2012 Edition: 23 Days and Counting...or, What a difference a year makes: Exactly None

I'm Back!

It's been a year-ish and I again have less than a month-ish to finish pulling together the LAMVF. Copyright pending. Because we may or may not be getting prosecuted for copyright infringement sometime in the near future, according to a series of confounding emails in the recent past. Apparently Los Angeles Music Video Festival is too close to "Los Angeles Music Festival"...who knows.

Anyways I thought I'd pick up where I left off for posterity's sake. I'm 23 days away from the 2nd annual LAMVF. Here's what my to-do list looked like a year ago, with things I STILL have to do marked in red. Can you spot the differences?

24 Days and counting...
It's the last day of 2010 and I have 24 days left before the festival.

Things to do:
-lock in speakers
-lock in panelists
-lock in judges
-finalize trophies
-finalize prizes
-sell ads
-finalize design of poster/program/flier/tshirt
-order poster/program/flier/tshirt
-order color-coded wristbands (tickets)
-publicity
-update website/twitter/fb
-compile email list **I need to compile a personal one with work/friend contacts
-email email list w/newsletter **I'm updating this one to "email SAVE THE DATE"
-finish screening vids
-select finalists
-announce finalists (press release/email all contestants)
-format so the finalists can be screened for judges
-screen finalists for judges/compile decisions
-work out deferred and late entries/payments
-follow up missing entry payments
-lock in bands for concert
-buy insurance for venue
-hire security for venue
-hire volunteers/interns
-buy food for greenroom
-reach out to food trucks
-compile screening formats for theater
-create projection images for rooftop ** maybe...it might not be open this year
-hire DJ

29 things to do in 24 days. And work starts again on Monday. Overwhelm-o-meter = 8/9

Kind of comforting to know I was way in the hole a year ago and still pulled it off...I'm going to go with an Overwhelm-o-meter of 6

14 Days and counting...

That's right. 14 days left. 2 weeks exactly before this festival is unleashed onto the unsuspecting world.

It is no coincidence that I just finished my first week being back at my day job and that I haven't written anything on here for a week. I practically didn't get to bed before 2am a single night in the last 7 days.

BUT there's a lot of good news! Sunday night, my "team" came over at 3:30 pm and didn't leave until 2:30...here's what happened:


Passed out our brand-new-fancy-pants business cards. NBD...

We watched all the videos in contention for selection and locked in our finalists....

(Yes, we did all click "accepted" together)...

We took a pizza break...

Then we wrote our to-do list and pow-wowed for the week. I made it as clear as humanely possible that from that point on we all needed to be amazing with communication--I asked everyone that every time I sent an email, they write back, even just to say "got it". If I asked them to get something done, they needed to let me know if they could or couldn't do it. If their phone or car was dying or they were stuck somewhere or didn't have internet or whatever, they needed to let me know asap so I could make other arrangements, etc. We're in crunch mode now and there's very little room for error so I wanted us all to be on the same page.

MONDAY:

First day back at work. Had some drama with task #1, dropping off VHS tapes at the Bronzery for casting by 2pm. Even though we specifically discussed the need to be proactive and keep the lines of communication super open, a dying phone, broken down car and locked-out-of-an-apartment situation almost dashed the plan for the day without me knowing until it was almost too late...Luckily it all worked out, thanks to Natalie and Colleen's amazing team effort. That was a wee bit of a stressful day. 

Tues/Wed/Thurs/Fri were sort of  a blur but a bunch of really amazing things happened. We got a call from Alternative Rentals saying they wanted to make a donation, and now we have an HD Camera package rental to give away as a prize! We locked in our second band AND Colleen came up with a BRILLIANT way to involve our headliners, Voxhaul Broadcast, with the fest itself, so the concert doesn't feel completely disconnected from the rest of the day's activities. 

We're going to hold a fast-pitch competition for a music video: LIFE'S A PITCH will give directors 3 min. to pitch their video idea to Voxhaul Broadcast and their manager for the band's new single. The winner will be announced at the concert and will take home the camera package (hopefully using it to shoot the video)...

And out of NOWHERE, after months of radio silence, I got a call from Scion saying they'd approved me for sponsorship!

SO we have our first corporate sponsor!!!!!!!!!!!!! I really feel like this is just the beginning...

I wish..

...I didn't need sleep

Status Update: 7:30pm

Napped.
Then emailed all the people who have yet to send us screeners and payments...

 

That means 30 more videos to watch, assuming they all reply...which means we won't be able to select our finalists for a few more days which is a bit stressful because every day really counts at this point--we need time for our judging panel to watch everything.

Since we haven't been able to confirm the judging/panelists b/c of the holiday, we won't be able to get out our press release Monday either...unless we list a bunch of elements as TBA.

Apartment = freezing.
Dinner = Honey Nut Cheerios, soup and a baked sweet potato. Yes.


No word on our volunteers (supposed to have been taken care of since last Monday) or our poster (supposed to have been finalized on Thursday). There is less and less room for this sort of error.

But what can I do? Just keep telling myself everything's gonna work out...

Overwhelm-o-meter is holding steady at 8.5

23 Days and counting...

Recovering from NYE slowly but surely...

Just finished watching the last un-watched videos in our registered list. Now I need to:

-Watch the rest I haven't screened yet (but have been screened by others
-color-code which ones are hard copy
-contact the submitters who are missing payments and screening links
-review/refine my picks
-screen the "PRO" videos and send list to MVPA of their associated companies to see if they're eligible for the MVPA category

and most importantly, place the order for our trophies with these guys:

I'm leaning towards a quick nap. Not sure if it's a great idea or a slightly dangerous one...

                             

24 Days and counting...

It's the last day of 2010 and I have 24 days left before the festival.

Things to do:

-lock in speakers
-lock in panelists
-lock in judges
-finalize trophies
-finalize prizes
-sell ads
-finalize design of poster/program/flier/tshirt
-order poster/program/flier/tshirt
-order color-coded wristbands (tickets)
-publicity
-update website/twitter/fb
-compile email list
-email email list w/newsletter
-finish screening vids
-select finalists
-announce finalists (press release/email all contestants)
-format so the finalists can be screened for judges
-screen finalists for judges/compile decisions
-work out deferred and late entries/payments
-follow up missing entry payments
-lock in bands for concert
-buy insurance for venue
-hire security for venue
-hire volunteers/interns
-buy food for greenroom
-reach out to food trucks
-compile screening formats for theater
-create projection images for rooftop
-hire DJ

29 things to do in 24 days. And work starts again on Monday. Overwhelm-o-meter = 8/9

o yeah and happy new year

25 Days and counting

...trying to pick up the pieces from yesterday. Decided I should spend the week-day/daylight hours pounding the pavement downtown to drum up more ad sales, since starting Monday I'll be back at work...

...then I'll watch the rest of the submissions and reply to emails and things in the evenings. Should totally work out fine. Not gonna be a problem. Definitely do-able. Right?...