26th March: Internship (class cancelled)

No class today :)

19th March: Youth Social Innovation meeting

I went along to the first ever Youth Social Innovation meeting tonight at the Media Design School. Unfortunately, I had to arrive late because I also had a YouthLaw MSG meeting that night. Anyway, I arrived in time for the important stuff: beer, pizza.

I caught up with Jade who is working for a small design company (4 people www.initiatedesign.co.nz) and we talked about the YouthLaw project. She said she'd be willing to help out during the editing stages of the project. Jade also introduced me to Lisa who is doing some cool community work in South Auckland, they are applying for funding with the city councils to run media workshops with kids. We exchanged numbers and she might be able to source some fun actors for the films.

I ended today completely zonked, Unitec Internship course, work at Saatchi & Saatchi, meeting at YouthLaw then the Youth Social Innovation meeting. I'm tired and going to bed now!!

19th March: Internship (4th lecture at Unitec)

Today we were visited by someone (I forget her name!) from the Careers and Employment Centre. To be honest, I was stressed out outside of Unitec, the last thing I wanted to do was attend class. But I did and I regretted it. It was really boring. The worst thing that can happen for me when I’m stressed out, needing to get things done, is to get stuck in a boring class or traffic jam. Not that it was the fault of Sara or the person taking the class from Careers, it just wasn’t what I needed to focus on at that particular time. I needed to get back to Saatchi & Saatchi to get through the work I’d been assigned for the day. I wrote in my notebook, “this feels like alcoholics anonymous”, not that I’d had anyt experience of those particular meetings.

Having said that, and getting it off my chest, I actually did learn a bit:

The key idea of a CV is to get an invite to an interview. You can structure a CV like so:

- Name, Address, Phone
- Key skills (match these up with the job description)
- Quals

I also found out about some sites that might help with my project and my life in general:

http://www.thebigidea.co.nz/ - online community for creatives
www.writerfind.com/nz - freelance writing site
http://www.freelance2008.co.nz/ - I found out about this conference through the freelance writing site above
http://www.talentonline.co.nz/ – in case I can’t find any actors (I don’t think this will be a problem)

18th March: TV production meeting at Saatchi & Saatchi

I was lucky enough to attend a TV production 101 meeting at Saatchi & Saatchi today, some of the material might be relevant. It was mostly advertising focused, but still interesting and possibly relevant to my project. I learnt that most talent is valid for 12 months, after that you need to renegotiate royalties (unless it’s already specified in the contract). Copyright for songs is normally two-fold, one from the artist and one from the producer or label. There will be no more 4:3 dispatch from April 1st 2008, meaning everything will be shot and dispatched in 16:9 – but we still need to keep everything 4:3 “safe”. By 2012, 4:3 will be obsolete. Digital Post and Oktober are the only grading suites in Auckland.

12th March: Internship (3rd lecture at Unitec)

Unfortunately, I couldn't make it to class today.

10th March: Meeting with Richard Mayo Smith

I took the time to meet with Mayo, a TV producer at Saatchi & Saatchi today. He was really helpful, offering advice and helping to organise my ideas.

We talked the project through as follows:

YouthLaw will need to provide a brief that has the scenarios and outcomes of the films. From there, scripts will be written which specify what we need to shoot and where.

If filming in parks, we will need to organise permits from the council.

We probably don’t need a director, but we could approach some contacts for a director of photography who may be happy to do some pro bono work.

We might need to shoot over two weekends.

Camera will likely be mini-DV (e.g. Sony 3chip). Will need a tripod. Possibly sound recorders, lighting and make-up.

People: Script writer, Camera person (and assistant), Talent (up to 30 people), Editing, Lighting (but probably not necessary), Catering, Make-up person (maybe).

He suggested I contact Greenstone and Screentime (Communicado) to see if they have anything they could offer.

5th March: Internship (2nd lecture at Unitec)

We talked about journals today and it’s okay for me to continue this blog as my journal. So this is good. One thing I need to be aware of, however, is that because the journal is public, I might not be as forthcoming in writing about specific people and events – in case it offends people or causes arguments. Because I’m aware of this problem, I might not write “just whatever comes to mind” and go through more a screening process before publishing posts. I’ll take a look through the blogging settings, because I think you can make some posts private, only available to certain people.

My philosophy in life is to remain as open and transparent as possible. I don’t like to have secrets. So I don’t actually think that blogging will be a problem, if there’s an issue that’s on my mind, I probably would have told the affected people anyway. Unless they are particularly worried about the event being written about publicly, I don’t see any problem publishing my thoughts on the Internet.

In class we talked about “Keeping a journal will help me to …” and these are the answers we came up with:

• Record ideas & information from meetings
• Provide a place to reflect on personal ideas, emotions and thoughts
• Record what people have said, times and dates of events
• Journals will be interesting to look back on at a later date
• Organise thoughts
• Store information that might not be relevant now, but could be in the future
• Show others the amount of effort that has been put into the project “behind the scenes”

Some of the others in the class have been doing well getting internships, Liz is working at Juice TV on the NZ music month campaign, Hayley is working at Draft FCB, Sheena is working for the Comedy Festival.

Coming up we have:

19th March – Careers and Employment Centre visit
16th April – Tim Marshal

3rd March: StudyLink sucks

My student loan for the internship project (course fees) was declined because I'm only studying part-time part-year. Something should be done to change these rules, because what I'm doing is exactly the sort of thing that StudyLink should be encouraging, i.e. students working hard on their internships in order to gain positive experience in their chosen fields (possibly going on to paid employment).

Anyway, I decided to dodge the system (enrol in a random course in second semester) rather than try to argue (where I could end up paying late penalties or being locked out of the computer system).

1st March: Meeting with Gabby

I met with Gabby today to talk about Unitec's A midsummer night's dream, I'm writing up some Press Releases for publication in In Unison, Tearaway and Vamped Up. Seeing as she is in her 3rd year Directing at Unitec, I thought I should ask her about the YouthLaw project.

She was very helpful and will send through some of her scriptwriting notes. She also gave me the names of some people who will be good to get in touch with:

• Rita - possible actor
• Charlie - possible actor / director
• Tai - possible actor / director / scriptwriter (used to be a drama teacher so might know some good school student actors)
• Nicola - possible director / camera operator (the sort of person who is always into new things)
  
• Liam - possible camera operator
• Jarred - possible actor
• Simon Good - possible video editor

I will follow up with Tai next week as he will be at the SmackBang drinks on Thursday, he sounds like a good person to get onboard.

27th February: Internship (1st lecture at Unitec)

The first day of the internship course at Unitec. I felt good that I already had an internship organisation and I knew exactly what the project will entail. It was good meeting Sophie (who is doing an internship at GoFM) and Andrea (from Germany and doesn't know where to go yet).

See my column in In Unison about the first day back to school, and in particular, meeting Andrea at: http://www.usu.co.nz/inunison/columns/latest-columns/add-me-pt-3/

The timeframes are a bit of a pain because YouthLaw's deadline for the production of video content is the 30th of June, but Unitec's presentation day is the 4th of June. I think it is possible to meet the Unitec deadline, but I will need to spend some time planning a schedule, and it also depends on how quickly Harvena is able to produce the written modules.

Anyway, I think I've got sufficient information to write up the "Project Proposal Plan" so I will try and get that out of the way asap and start focusing on actually getting this thing going.

26th February: Video content meeting

Jeanie and Harvena came down for lunch with me at the Saatchi & Saatchi building today to start working on what will be my internship project.

We had already decided that a manageable project will be to create video content to supplement the modules that Harvena is writing. The meeting was more to discuss timeframes and how we would go about doing it.

I will need to know what format to produce the videos in. I don't really know what formats are available, but we do need to decide where the content will eventually end up. Putting the videos on YouTube opens them up to the public and YouthLaw has less control over quality and the amount of content that can be stored. The other option is to store the videos on the SharePoint site, this means YouthLaw has more control over who sees the videos, the quality of the videos and how long each video can be. We will need to ensure that this video functionality will be available in the website that is being developed.

Speaking of website development (and this is outside of my internship project), Jeanie isn't sure who will be designing the site yet. I hope some decisions are made around this soon as it could impact on timeframes.

We discussed "A fair hearing". A fair hearing was a video that was created in the 90's about a Board of Trustees meeting to discuss a student's behaviour. It ran for 20 minutes and provided information about advocacy under the Education Act. It will give me a good idea of the sort of stuff that has been done before and what YouthLaw may want for the new project. I've now got a copy of the VHS and will take a look at it soon.

We talked about how the final website will look. Harvena explained that each module will be divided into a number of sessions. At the end of each module, there will be an assessment that the user must pass before going on to the next module.

Harvena showed me the video brief that she had created for the modules she wants video content in. She explained that there are two ways to go about creating video content:

1) Lots of different scenarios to illustrate different areas of the law, e.g. a stand-down, a suspension, an expulsion etc. This would lack "a story", but each video would be very relevant to each module.
2) An ongoing storyline, where a main character progresses through different areas of the law (e.g. a real bad student who gets stood-down, then suspended, then excluded etc).

We discussed both ways and it became apparent that the ongoing storyline would be the best option as we would only need the one actor (and their parents / teachers etc). Harvena is going to update the video brief to reflect this and resend through to me.

Harvena needs video content for the following modules:

• Gross misconduct (Education Act advocacy)
• Continual disobedience (Education Act advocacy)
• Youth justice (Youth Justice Act)
• Possibly also a special needs section. However, concerns were raised that parents might not be willing to allow their kids to be filmed and so photos might have to be used instead. Personally, I see this as no obstacle and Red is willing to try and find actors to fill the parts required

Jeanie also asked if I could produce some video content (2-3 clips) for her module

• Natural justice (and how it applies to everyday life)

We identified some requirements for the videos

• Produced in a format that will integrate easily into the rest of the content (website text)
  
• Produced in a style that can be easily cloned (so that additional video content can be added later)
• Clips should be no longer than 3 minutes each
• Clips will need to be viewed and accepted by YouthLaw as well as a select group of National Youthworkers Network pilot testers
• Clips should be funny and entertaining where appropriate (e.g. a joke cracker student / or a hard case principal)
• Clips should be fairly generic so as to be appropriate even if the law goes through minor changes, but not too generic so as to lose value or be boring
• There was an additional request to create a module on how to create your own videos in similar format (this could be made available to selected people who are interested in expanding the content of the site)

We finally discussed timeframes

• The modules need to be completed (written) by 30th April, but Harvena expects to complete them earlier (approx end of March)
• The video content needs to be completed by 30th June

The entire PLEAS project will be completed after pilot testing and national roll out by 31/08/2009.