Class Notes: Week 10
Guests
Jackson - Junior. Cara is his boss. Duke Students Snapchat account. Duke Student Broadcasting. Duke in LA
Katherine - Senior. Cara is her boss. Freelance photography and design and web design.
Sonia Foust - Video and Analytics. Works closely with Cara. YouTube producer at Duke.
Cara - Social Strategy. MBA in Marketing. Transaction based instead of journalist based. 6 years at Duke University. Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Medium. DukeStudents team.
Duke Students - massive entourage of students who love Duke and promote Duke on Social Media. Jackson is an editor. He runs Snapchat. He has a team. Paid Editor positions and free volunteers. Students post on their own.
JS: Teams help them get content.
User-Generated Content: Using stuff that the community is sharing and repurposing it for their own. Owning as your brand.
Check out the Medium Channel.
Think about building a portfolio.
Internships: Devil’s Advocates
-Visual Content Samples
-Quick paragraph about why you love Duke
-Hit up Cara if anybody is interested in joining that group
Sonja has spots for:
-On-Screen Talent for 60 seconds at Duke
-Producer position (maybe): Pretty dependable and a number of hours able to dedicate. Uploading, writing scripts, even editing. Paid. Standard work-study rate.
- The Week at Duke in 60 Seconds - Goes up every week. Shared on local stations, coach shows, athletic shows, features on channels for Duke as well. Scripted, shot in Green Screen. Edited in our office.
Plug for Podcast Production Panel
Katherine - Senior. Cara is her boss. Freelance photography and design and web design.
Sonia Foust - Video and Analytics. Works closely with Cara. YouTube producer at Duke.
Cara - Social Strategy. MBA in Marketing. Transaction based instead of journalist based. 6 years at Duke University. Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Medium. DukeStudents team.
Duke Students - massive entourage of students who love Duke and promote Duke on Social Media. Jackson is an editor. He runs Snapchat. He has a team. Paid Editor positions and free volunteers. Students post on their own.
JS: Teams help them get content.
User-Generated Content: Using stuff that the community is sharing and repurposing it for their own. Owning as your brand.
Check out the Medium Channel.
Think about building a portfolio.
Internships: Devil’s Advocates
-Visual Content Samples
-Quick paragraph about why you love Duke
-Hit up Cara if anybody is interested in joining that group
Sonja has spots for:
-On-Screen Talent for 60 seconds at Duke
-Producer position (maybe): Pretty dependable and a number of hours able to dedicate. Uploading, writing scripts, even editing. Paid. Standard work-study rate.
- The Week at Duke in 60 Seconds - Goes up every week. Shared on local stations, coach shows, athletic shows, features on channels for Duke as well. Scripted, shot in Green Screen. Edited in our office.
Plug for Podcast Production Panel
Marketing/Audience Themes
#OneDayAtDuke
-Built a microsite (stand-alone)
-Intended to host user-generated content shared throughout the day
-Planted some seeds (always do this if you’re depending on the community to run it)
-This means telling people about it and making it as simple as possible
-Get somebody with “reach”
-Stickers are effective
-Getting the right people to share the right thing
-Canvassed the campus with stickers
-The day was really long and late
-From a video perspective, hired two external people
-James Todd on hook the entire day
-James Produced the hell out of it. every hour at a different scene.
-Two freelancers
-Time lapse shots
-Four professional videographers
-Got 1,000 crowdsourced content
-International participation, and a money shot
-Timeline to produce was short. Started in February and shot in Late March. Had all summer to work through 1,000 submissions and hours of footage.
-#OneDayAtDuke was four years ago. Snapchat didn’t exist. Instagram wasn’t really a thing. Twitter and Wordpress was used.
Jackson is working on something big. Mega.
-The ability to allow users to send content is changing the way groups operate
-Physically send snaps to DukeStudents
-Problem is getting people to know that they can send @DukeStudents snaps
-Produced a quick video on getting snapchat famous
-All done on Snapchat. Downloaded the video and uploaded to YouTube.
-Instagram was an easy 1-2-3-esque picture.
-Repost the 1-2-3 graphics once a week or so.
-As more and more people submit, exponential growth occurs
How do you get people to watch content that we are producing? How do analytics work? Certain goals with pieces? What works well?
Channel optimization
-Each platform behaves very differently than others
-Twitter owned Vine, and also owns Medium. Suite of family tools. And then Facebook acquired Instagram. Snapchat doing their own thing. Google owns YouTube. All competing.
-Facebook: Wants to be content originators. Start with the content, upload and store it there.
-Native upload it everything to optimize it versus doing a bunch of sharing.
-If you’re trying to monetize you will have to think more about native uploading.
-Do you have a central hub where you want people to go see your stuff? Think about that when strategizing your social media presence.
Who is your audience?
-We have 8 (she listed these too quickly for me to copy them down)
-We have a presence on many different places.
Monetization
-Sonia speaks
-Wanted to drive traffic to the blog post because she was monetizing it
YouTube Tips
-Caption everything especially for Facebook
-This is because sound is not always on for audiences
-Goes for Youtube too but more for Facebook
-YouTube you click “Transcribe and Auto-Sync” and you can download the SRT and upload the SRT to Facebook
-Helps with MetaData and Search Results as well
Ways to get involved
-Look into DUU
-Duke Student Broadcasting
How do we shift the needle in how people think about and talk about Duke?
-Sustainability
-Stop thinking about Lacrosse
-Arts
-Crisis and Communications - About 4 people
-Issues Management: Not always a crisis. Need to monitor and understand the conversation that is happening on campus.
-Incredibly complicated plan in terms of recognizing and acting upon an alert.
When the Noose was hung on campus, it broke in the middle of night. Had received texts from students all night.
Pulled the trigger in alertings all up the food chian. Nice tools to listen to sentiment to completely understand the landscape.
-Benchmark: 20,000 comments in one day on Call to Prayer. We pay for tools for that listening piece. Try to stay quiet. Official statements when needed. Can act swiftly because private institution. Allow community to take control of the conversation. Respond when we think it’s appropriate.
Are there concrete goals?
-With digital marketing, we don’t want to increase applications necessarily. We are happy with 32,000 applications. Focused more on getting students we want to come to Duke, to come to Duke.
-Show window into life of Duke students.
JS: This is where the power of snapchat comes through. We want to target several names. Wiz kid geniuses. Will has a billion dollar idea and is considering multiple schools. I can tell him about it or I can send acapella music specifically.
NOTE: They aren’t stalkers.
For smaller organizations, how do you decide where to focus your time?
Sonia: Understand where your audiences are coming from. Focus on mediums through which your traffic is dominating.
-Built a microsite (stand-alone)
-Intended to host user-generated content shared throughout the day
-Planted some seeds (always do this if you’re depending on the community to run it)
-This means telling people about it and making it as simple as possible
-Get somebody with “reach”
-Stickers are effective
-Getting the right people to share the right thing
-Canvassed the campus with stickers
-The day was really long and late
-From a video perspective, hired two external people
-James Todd on hook the entire day
-James Produced the hell out of it. every hour at a different scene.
-Two freelancers
-Time lapse shots
-Four professional videographers
-Got 1,000 crowdsourced content
-International participation, and a money shot
-Timeline to produce was short. Started in February and shot in Late March. Had all summer to work through 1,000 submissions and hours of footage.
-#OneDayAtDuke was four years ago. Snapchat didn’t exist. Instagram wasn’t really a thing. Twitter and Wordpress was used.
Jackson is working on something big. Mega.
-The ability to allow users to send content is changing the way groups operate
-Physically send snaps to DukeStudents
-Problem is getting people to know that they can send @DukeStudents snaps
-Produced a quick video on getting snapchat famous
-All done on Snapchat. Downloaded the video and uploaded to YouTube.
-Instagram was an easy 1-2-3-esque picture.
-Repost the 1-2-3 graphics once a week or so.
-As more and more people submit, exponential growth occurs
How do you get people to watch content that we are producing? How do analytics work? Certain goals with pieces? What works well?
Channel optimization
-Each platform behaves very differently than others
-Twitter owned Vine, and also owns Medium. Suite of family tools. And then Facebook acquired Instagram. Snapchat doing their own thing. Google owns YouTube. All competing.
-Facebook: Wants to be content originators. Start with the content, upload and store it there.
-Native upload it everything to optimize it versus doing a bunch of sharing.
-If you’re trying to monetize you will have to think more about native uploading.
-Do you have a central hub where you want people to go see your stuff? Think about that when strategizing your social media presence.
Who is your audience?
-We have 8 (she listed these too quickly for me to copy them down)
-We have a presence on many different places.
Monetization
-Sonia speaks
-Wanted to drive traffic to the blog post because she was monetizing it
YouTube Tips
-Caption everything especially for Facebook
-This is because sound is not always on for audiences
-Goes for Youtube too but more for Facebook
-YouTube you click “Transcribe and Auto-Sync” and you can download the SRT and upload the SRT to Facebook
-Helps with MetaData and Search Results as well
Ways to get involved
-Look into DUU
-Duke Student Broadcasting
How do we shift the needle in how people think about and talk about Duke?
-Sustainability
-Stop thinking about Lacrosse
-Arts
-Crisis and Communications - About 4 people
-Issues Management: Not always a crisis. Need to monitor and understand the conversation that is happening on campus.
-Incredibly complicated plan in terms of recognizing and acting upon an alert.
When the Noose was hung on campus, it broke in the middle of night. Had received texts from students all night.
Pulled the trigger in alertings all up the food chian. Nice tools to listen to sentiment to completely understand the landscape.
-Benchmark: 20,000 comments in one day on Call to Prayer. We pay for tools for that listening piece. Try to stay quiet. Official statements when needed. Can act swiftly because private institution. Allow community to take control of the conversation. Respond when we think it’s appropriate.
Are there concrete goals?
-With digital marketing, we don’t want to increase applications necessarily. We are happy with 32,000 applications. Focused more on getting students we want to come to Duke, to come to Duke.
-Show window into life of Duke students.
JS: This is where the power of snapchat comes through. We want to target several names. Wiz kid geniuses. Will has a billion dollar idea and is considering multiple schools. I can tell him about it or I can send acapella music specifically.
NOTE: They aren’t stalkers.
For smaller organizations, how do you decide where to focus your time?
Sonia: Understand where your audiences are coming from. Focus on mediums through which your traffic is dominating.
Contact info:
Cara Rousseau
Manager, Social and Digital Media Strategy
@cararousseau
cara.rousseau@duke.edu
Sonja Foust
Senior Program Coordinator
sonja.foust@duke.edu
Manager, Social and Digital Media Strategy
@cararousseau
cara.rousseau@duke.edu
Sonja Foust
Senior Program Coordinator
sonja.foust@duke.edu
Ned Phillips is here, guys!
Born in Durham, left, and came back.
Independent filmmaker and cinematographer.
Works in variety of forms, moving more into feature film type of stuff.
Lots of documentary work and some narrative too.
Basically self-employed since college.
Went to Europe and was a tour guide, you just tell stories.
Then started as an assistant editor.
Produced the RUNAWAY videos.
2016 Productions
Have released four films in 2016. Three feature films and a short.
1) Movie about the UNC athletic academic scandal. Did the festival circuit last year and is now on Vimeo-On-Demand. Cinematographer and Editor.
2) Truth Underground - Three spoken word poets as they deal with PTSD, depression, loss of family. How art and community work together. Not out yet but making NC Premiere in Wilmington next weekend. The 9th.
3) Radioactive Veteran - Short film. New clear testing in Nevada in the 50s. Blowing up bombs and sending soldiers to “see what would happen.” One widow’s struggle to get veterans’ benefits from deceased husband as a result of these experiments.
4) Son of Clowns - Festivals in 2016. Also in Wilmington next month. Amazon on the 15th of this month.
Q: How can you make a living doing that? Funding on the front end so you can live? Monetizing on the back end?
A: It’s very hard to fund things. Funding is the hardest part for sure. Surround yourself with good producers who know what they’re doing and the language of grant-writing and have connections in the industry. Connections are so much. I can trace what somebody saw that said “OOh I like that.” Digital imagery trail of career trajectory. (Think Creative Trees?) You are always the first investor in your project. Time, money, resources, equipment, up front. You have to believe in the project and other people will see that belief. There is not a situation where I have gotten money up front for anything. Use that to sell. UNC Documentary was completely crowdfunded. Raised almost $200,000 on Kickstarter. That was because our Producer spent a year ahead of time building audience. Documentary is all about building audience ahead of time. Blogged about it for a year, gained a following. By the time he said they were making a documentary he had a huge following already. Producer sent Ned a random FB message. Shot the Kickstarter video for the project. I’m directing my first feature documentary right now. In the process of applying for big film grants. Strategizing for private fundraising. Issue-driven film and certain types of people or organizations who we know would care more. Avoiding crowd-funding if we can because there’s a lot of work. General strategy, applying for money through organizations. Have a very clear vision and be very explicit about what you’re going to do. Have evidence. Have history of being involved in other successful things is good.
Independent filmmaker and cinematographer.
Works in variety of forms, moving more into feature film type of stuff.
Lots of documentary work and some narrative too.
Basically self-employed since college.
Went to Europe and was a tour guide, you just tell stories.
Then started as an assistant editor.
Produced the RUNAWAY videos.
2016 Productions
Have released four films in 2016. Three feature films and a short.
1) Movie about the UNC athletic academic scandal. Did the festival circuit last year and is now on Vimeo-On-Demand. Cinematographer and Editor.
2) Truth Underground - Three spoken word poets as they deal with PTSD, depression, loss of family. How art and community work together. Not out yet but making NC Premiere in Wilmington next weekend. The 9th.
3) Radioactive Veteran - Short film. New clear testing in Nevada in the 50s. Blowing up bombs and sending soldiers to “see what would happen.” One widow’s struggle to get veterans’ benefits from deceased husband as a result of these experiments.
4) Son of Clowns - Festivals in 2016. Also in Wilmington next month. Amazon on the 15th of this month.
Q: How can you make a living doing that? Funding on the front end so you can live? Monetizing on the back end?
A: It’s very hard to fund things. Funding is the hardest part for sure. Surround yourself with good producers who know what they’re doing and the language of grant-writing and have connections in the industry. Connections are so much. I can trace what somebody saw that said “OOh I like that.” Digital imagery trail of career trajectory. (Think Creative Trees?) You are always the first investor in your project. Time, money, resources, equipment, up front. You have to believe in the project and other people will see that belief. There is not a situation where I have gotten money up front for anything. Use that to sell. UNC Documentary was completely crowdfunded. Raised almost $200,000 on Kickstarter. That was because our Producer spent a year ahead of time building audience. Documentary is all about building audience ahead of time. Blogged about it for a year, gained a following. By the time he said they were making a documentary he had a huge following already. Producer sent Ned a random FB message. Shot the Kickstarter video for the project. I’m directing my first feature documentary right now. In the process of applying for big film grants. Strategizing for private fundraising. Issue-driven film and certain types of people or organizations who we know would care more. Avoiding crowd-funding if we can because there’s a lot of work. General strategy, applying for money through organizations. Have a very clear vision and be very explicit about what you’re going to do. Have evidence. Have history of being involved in other successful things is good.
Production Lab
Audio - Ideally get clean audio the first time. Unplug the refrigerator. Put your keys in the fridge.
Websites - SquareSpace has some artsy looking stuff.
Three main things
1) Aperture - How big the shutter opens up
2) Shutter speed - how fast is opens and closed
3) ISO - if the same amount of light hit two different types of film (sensor sensitivity)
You have to learn about your camera.
Think about every shot you’re using in the itnerview.
-Set up two cameras (one WS and one CU)
-4K is cool because of this
While interviewing
1) Be an active listener
2) Mental notes when subjects get emotional
3) Always ask “do you have anything else to add?”
4) Follow up on things that were asked earlier if need be.
5) Don’t step on the person conducting the interview early on, but if you notice something later, you can step in. Carson will only interject much later on in the interview. Try to get the most concise answer possible.
Set-Ups for Episodes 1 and 7
-Canon 60D with a rogue video mic on top. 50mm prime (1.2). When I shot that, that was the first time.
-Necessity for close up shots because he needed good audio, getting audio from the on-camera mic.
If you’re having issues with subjects moving out of focus
-Increase aperture number
-Adjust shutter speed
NP: Sometimes it can feel natural.
Preventing wind pickup on mics: Wind breaks or dead cats. Find something to block the wind.
Don’t interrupt the interview when an external sound impedes the interview. You will always have to accept other things happening, but you let them finish the thought and then find opportunities for subjects to talk more.
Record multiple audio channels. Have options.
Have master shots, and then cutaways in each scene.
Websites - SquareSpace has some artsy looking stuff.
Three main things
1) Aperture - How big the shutter opens up
2) Shutter speed - how fast is opens and closed
3) ISO - if the same amount of light hit two different types of film (sensor sensitivity)
You have to learn about your camera.
Think about every shot you’re using in the itnerview.
-Set up two cameras (one WS and one CU)
-4K is cool because of this
While interviewing
1) Be an active listener
2) Mental notes when subjects get emotional
3) Always ask “do you have anything else to add?”
4) Follow up on things that were asked earlier if need be.
5) Don’t step on the person conducting the interview early on, but if you notice something later, you can step in. Carson will only interject much later on in the interview. Try to get the most concise answer possible.
Set-Ups for Episodes 1 and 7
-Canon 60D with a rogue video mic on top. 50mm prime (1.2). When I shot that, that was the first time.
-Necessity for close up shots because he needed good audio, getting audio from the on-camera mic.
If you’re having issues with subjects moving out of focus
-Increase aperture number
-Adjust shutter speed
NP: Sometimes it can feel natural.
Preventing wind pickup on mics: Wind breaks or dead cats. Find something to block the wind.
Don’t interrupt the interview when an external sound impedes the interview. You will always have to accept other things happening, but you let them finish the thought and then find opportunities for subjects to talk more.
Record multiple audio channels. Have options.
Have master shots, and then cutaways in each scene.