/30 - have a PDF version of an updated sponsorship brochure

9/30 - get contacts from the class of who would be willing to donate

10/1 - send out first wave of sponsorship emails

Shannon and I will create a schedule for follow-up emails, calls, and visits which is to come. 

10. What are the risks? (Small vs. large impact, likely vs. unlikely)

• Large impact, likely: We don't get as much money as we need. 
• Large impact, unlikely: No one donates anything and Visions has to take place in a box.
• Small impact, likely: Our plans get delayed and we fall behind schedule with collecting money.
• Small impact, unlikely: I have no paper for letters :(

11. How will you communicate with your team?
Shannon B. and I will probably just text each other or Facebook message each other. We will call if it is an emergency or if I have a funny joke that can only be heard.

12. How will you determine if the project is successful?
If we are able to charm our potential donors enough that they think we are hella rad and they feel that they should give some of their hard earned money or products, and that makes Visions happen in April, then I will consider it a success!

POW Interview

***This is not a perfect transcript. I couldn't record it so I took a lot of notes and wrote down a lot of quotes to rebuild it.***

Adrienne
What is your favorite thing about your festival?

Tara 
There are so many things… I enjoy the process, as in putting together a big festival every year. I just get a surge of energy promoting women directors, and women in the field in general. It gives me a sense of pride to celebrate women who are established in entertainment and women who are just starting out… like with our POWGirls festival.

Yeah about the youth festival, I just wanted to ask about that as well. I was exploring through the website and saw that you have a special category for students. You know, it is basically what Visions is about. We cater to undergraduate filmmakers because all other student categories are filled with graduate filmmakers who have a bigger budget and more experience. I wanted to know how your category works. 

We actually just started the youth festival in 2014. We were basically beta testing it then and then this past year, we had 3 sessions of POWGirl films. I am always very impresses with younger work and we do try track the ages of the girls submitting. We are actually going to be starting up a mentorship for girls just starting out. It would be for girls like you or younger who want a more formalized mentorship. 

Yeah I would absolutely be interested in that! How long have you actually been with POW?

Well I have been in entertainment for 25 years now. I worked in marketing for a studio in LA then came back here to Portland where I worked on films and local projects. Then I basically took over and rebooted POW in 2008. [I think she said it was on hiatus for a while] I really changed how it was run and remodeled everything, and I have been working on it ever since. It is basically my baby. 

What do you wish you had known starting out that you know now or what do you wish you had done differently?

Financing. I worked in entertainment for a long time doing events with gobs of money, whereas here we just don’t have that. This is very different and it does allow us to be more creative in our thinking. I have become a much stronger business owner because I run it like a business. We are not a non-profit organization. I have to be able to pay my employees and make a revenue. 

How many do you staff?

I have 2 permanent staff members year round that are paid. Right now we are looking for a fourth person to be on the team. We also have about 100 volunteers year-round to help with our pre-screenings and the festival itself.

What is the most challenging thing currently for your festival?

Maintaining growth. POWGirls is really expanding. We have a new vision that we have been working on and will be announced in March. When talking to the stakeholders, you have to keep them excited and keep them interested. Every year it’s like we are reinventing the wheel to get consistent money. We have our once a month screenings and POWGirls is getting to be year-round. We have to make sure to keep paying people  and making sure that people are responding to what we are putting out there. Will people show up? We have to make it compelling and get people to respond to our programming. It’s one thing to have people say they are interested, but it’s another thing to actually have people in the audience. 

You have to find a way to get butts in the seats. 

Exactly. If you can’t get the butts in the seats then what’s the point? 

Exactly. And that is something that we have to think about all the time as well because it is defiantly hard to do so sometimes. So when I was online, I found your mission statement and combed through the website, but how would you personally describe the mission and goals of POW?

I would say it’s an organization that is overall here to support women in the film and television industry. Specifically women directors. And that is something that I get questioned on a lot. They ask what about women producers or women centered plots. [She talked about how the statistics show that there is a vast minority of women directors and it is not because they aren’t there, they just aren’t being highlighted]. The director is the creative point, the commander of the ship. We got about 1,000 submissions last year that met that qualification so when people say there aren’t women directors, we just point to that. We are working toward this equality goal. We want to be supportive of all women in the industry. Now we have this added education component. Soon we want to be able to give complete support in terms of sponsorship. It is really evolving into more than just a festival.

So I think you actually mentioned this in that answer, but did you say you had about 1,000 submissions last year?

Yes it was about 1,000 entries for this past year which is actually double than in past years. We end up screening about 50 films a year. We take up one full theater a year, and we may push into 2 theaters. 

Earlier you mentioned getting volunteers to help with pre-screening. How do you guys go about your pre-screening process? Like how many pre-screeners do you get and how do you go about choosing who does it?

Well entries open in May. We have 3 rounds of screening. The first round is batches of 20 films. We have screeners all across the country. We call this the general audience films. We have facilitators who have groups of about 3 to 5 people over to their home to watch the films. We have them take notes and put them all in a Google Doc. [There was something else in here, but I don’t remember what she said]. We have a pretty sophisticated tracking system for our films. We have info on whether or not it passes the Bectel Test, whether or not there is a person of color in the film, what kind of storyline it is, if there is a female protagonist. We also collect demographics about the filmmakers. They send out the notes and we process everything. The ones in the yes selection move on to the 2nd round. The second round is more filmmaker screeners who know what they are talking about. We have had alumni, POW alumni for it before. This is usually just one person watching the full film. The third round is me and the programmer mainly. [I didn’t quite understand the 3rd round]

Do you use a scoring rubric for the films when screening? 

Yes it has the name of the film, the tracking number. We have them rate the film on a 1 to 5 scale for production value and story value. Then we have yes or no questions like if it passed the Bectel Test, if it was LGBT, [things like that].

Do you guys jury after pre-screening? I know you mentioned you and the programmer seem to have final say.

We haven’t quite determined the value of jurying yet. We have never had like a celebrity be a judge for the films. We think it takes away from the actual film and makes it more on who is judging the film. We have asked before how others felt about having awards and such and everyone seems to be 50/50 on the subject. Basically for us it is just everyone’s a winner!

You said that you open up your call for entries in May, right?

Yes. We start taking submissions in May and accept them until early September… Today is actually the last day for submissions. 

When do you get most of your submissions? The early, regular, late deadlines or do they come in waves?

They come in waves mostly. I mean, I am still getting submissions today since it is the last deadline. 

Switching gears, do you guys give out swag bags to filmmakers and guests? 

Oh sure. We want to make it a great event for them. We have been talking about trying to make them more personal though to the person. We don’t want them to just have a bag with random things and flyers in them. We have a lot of really great partnerships with people in the community so we are trying to incorporate that into it. You know Portland is known for it’s coffee and chocolate. We have a lot of great chocolatiers here so we want to include that kind of stuff into it as well.

Yeah I get that. I was in charge of swag bags last year and that was something I had to think about a lot. Since Wilmington is on the beach, I took mason jars and filled them with sand and painted them and everything. Granted, it was a pain and I stole a lot of sand and got paint on my carpet, but everyone really liked that gift and they were very appreciative so it was worth it! Do the filmmakers have to pay for registration to the festival or are they given passes?

Filmmakers get 2 passes to the festival and then they also get guest tickets for their individual screenings. Unfortunately, we can’t provide lodging and travel for them. That is something that we would really love to do, but it is just not always possible. We do give discounts on lodging with the local hotels that we use. 

Since I am in charge of development and sponsorship this year, I have a couple questions about that. What kind of sponsors do you try to get? Are they corporate or more local? What do you look for?

We do have some big sponsors like [New Bell?] and Luna. We want ones that are run by women or support women in this business. We have a lot of sponsors and donors who come back every year to give. We also have a membership program. We are very intentional about who we go after to sponsor us and we are very thoughtful in deciding. We want them to be in line with our core values and goals.

Obviously when it comes to the sponsorship you have the levels of perks that come with how much they gave, but do you give any other kind of perks or thank you’s to sponsors during or after the event?

Sure! We always give them the opportunity to interact with the guests, especially if it is a high profile guest, we try to have a private lunch where they can meet them. The sponsorship levels are more of a launching off point. We just kind of call them as say “Hey how’s it going? How are the kids? What can I put you down for this year?” We try to maintain those relationships. And when it comes to the levels, we try to work with them with what they are looking for in this partnership. If they don’t want a page ad, but they would rather fully cater an event with their name on it, we will work with them. We ask them what is most important to them in the sponsorship. And a lot of new sponsors will have more questions about demographics that we have to work with. 

So it’s kinda like a personalized sponsorship?

In a way. We look at what their need is and what their directive is. 

Do you use any specific programming or organizational tools? Like I think you mentioned Google Drive earlier, and that is like our best friend.

Yeah we have master sheets on Google Drive. It helps to make sure everyone has the information. We all work remotely and only come together once a week so it helps that we all have access to everything. We use Excel, Google Drive, Quick Books for the financial side of it. We are building a pretty expensive budget. The databases with Without a Box and Film Freeway help us keep pretty detailed tracking and records of everything. And really we also just have a bunch of 3 ring binders full of notes, promo materials and hardcopies of things.

Obviously you guys do a lot of community outreach with POWGirls and you mentioned your monthly screenings. What other kinds of year-round events do you have?

We do things like if a woman director is coming to town, we try to set something up with them and grab a screening. We had Kathryn Bigelow a couple years ago after her film The Hurt Locker came out. And you know she went on to be the first woman to win the Academy Award for Best Director, so we just kinda rode that one out! We always try to raise money for POW and try to evaluate the returns on those screenings. It all goes back to finding a way to get the butts in the seats. 

That is basically all my questions for you. Is there any other kind of advice that you may have for me?

When you are doing events, know the process and know the heart of it. It can be overwhelming and you may just have those days where you wonder “what am I doing here? Why am I doing this?” and that is when you need to sit back and be proud of everything your work is about and you have accomplished.

POW needs more POW!

1. What time is your interview scheduled and who will you be talking with when you call/skype?

• She emailed me back with the times that she is available next week and I told her that Tuesday at 6pm (3pm her time) would be best for me. She hasn’t responded to confirm this yet, but I assume that is because it is a long weekend. Right now I am banking on Tuesday, but that could change.

2. Who started it and who runs it?

• I didn’t find who started it. Their “Festival History” section is just an overview and recap of the past 8 years of the festival. There is nothing about who or how it got started. All I got was that in 2008 they started back after a 5 year hiatus. I am hoping to get this question answered in my interview.

3. What is the mission of the festival/conference? (copy and paste the first paragraph)

• The Portland Oregon Women’s Film Festival (POWFest) places a spotlight on women directors by showcasing their work and strengthening the community of women in film. POWFest empowers women to find their voice and to share their stories through innovative and quality filmmaking. We feature the work of today’s top women directors, honoring the true pioneers while providing support and recognition for the next generation of leading women filmmakers.

4. How does this compare with their actual programming choices from the past two years?

• From what I have gathered from their “history section” and their submissions guidelines, they accept women directed or co-directed films only and strictly. That seems to have held up over the past 8 years.

5. Be specific in describing what they program (mode, categories within mode, niche, Political? Global? Local? Gender? Sexuality? Race? Any themes that you see? etc...)

• They are looking for women directed or co-directed films. They accept international submissions. There is no theme in the films, as in it doesn’t look like they look for women’s issue films. It seems like it is meant to be more of a celebration of women filmmakers.

6. Where is the event?

• Portland, Oregon. Specifically the Hollywood Theatre.

7. When is the event? (Give dates from last year if not current)

• It usually takes place in March. The 2015 festival took place on March 12-15. The 2016 festival will be on March 3-6.

8. How do you submit? Snail mail, online, withoutabox, through their site, etc…

• Direct Entry, FilmFreeway, and Without a Box

9. When are the deadlines to enter? Early? Reg? Late?

• Early: June 19, 2015
• Regular: August 14, 2015
• Late: August 28, 2015
• WaB Extended: September 11, 2015

10. How much does it cost to enter?

• Early: $25
• Regular: $35
• Late: $45
• WaB Extended: $55

11. Who’s eligible, what are the guidelines to enter?

• Must be directed or co-directed by a woman.
• Short Narrative: Narrative Films of any genre under 40 minutes in length
• Short Documentary:  Documentary Films of any genre under 40 minutes in length
• Narrative Feature: Narrative Films of any genre over 40 minutes
• Documentary Feature: Documentary Films over 40 minutes
• Experimental Short: Short Films of Experimental Nature under 40 minutes
• Animation Short: Animated Films of any genre under 40 minutes in length
• Young Director (19 & under): Shorts and Features of any genre

12. Is there a Student category?

• There is not specifically a student category but there is a “Young Director” category where directors 19 and under can submit to.

13. What formats do they except for jurying? DVD, Vimeo, Flash drives?

• They accept DVDs through the mail (must send 2 copies) and Vimeo links with the password. Short films must be submitted through an online format.

14. What formats do they except for exhibition/screening?

• I would assume DVD or link. They do not specify on the website.

15. How many films screened at the festival last year?

• 62 films

16. How long is a typical shorts block or paper presentation block at their event?

• They don’t have a detailed schedule of events that I can tell how long each block is. It says what time each block starts, but not when it ends. Some of the blocks look really long though.

17. How many films or papers do they program per block?

• Their blocks screen anywhere from 5 shorts to 15 shorts.

18. How do people register to attend? Is there a cost to attend as a guest?

• Everything takes place at the Hollywood Theatre so the guest has to buy passes and tickets through them. They only have 1 kind of pass which is $40. Tickets for the various events are $8-$10 each.

19. Look at sponsorship page and see what businesses, grants, and private entities give money to the event. Figure out how many of each kind and note any leads that might be useful to us.

• They don’t have an official sponsors page (or at least that I can find… their website is weird…) but they have a crawl at the bottom that has a list of sponsor logos. Most of them seem to be companies that probably donated services to them during the festival (Hotel Deluxe, ZipCar, Magnolia Corners Beer & Wine Bar, etc).

20. What are their sponsorship levels and incentives for each level?

• Support - $500
• Organization attached to one festival screening or festival related event
• Inclusion of company logo on sponsor slide ad (prior to all screenings)
• Opportunity to include a promotional item in filmmaker gift bags
• Screening/Event Sponsor logo position: printed program and on powfest.com
• Invites to all festival VIP events including: special meet-n-greet with the POWFest Guest of Honor
• 2 POWFest Individual Passes
• Opportunity to gift tickets to participating community partner organizations
• Contributing - $1,000
• Organization attached to one festival screening or festival related event
• Individual Slide Ad (prior to all festival screenings)
• Inclusion of company logo on sponsor slide ad (prior to all screenings)
• Inclusion of company logo in festival promotional video (prior to all screenings + via social media)
• Opportunity to brand one festival related promotional item: Step & Repeat Banner, Filmmaker Bags, Lanyards
• Opportunity to include a promotional item in filmmaker gift bags
• SMALL advertisement in official festival program
• Contributing Sponsor logo position: printed program and on powfest.com
• Sponsor Spotlight Opportunity in the POWFest Monthly Newsletter NEW!
• Reference to sponsorship in all media alerts/press releases/festival program
• Inclusion of company logo in festival poster advertising
• Invites to all festival VIP events including: special meet-n-greet with the POWFest Guest of Honor
• Signage/marketing materials at all events
• 5 POWFest Individual Passes
• Opportunity to gift tickets to participating community partner organizations
• Premiere - $2,500
• Organization attached to one festival screening & festival related event
• Individual Slide Ad (prior to all festival screenings)
• Inclusion of company logo on sponsor slide ad (prior to all screenings)
• Inclusion of company logo in festival promotional video (prior to all screenings + via social media)
• Opportunity to brand one festival related promotional item: Step & Repeat Banner, Filmmaker Bags, Lanyards
• Opportunity to include a promotional item in filmmaker gift bags
• MEDIUM advertisement in official festival program
• Premiere Sponsor logo position: printed program and on powfest.com
• Sponsor Spotlight Opportunity in the POWFest Monthly Newsletter NEW!
• Reference to sponsorship in all media alerts/press releases/festival program
• Inclusion of company logo in festival poster advertising
• Invites to all festival VIP events including: special meet-n-greet with the POWFest Guest of Honor
• Signage/marketing materials at all events
• 10 POWFest Individual Passes
• Opportunity to gift tickets to participating community partner organizations
• Sustaining - $5,000
• Exclusive sponsorship of one primetime screening
• Exclusive sponsorship of one festival related event
• Individual Slide Ad (prior to all festival screenings)
• Inclusion of company logo on sponsor slide ad (prior to all screenings)
• Inclusion of company logo in festival promotional video (prior to all screenings + via social media)
• Opportunity to brand one festival related promotional item: Step & Repeat Banner, Filmmaker Bags, Lanyards
• Opportunity to include a promotional item in filmmaker gift bags
• LARGE advertisement in official festival program
• Sustaining Sponsor logo position: printed program and on powfest.com
• Sponsor Spotlight Opportunity in the POWFest Monthly Newsletter NEW!
• Reference to sponsorship in all media alerts/press releases/festival program
• Inclusion of company logo in festival poster advertising
• Invites to all festival VIP events including: special meet-n-greet with the POWFest Guest of Honor
• Signage/marketing materials at all events
• 15 POWFest Individual Passes
• Opportunity to gift tickets to participating community partner organizations
• Presenting - $10,000
• Presented By Status for the entire festival
• Exclusive sponsorship of one primetime screening
• Exclusive sponsorship of one festival related event
• Individual Slide Ad (prior to all festival screenings)
• Inclusion of company logo on sponsor slide ad (prior to all screenings)
• Inclusion of company logo in festival promotional video (prior to all screenings + via social media)
• Opportunity to brand one festival related promotional item: Step & Repeat Banner, Filmmaker Bags, Lanyards
• Opportunity to include a promotional item in filmmaker gift bags
• LARGE advertisement in official festival program
• Presenting Sponsor logo position: printed program and on powfest.com
• Sponsor Spotlight Opportunity in the POWFest Monthly Newsletter NEW!
• Reference to sponsorship in all media alerts/press releases/festival program
• Inclusion of company logo in festival poster advertising
• Invites to all festival VIP events including: special meet-n-greet with the POWFest Guest of Honor
• Signage/marketing materials at all events
• 20 POWFest Individual Passes
• Opportunity to gift tickets to participating community partner organizations

21. Did they have a kickstarter or indiegogo? What incentives did they have for each level of donor?

• They don’t have either, but you can make a donation through the Hollywood Theatre website. POW has a link on their website where you can donate. They have suggested donations of $50, $100, $250, $500, $1,000, and $5,000, but they only have incentives of $50 or more get a t-shirt, and $100 or more get a t-shirt and a festival pass.

22. What kind of non­traditional film/video events have they had before? Things like Installations, 'Visual Soundwalls,' VJing etc.

• I haven’t seen anything like that in their programming past.

23. Are there ways in which they have expanded the typical film screening event? How have they branched out from sitting in a dark room in front of a screen?

• It looks like they have Q&As after film screenings, and workshops throughout the year. They also have specialized panels like they had a screening of The Hurt Locker when it first came out and a moderated panel with Kathryn Bigelow.

Our website is our virtual face. Every day our site has incoming traffic, nationally and internationally. It's important that visitors are able to find the information that they need without being sent on a wild goose chase through our pages. We want visiting our site to be easy and painless, and for our visitors to have as good of an experience virtually as they would actually attending the event. Our goal is for the Visions site to be easy to navigate, to be aesthetically pleasing, and to easily deliver the information our audience is looking for without overwhelming them. The following exercise will help you see how important all of these things are to a first time (and hopefully a future repeat) visiting our site.

Answer the following questions about your experience with your assigned festival’s/conference’s website:

24. Is the layout easy to navigate? What makes it easy?

• Yes because it is a very simple website, but when I say simple I mean amatuer. It is basically like drop down menus, nothing special about it.  

25. Is the layout difficult to navigate? What makes it difficult?

• It took me forever to find the Mission Statement because I didn’t know you were supposed to click on the individual drop-down headings. I thought you could only click the drop-down options. So that was weird.

26. Can you find the information you are looking for on the homepage or via a link on the homepage?

• Somewhat. Most of the questions on this didn’t apply to their website (they don’t have Indiegogo, Kickstarter, specific sponsor page, etc)

27. Aesthetically, what catches your eye? What's cool about it?

• I really like their logo. It is all pink and it is very eye catching.

28. Aesthetically, what doesn't fit in? What makes it look bad?

• It is so simplistic. They need a graphic designer or something on their team. There is nothing special about the website and it looks like a template. It is all pink and white. There is no theme or campaign or gripping. It makes them look like they are a small, amatuer film festival and not an important festival that features major women filmmakers like Kathryn Bigelow or Gillian Armstrong. It really bothers me because it could be so much better.

29. Should there be more information? Is the page too bare?

• YES! Their main page is links to their newsletter. They need to just overhaul their website. Make it more clear and inventive.

30. Should there be less information? Is the page too busy?

• I just hate their newsletter on the main page.

31. What would you do differently if you were to redesign this website?

• Oh so many things. Have more of a color scheme, put more info about the upcoming festival on it, feature the mission statement/goals more prominently. I would change the “history” page to make it not look like a teenagers blog. They just posted pictures and had the text wrap around it. It didn’t look good at all. They also need an editor for the website. I found so many spelling and grammar errors. THEY HAD A MISSPELLING ON THEIR SPONSORSHIP LEVELS!!!!!! Just… OY!!!

32. What would you keep the same if you were to redesign this website?

• Honestly, not much. They need Indiegogo or Kickstarter. They need better pictures. I want to go in and change a whole lot about their website, and honestly from where I stand now, I want to change a lot about the festival itself… I am being very critical about this.