Exec Meeting @ 2018-10-19 16:00:00
Minutes of the Warwick Student Cinema (WSC) Executive Committee meeting held on 19th October 2018
16:00
R1.04 (Ramphal)
Present: Irene Mercader (President), Casper Davidson (Vice-President), Alex Pointon (Technical Officer), Taylor Wilkes (Treasurer), Josh Bullin (Films Officer), Alice Glasgow (Films Officer), Matthew Davies (Marketing Officer), Iain Walker (Chief Duty Manager), Nicky Leathard (Publicity Officer), Anna Solecki (Publicity Officer), Benji Levine (IT Officer) until point 5, Kieran Hall (Chief Projectionist) point 4 onwards, Hilla Hamidi (Events and Socials Coordinator) point 8 onwards
Also present: Reece Goodall, Caleb Gilliam-Scott
1. Welcome and Apologies
Apologies were received from Todd Olive (External Relations Officer)
2. Updates from Different Teams
Front of House – The second Getting Involved meeting was good, but less successful than the first. Rotas are very full, with trainee stewards signing up now having to wait until week 7 to start – they are being given complimentary tickets to compensate for the wait. There are 3 TDMs currently and new TDMs will be recruited soon.
Projection – Rotas are close to full and there are some trainee projectionists. New trainee projectionist interviews are taking place this week. Decisions will be made on who to recruit and how many to take on next week. Last year, some trainees dropped out so we should take on more than last year, with the expectation that some will drop out. Some 35mm trainees will be taken on soon too.
Publicity – There is already a new crew member getting involved with publicity. More people signed up at the Getting Involved meeting, with some interested in writing reviews and others interested in Photoshop.
Marketing – there has been some interest from the second Getting Involved meeting but it is taking time to integrate people into the team. MD is sending out a Doodle poll to organise individual meetings with them.
IT – Plenty of trainees have signed up. There have been one-on-one sessions with 18 trainees, which is very positive. Naturally some people will drop out but we hope to retain most of them. 10 people came to a group session which was productive. Some user accounts are not working on office computers and this is being investigated. SSH is currently broken, but this only really affects the IT team directly. Dreamworks is being replaced by a Windows 10 computer, so users are advised to move files from it before the end of the week. Some hardware is being ‘refreshed’ over the coming weeks and months.
3. Slack
Slack has been reorganised so that some informal chats will still exist, but we should aim for all teams to try and move to Slack as it may be more helpful than Facebook chats. IM suggested it would be useful to have an updates channel for different teams to update each other so everyone is informed on what’s going on between exec meetings. This is because there are teams like IT where it’s not obvious what progress is being made, unlike more ‘visible’ teams like marketing or publicity.
4. Harry Potter Marathon
All of the 35mm films arrived last night and are being put on the platter now. Digital versions are on their way. Lots of marketing is being done with a fantastic trailer made by MD and AG. JK Rowling tweeted her thanks that we are giving £1 from every ticket to her charity, Lumos. BL has ordered 400 35mm souvenir tickets, with 100 for each Hogwarts house. MD is planning to print out Hogwarts acceptance letters onto parchment paper and putting them in wax-sealed envelopes. There may be a sorting hat process to sort people into houses, for example tickets could be drawn from the hat. The houses may be used to decide teams for the quiz and other activities.
We have sold 59 tickets, which is positive, but we are expecting many more to be sold closer to the event. Flyers have been taken to the SU and will be distributed by their Street Team. The remaining flyers will be left on publicity table, stuck outside the library and handed out on doors.
We certainly have enough DMs and stewards – they will be allocated by the next DM meeting. Every 35mm projectionist will be in attendance and there will be digital projectionists in attendance too – they will be allocated by the next projection meeting.
There was a discussion on the Harry Potter marathon chat about doing a group pizza order at the event which would be available to anyone attending, not just crew. B stated that the advantage of this is that it is more organised than everyone ordering their own food and reduces the number of people coming in and out and start of the third film. It will also be easier for them to place an order with us and cheaper for them as we’ll get a significant discount. We would offer customers a limited selection of pizzas which we would keep track of and hand out later. Bl contacted Dominos and they would be fine if we ordered pizzas at 4 for them to deliver at 7:30. The main opposition to the idea was thought to be that it would be too complex to organise, but BL and some volunteers are happy to sort out all the logistics so that those who are concerned wouldn’t have to be involved. The specifics of processing orders will be decided in the coming days. CD expressed concern that if Dominos made a mistake with the orders, this would annoy customers and cause us reputational damage. KH said we should make clear it is Dominos pizza and not our own to avoid reputational damage. The limited selection would reduce the risk of mistakes with orders. Customers will pay in advance for the pizza and could use AM’s card reader or pay by cash. BL will continue with these plans and get in touch with Dominos on the morning of Saturday to confirm the arrangement.
HH is creating a quiz for the event and this is nearly complete. There will also be a costume competition, which could be judged by someone from the Harry Potter & Quidditch Society and someone from our own society. The judging of costumes should take place early during the event as some people will want to get out of their costumes to stay comfortable. We could have a photographer to take pictures of costumes. The science concourse could be decorated with a variety of Harry Potter-themed items, including Diagon Alley decorations, a Moaning Myrtle in the toilets, golden snitch stickers around campus, a broom made into a Nimbus 2000 or banners for each Hogwarts house. AP noted these items are expensive so perhaps it would be better to order a large A0 poster instead or buy something which we could keep for future events.
IW and HH will sort out a briefing and brunch before the event.
5. Popcorn update
IW said that the new sweeper is working and we haven’t noticed an uptick in popcorn spillage. As such, the exec voted to lift the ban on popcorn indefinitely (11 for, 0 against, 0 abstain).
6. NFT Situation
KH says Films Officers were chasing up films but we still haven’t paid invoices for March until September as we didn’t receive a service during this time – we are paying current and future invoices. AP will sort out the situation with the old invoices. As per last meeting, we endeavour to end our contract once Unique Digital is up and running.
7. External Relations Report
The exec were contacted by a beauty brow salon, but no one felt like this opportunity was something we were interested in as a society. The Harry Potter & Quidditch society is collaborating with us for the Harry Potter marathon. A screening of Rent is scheduled for 1st December. The plan is for the SU to pay for the film costs, with all proceeds going to charity. We will get in touch with other societies soon regarding future collaborations.
8. Upcoming Events and Socials
On 20th October, there will be an Ice Cream Bar Crawl with the theme being characters from movies. IW expressed concern we were promoting this event at the same time as a screening on Facebook, but it was discussed that the advantages of people coming to our socials and potentially getting further involved in the society outweighs the few people who don’t come to the screening. There was some confusion about whether the society owes LuvBug any money – this will be clarified by IM.
The only other event that will clash with our screenings is Kenilworth Fireworks on Saturday 3rd November – it may be possible to make it back in time for the 9:30pm screening of Mission Impossible: Fallout afterwards. On Wednesday of Week 4, there will be a Video Games Night and on Wednesday of Week 5, there will be a Halloween-themed circle followed by Pop!
A FilmSoc Tour to Disneyland Paris was mooted. The previous FilmSoc Tour was two years ago in Edinburgh. The suggested dates are during the first week after the end of Term 2. Any further ideas should be communicated to HH.
9. TADONM
This will be decided over email.
10. AOB’s
i) KH: Pearl and Dean have given us some new ads.
ii) KH: It might be better to call our film showings ‘shows’ instead of ‘screenings’.
iii) TW: Other companies apart from Clifton have poor quality hoodies, so we’ll stick with Clifton for the new hoodies. The cost is £40 per hoodie, which could be subsidised to £30. TW shall create a poll.
iv) AS: Sometimes exec meetings run for quite a long time, so perhaps we should have a fixed end time.
v) AG: The dump needs cleaning as it has got lots of outdated publicity in there.
vi) AG: The Lion King which was booked for the Sherbourne screening was more expensive than expected. Cost quoted was £144 but it may be more, so Sherbourne may have issues paying for this. The exec shall be notified if there are any developments with this.
vii) JB: Rent is no longer available on DCP, but we may be able to get a 35mm print or a blu-ray copy.
viii) JB: The next Programming Meeting is provisionally scheduled for Week 5. The first meeting to decide next term’s schedule took place today.
ix) MD: Someone contacted the society’s Facebook page asking for us to screen his horror film, but it is unlikely we’ll find time to screen it. The Argentine Tango society want to recreate famous argentine tango scenes from cinema on the big screen and would like to collaborate with us on this. UNICEF asked us to screen something for their FAST24 event, but we’re unlikely to be able to put something up in the next 2 weeks. We would be happy to collaborate on something with them in term 2.
x) IW: If emails are sent to exec, please CC or BCC (as appropriate) the exec when replying so everyone knows it has been responded to.
xi) RG: Reiterated suggestion to be kinder to one another.
xii) IM: If you want a crew or crew guest ticket for the Harry Potter Marathon, let IM or IW know.
xii) CD: If anyone is able to work the open day stall on Saturday 20th October, let CD know.
Meeting ended at: 18:01