MEDIAWORKS: WEEK 1 REFLECTION
Students pitched their ideas to final Build Your Brand client partners at the end of week 1. This reflection is written by youth producer, Madison.
The first week of MediaWorks at Wide Angle was an exciting one as we were introduced to the world of working with clients. After a quick orientation, we were assigned to different cohorts based on a form of media we’d work with for the next five weeks: graphic design, photography, and video. Once we got to know each other with a really fun team icebreaker, we were pretty excited to start.
In video team, we dove right into the list of clients who had written proposals and went through each one individually, marking the pros and cons, then we shared out. We had the most requests to go through, but we were still a bit ahead of the other groups in the end. Together, the final three clients were narrowed down, but there could only be one. To help with the decision we did some audience analysis, which amounted to us following our clients on instagram to get to know them and their audience. We went through their websites and every social media platform they listed to see who was following them, who they were following, how many people were actually liking their posts, and how often their posts were being shared. The team shared out, again, but this time it was pretty clear which organization had resonated with all of us. Black Girls Cook is an organization that teaches farm-to-table cooking for African-American girls in Baltimore as a means of promoting health and self-esteem. They had a good following, but they were looking to expand, and we could all see us filming some food, so it was the perfect match. Some of the team members even pointed out how similar the Black Girls Cook mission was to Wide Angle’s. It’s no secret that both strive to teach youth in the city life skills that will help them express themselves in the long run.
As excited as we were to start with our new client, we first had to reject all the other proposals. For me, it was a little hard since I was advocating for an organization that did community activism. Still, we had a good time trying to make our rejections sound less mean and I think it helped us be able to feel better about having to reject proposals from people who were also doing great things in the community. The person who advocated for Black Girls Cook did get to write an acceptance email to Ms. Nichole, the founder of that organization.
Finally, Ms. Nichole was invited to come and hear our pitch about what we could do for her. We started by writing our own pitches from a basic outline and presenting them to the team. We critiqued each one, then took the good parts to create one pitch. From there it was a lot of practicing, editing, and revising to make sure the transitions were smooth and the content was clear. We had a nice slideshow, too. On Friday, we all dressed up and presented our pitch in front of the clients. We were all pretty nervous, but when we were done, we finally got to meet Ms. Nichole and her feedback was really helpful. Through talking with her we were able to get more insight into what type of video would best capture her personality and draw in new recruits to her organization. The most exciting part of the weeks to come will undoubtedly be when we finally get to start filming our vision and screen it with her. I know she will be very impressed by our hard work and creativity and we can’t wait to get started!