Exec Meeting @ 2024-01-27 16:00:00
WSC Exec Meeting, FAB2.32, 27/01/24, 4pm
Present: Liv Lancastle (chair), Daniel Kallin (minutes), Sophie Cooper, Tomas Caldon, Dillan Patel, James Patt, Eric Liu, Ethan Dougall (late, present from ‘Elections’) Zain Mothupi (late, present from ‘Term One Reflection’)
In attendance: Marnie McCrudden, Kieran Hall
Apologies: Jay Patel, Josh Heng
Exec updates
JPT: FOH: really well, lots of emails, emails still going to spam, encouraging people to just to talk to me on show, Dallon has Qshow on Fight Club, TDM team full
SC: Pub: it’s all here now, backup A5s not and are a lost cause basically obsolete, other A5s being drafted, hoping to get done and here before W5, blog still happening with a couple of very enthusiastic people, pitches existing, had an idea for thing to in run-up to Oscars: article on Oscars, do Exec picks for all the Oscar categories and do a poll (maybe wider on Insta too, will send list out and can be made into an article/insta post, should be W10 so might be new Exec as well, pay attention
Pub spending a lot cheaper than expected, big saving, might be getting more refunds from dodgy A2s, props to KH for karening all the pub people, appreciate the chasing
KH: do need to find examples of booklets without middle stapled in as that is main complaint
EL: Proj: no. things have been projected :)
TC: Socials: have been happening, going to be continuing to be happening, going to start writing Pub Quiz soon, going to make it harder than last time
DK: we are hosting Take 24 filmmaking competition next Sunday
ED: films making lots of money!
SC: pub runs went well even though it was late so not too much of a loss, people were very eager to receive pub and asking where it was before it arrived, the people love the booklets, would like to do a T3 booklet especially as we saved money
ED: observed from EPOS sales, people with film passes using them a lot
JPT: how many sold?
SC: think it’s 23
ED: consistently seeing around 10 people using them on shows which is great
KH: when YSC guy came to visit, chatted about how well YSC film passes sell for them, potentially scope for term passes to become more of a thing once more established
JPT: did we sell more or less than last term?
LL: think we made it past 30 [checks sales report] it was 27
DP: some of the term passers have become crew
ED: think about making some pub related to film passes
KH: maybe a booklet page
SC: would be happy to do it for T3 but it is limited schedule
LL: we can just reduce the price for it
SC: can make generic thing and fill in prices when they change
LL: Film Hub funding quarterly reports completed in Christmas holidays, final report deadline somewhere near end of summer term, will get sent to next Exec, we haven’t been told that we’ve done anything wrong
ED: how much money has been allocated so far?
LL: before pitch pot, they don’t want a budget back, just list of events and attendance, bulk of report ‘narrative report’ describing impact project has had, quotes from customers etc. and rest is spreadsheet, final report will need more work but no budgeting is involved
KH: how are surveys doing?
LL: had just over 75 responses, only needed 120, can just send round crew if we need a few more at the end, will put up on allnighter
EL: survey slide up for LofA?
LL: yes, will make slide before on-the-day this time
Elections
LL: elections coming up this term, will need to be organised, couple of things we need to do is Meet the Exec - can be combined with Getting Involved - elections have to be between W7-W9 but W9 is SU elections so we don’t want to clash with them “tired of democracy”, W8 seems like right week to do them in
JPT: what is a Meet the Exec?
LL: everyone gets in a room and the Exec talk about what we do, people wanting to run for our positions ask questions about the role, but very similar to GI meeting - could do that around W5, don’t want to do it on reading week, need two weeks beforehand to have stuff announced, one week before elections needs candidates out and online voting, and then nominations need to be open by W6, so MtE on weekend W4 or Wed W5, will do poll between the two and see which the most people can make - returning officer is by default VP unless they run again in which case they nominate someone else which could be me
DK: was planning to nominate you anyway
DP: worth digitising?
LL: could do and run through SU website, but in-person meeting wouldn’t be run in same way, but we did do a combination of email votes and online ballots last year
ED: make sure we advertise Elections on socials, sent what I made last year to JPL
Term One Reflection
LL: recap how Term One went, and how Christmas went, and where we are now, T1 was good and we made a massive amount of surplus, we paid off projector loan (KH: got mentioned in SU Finance+IT meeting), we have money so that went well
SC: already gone over positive pub updates, everything is now here and we have saved money, so let’s talk about what happened over Christmas, I was not happy, from angle of not wanting successor to have same problems, relevant to everyone - didn’t have a break, didn’t have time to do degree, knew I would be busy at end of T1 and underestimated that, working on Pub over Christmas and into T2, haven’t had a break until now
Issues: not supported at all by majority of exec/crew, understand people want a break but so do I, only had a couple of people helping over Christmas, intense proofing means you start to miss mistakes, need fresh eyes, mostly KH and Callum helping, bit of ZM, and late reviews from DK, TC and Max, meant to ask for help but felt unsupported and wasn’t getting creative input like with International Women’s Evening name, pub running had low turnout, me, LL, Cerys, Eleanor, ED, Julian - pub running is an exec duty, least you could have done is help cart everything around, moving pub during the week was difficult, just me, KH and Julian and Hashir, annoying and didn’t feel like there was much acknowledgement or offers for help
Main problem: respect for time and deadlines, told you all I was “balls deep in masters stuff”, negotiated and agreed to deadlines, planned for worst case scenario, deadlines continuously ignored, my role dependent on other people doing their bit, can’t progress if people don’t reply or help, needed to beg and plead to get response, if everything was on time then it would have been here before Christmas, bad printers wouldn’t have mattered, Christmas means printers shut and it’s a break so emails don’t get replied to, can’t do job if not getting replies and people with relevant info aren’t coming forward, if nothing confirmed then very difficult to do designs when things have to be moved around, only came through in the end because me and a small group of people put in lots of work, stops being fun - don’t understand why deadlines weren’t met, don’t want successor to have such a shit time too, lucky that me, KH and Callum were willing to do it as we wouldn’t have booklets otherwise
Conclusion: bit crap, don’t want my successor to go through this, want to do this but putting in that much time and energy to get so little help is not good, if anyone has any questions on this speak now…
LL: any points on this to avoid it happening in future?
EL: sort of on me that Allnighter first film took a while to be confirmed but not my call if we want LifeOfBrian or not, that’s for the FOs
ZM: without LifeofBrian, didn’t feel like it was our call either, thought it was dead-end, wanted to do just Holy Grail, not going to overrule Exec on idea of it being mystery film
SC: at’ed FOs directly multiple times, discussion on mystery film happened over Christmas break which was too late anyway, not EL’s fault, not Exec’s fault, shouldn’t have come to this
DP: my point was allnighter was always done as a team
ZM: was discussed in W9 exec meeting, did say Holy Grail was bookable from Cinema Museum, only need to confirm rights
KH: wondering if it was worth not getting bogged down by allnighter stuff, that’s still not sorted but not where it went wrong, nothing was ready anywhere near SC’s fair deadlines, I personally have spent last year and a half trying to bend over backwards with WSC, number of people felt they were uncomfortable with how much WSC was relying on people who “don’t go here” which is fair, but quite apparent that pretty much all the proofing was done by people who don’t go here, same with reviews, going to hit different next time someone has that moan, feels very unfair if people aren’t willing to do the work, I did absolutely nowhere near as much work as SC did and still gave up my Christmas for it, not the first time the society has had this convo, not the first time this exec has had this convo, deadlines for Autumn pub being discussed and I spoke and said in my experience Filmsoc was not leaving enough time for printing with deadline, was told that everything was fine last time so they didn’t see what the problem was, spoke emotively about how much work went in to making pub happen last year - allnighters and driving across the country - filmsoc good at thinking things happen by magic, schedule confirmation deadlines have not been anywhere near this late until past few years, need to think about pressure that puts pub under, gave examples of 2019/20, someone turned to me and said “wasn’t their understanding of what happened” which was strange because I was there, I think we want to be able to know this won’t happen again because another pub officer has been made to feel like shit - this happened last year, we agreed to not do this again and then it happened again, what’s going to be different this time?
LL: need to start by keeping track of deadlines
KH: after 2022 Spring pub managed to get here on time after scrambling to meet tight deadlines, there were complaints that deadlines could have been pushed back a bit later to make schedule more concrete, this is an example of how these lines of thinking go wrong
LL: left more slack for Autumn pub as we had some room for it
SC: still had to leave other people on charge when I went on holiday
LL: all got here with a week to spare, reason it was ok as we set strict deadlines with wiggle room in them, possible to get everything done in time despite schedule being pushed later - this time we were very clear about how tight the deadlines were, there was a negotiation as pub needed longer and scheduling needed longer too, but understanding that Christmas was no-go zone, deadlines were missed by exactly one month, need to emphasise meeting deadlines to next FOs so next exec doesn’t end up doing this, can’t disrespect the time of people having to work after schedule confirmation, anyone want to say more stuff?
ZM: on deadlines, for Autumn, we had everything planned as confirmed for original deadline but it wasn’t our first choice, went two weeks over, me and DP staying up all night as films not getting confirmed so we chose an easy-to-book replacement - for T2, confirmation deadline was a week after programming meeting
KH: wasn’t programming meeting not a lot later than it was supposed to be?
DP: a little bit, clashed with other things like GI meeting
LL: there were 3 weeks between first draft and confirmation, discussed idea of confirming things once available during drafting, you both agreed this was a sensible way of doing things, other choice was having vote earlier and longer to confirm but you didn’t want that. We have been moderately lax before as have been fine with a couple of films not being confirmed by deadline, this time it was over a month before it was ready for publicity, there was a month from schedule vote until pub could be confidently designed, SC had to ask for updates rather than FOs updating on own accord, proactive communication would have made things a lot easier
DP: we were updating document fully and making notes on what has changed, was messaging SC and putting in exec when those changes had to be made – were having quite a lot of issues, studio approval for some films took ages, booking weren’t open until later due to Christmas, those issues will be felt by other people in the future
LL: that is my point about proactive communication
DP: we don’t know when films will be difficult or not
LL: impression that most people have been getting is that there is a lot stuff not communicated until asked
DP: would it have been useful for a weekly update?
SC: if there is a crisis I need things fed to me as soon as they happen, not being updated and having to chase them days before deadline is so disheartening and annoying, feels like nobody cares, this info should be given to me without being asked, should be empathetic to how hard it was
DP: a lot of the time there is no update until there is an update, nothing to say except that we haven’t heard anything yet
SC: before deadlines that’s alright, but past deadlines then regular updates should be more of a thing so we know that things are being fixed
DP: can understand that, could have told you before you asked, quite a lot of things fell through, not fun for us either
LL: if people know what you are doing and what you are struggling with then we can support you, to remove the stress and start on pub earlier, FOs are only role which don’t have to copy in Exec whenever they send an email that affects the society, not automatically being shared so you need to be proactive in sharing it
SC: KH updated frequently when printers were being shit, exec cc’d in and everyone in the loop, if you’re doing the work do you not want kudos for that? Benefits you to update us all, we are all supposed to be working together so we can see we are all doing stuff
ZM: in my mind, viewed that bi-weekly Exec meetings were place to update, but understand that during Christmas the updates were needed
SC: understand working over Christmas isn’t fair, but some of us had to do that, if we waited until exec meetings to share this information then nothing would be done
LL: have had the same discussion every term which is a shame, make it clear for future exec what we are expecting, handover properly on stuff about meeting deadlines
KH: I think because a lot of people are quite sad and miserable and frustrated, only spoken about needing to know about other people doing their jobs in an accountability way but, more positively, we’re supposed to be excited by and enjoying what we are doing, reason I post pics of pub being here isn’t just to tell people I have ordered it but also just because it is cool and other people will find it cool, especially for new exec when they are still green and enthusiastic, feel like its nice for them to know what everyone is doing in a sharing kind of way – I wonder if there is a knowledge or terminology gap between people like FOs and myself who have communicated with people in industry and with Exec, words like ‘confirmed’ are being used differently, films that were cancelled had been pencilled in provisionally before bookings were ready, maybe not everyone was clear how tentative those dates were, really normal for a film studio to ‘expect to be taking bookings’ but the film suddenly comes out months later – SC and I, noticed Colleen Hoover book adaptation was coming out ready for T2 and looked into it but now it is coming out in June, not a rugpull as there are no promises being made at this point – decisions hard to make effectively when not everyone on same page with terminology like ‘safe zones’
LL: difference between open for bookings and waiting for reply and not open for bookings but they said it was fine, difference could be made clearly – biggest exec responsibilities listed in constitution are the ones that involve working together as an Exec, pub runs and coming to meetings are a big part of all of our roles as one big team, would be nice for that to come back for next Exec
ZM: in terms of making progress better, we can meet any deadline if it is a single deadline, could pull a film off that isn’t certain to be confirmed, more leeway with deadlines makes it a lot more complicated, Donnie Darko cleared for schedule but we were trying to book other films for that slot
EL: you never said at the time that you were struggling to meet the deadline
LL: leeway is don’t damage your own life to meet a deadline but not that the actual deadline is three weeks after
KH: people aren’t being clear on the difference of OK this is now shit and yes this is going to make my job harder but we can make this happen if we have to, up until you literally can’t do it anymore there will always be something you can do to make Pub happen on time but that has become normalised so the process has expanded to fill that time, now at a point where leeway is no longer just a response to a crisis situation but assumed as something that can be gone into, SC met the no-contingency plan deadlines but then something went very wrong
SC: deadlines are deadlines, same as on Tabula, especially on a chain where you doing something affects something else, I am willing to do this but not everyone’s breaking point is the same, just because it went over doesn’t make it OK, don’t know if I’m understanding the point you are making correctly but deadlines are deadlines because I worked out how much work I could do in that time
ZM: with our job, a lot of it isn’t up to us
DP: effort doesn’t necessarily correspond to outcome
ZM: concerned about films like All Of Us Strangers where they say the film will open on Tues, deadline on Fri, then pushed to next Tue, should we axe or push over deadline?
SC: dependent on time, had oodles of time for Autumn, not for Spring
LL: our deadlines are a balancing act, if FOs need to go over their deadline, can they borrow time from Pub, choice is up to Pub, you could ask SC if she can accept having three days fewer, question for Exec, Exec will likely say yes to a few extra days over a deadline, people having time borrowed from need to be prepared
SC: and need to be more supported, becomes physically impossible to write 10 reviews a day, good analogy, people need to know what is going on, different between weekly leeway and an entire month
KH: not just for FOs, for entire Exec, same Exec need to support Pub if agreeing to borrow into their time to book a film
LL: everything we do revolves around getting favours from people, if someone can’t do a show it’s closer to asking a friend to cover the show for you, more about asking for help then adhering to strict deadlines and strict show requirements, difference between asking for a few more days and having people cancel their plans to make up for work you couldn’t manage is miles, even if the people are willing to do it it is unkind to ignore their needs
ED: clear set of action points?
EL: treat deadlines as actual deadlines
SC: respect for each other’s time, greater help for publicity, if you’re struggling then say, nobody should be staying up all night that’s deranged, work together on a solution
ED: think this should be codified in handover packs for FOs and Pub, deadlines should be hard deadlines, changes should be communicated as soon as becoming apparent
KH: for FO handover packs, would be useful to hand down some of the expectations that have been squashed in this process, e.g. Disney have a habit of estimating when films can be booked without promising anything, next FOs need to know that, would be good if they were informed going in
EL: is it worth sharing those specific parts with rest of Exec so new Exec know this as well
ED: when something unexpected happens within week or two of deadline, needs to be put on Exec slack and on discourse, slack checked by more people, keep people informed, should be in handover pack
ZM: Slack is easier as well
ED: more than just deadlines, proofing was big problem too
SC: comes to a point where can’t proof anymore because done too much, but it’s only me and a few people, more people can spot things even if they just proof one page, if you’re not sure how to proof then you can just ask, always stuff to proof even if it’s just spelling, Cerys made one comment and it got her a script checking credit
ED: might seem superficial, is proofing an Exec duty?
SC: not written as a role
ED: is pub running explicitly an Exec duty?
LL: Exec members IV responsibility is pub runs
ED: proofing should be put in as a responsibility for visibility, needs to be passed on more long term
KH: feel like even if people didn’t proof, at least tell SC that you don’t have time for it, the only times when people talk about things is if they want something or want to criticise something, we never appreciate people enough, not many people have told SC how good the pub is, we are rubbish at appreciating people, we need to do that more, would go a long way
JPT: I share the whole sentiment of it being frustrating when people aren’t communicating when they can’t help out, reason I didn’t do proofing was because I was when a shit state, exec duty so people should be doing it, lost point
SC: it’s fine if you can’t do stuff, not going to force you to do anything, some appreciation would go a long way
JPT: that’s the point I was trying to make, I covered a lot of shows and Hashir did a load, do loads of work but nobody even says thank you, we help each other out, communicate when you can’t do things so we can cover each other, share ED’s sentiment that we need to have more concrete rules or section in handover pack of how important it is to communicate
ED: related to work going unappreciated, tendency to just assume other people will do stuff like proofing even if you’re not doing it, think about it
LL: anything else to say? No. cool.
TADONM
LL: next meeting, probably W7, will be Meet the Exec in next week or two.
AOBS
EL: we need to decide whether we are doing 35mm Priscilla and Poor Things or not?
DP: consecutive days, Priscilla says yes (ZM: same deal with Passages), Poor Things is a wait-and-see
LL: I don’t want to do both
SC: seems like slack convo
SC: next exec meetings, would like to discuss deadlines, would be good to have programming meeting during term
KH: want to buy a Dolby preamp unit with all the cards, 12 of them, for doing magnetic sound, we need this to do 35mm mag, also spares for 70mm and haven’t found any, individual cards crazy expensive, but this is ridiculously cheap for all 12 cards
Vote: all For.
Meeting ended at 17:46.