Meeting Minutes

Week 1




The name of the concert: The Spring Concert 2016


*Promotional video – Tei, Josh and Caleb – Produce with whole class*

Designated jobs: Gina and Sam – Tickets and poster designer
                            Alfie – Marketing man (Ed) and finance (Hugo) Glowsticks!!
                           Caleb and Pete – In charge of timings and the acts that perform (set list)
                           Aimee and Anna – In charge of refreshments
                           Tei, Mike and Josh – Staging and techs (monitor at the FRONT)
                              (Talk to Mr Wattes about lighting and stage design)
*Front-of-House to be discussed*


21/1/16



        Pete reflects on the last meeting:
o   It was too unfocused and there were too many conversations going on at once
o   This meant that important things were being discussed but not heard
·    Caleb brings up the topic of acts and set list:
o   He enquires about an age range to the performers, but we decide as a group that this doesn’t matter so long as they are confident in their performing
o   We discuss how we are going to perform our songs in our groups, and decide to group them as sets instead of individual songs split up
o   On the topic of the order of the acts, we talk about the order of acts:
§  We decide that acoustic acts or acts with less equipment should alternate with bands or people with more equipment to perform
§  We also decide that we are going to go with concert tradition and have the Jazz band open
§  Anna suggests Vox (the school choir) as a closing act to break things up
·         We then go on to discuss stage setup:
o   The idea is put forward that we have the lowered portion of the stage set up with two mics for acoustic acts
o   This means less equipment will have to be moved around on stage in between acts
·         Ed brings up the subject of the run time of the concert:
o   He poses the idea of it being not so long so people get bored, but enough time to fit a variety of acts in
o   The chairs we have in the hall are also uncomfortable if they’re sat on for too long
o   We also decide to alternate acoustic acts and ensembles to break up the styles of music
·         Pete asks Alfie if he has had any more thoughts on ticket  pricing:
o   Alfie has decided on a price of £3.00 for tickets
o   Hugo and Alfie both pose the idea of more expensive VIP seats at the front which would cost extra
§  This would bring in more profit but we decide against the idea because it’s a bit too much complication and we don’t know if people will actually bother paying for the extra tickets
·         Ticket pricing brings up the idea of profit and budget for refreshments
o   We discuss what to buy and how much we should spend.
o   We decide against the previous idea of a bake sale due to health and safety regulations and allergies so we want to go with shop bought stuff just for ease and less complications
·         Georgina came up with an idea to donate some of the profit to a school charity
·         Caleb brings up the topic of poster design and advertising
o   We decide to start advertising around a month before the concert to keep interest up, but not too soon that people see it and then forget about it
·         Before next meeting, we want to discuss our jobs in our groups and come to next week’s meeting with feedback


29/2/16



·         Pete decides that we should work on the stage design this meeting

o   We want to follow a design similar to the recent Christmas concert with 4 to 5 mics-2 on a lower stage and 3 on the main stage

·         We stray away from stage design when Mr Lambert brings up marketing

o   We ask Gina if we can get a design on the poster and tickets on to photoshop so we can alter the colours and get them printed and stuck up around school as soon as possible

o   Mr Lambert tells us that we don’t have to worry about printing costs

o   We decide that we want the printing done by the last Friday before half term so we can get everything cut out and ready to be stuck up after the holiday so we will have advertising out 3 weeks before the concert.

·         We move on to talking about the acts in the concert and if we can fill up the previously decided run time of two hours.

o   Caleb lists the acts he has so far on the board and adds up the times to see if we have enough to fill the time. We do, but notice that a lot of the acts are a similar style

o   We decide we want a wide variety of acts to keep the audience engaged because we had heard comments in the past that there is a lot of rock and pop music and not a lot of variety
o   We go on to talk about which acts can give us this variety. Mr Lambert recommends a couple of folk style performers in the lower years that we may be able to have.
o   The idea of year 13 class performance is brought up as it would be their last chance to perform before they leave the school. If it could be organised, this could give us some variety in the acts that we need
·         The point of assigning jobs which are needed on the night is bought up
o   It’s decided that myself (Mike), Tei and Josh should do the job of stage hands as we opted to be in charge of the stage in our first meeting.
o   Caleb says he will ask Mrs Pearson about how school events are normally run especially things like front of house staff to man the doors and refreshment stands
·         We finally move on to stage design
o   We sketch a few ideas on the board and play around with various configurations of the front stage
o   The idea of a runway is suggested, so that the audience seating is diagonal to the runway but we decide this isn’t a great idea because it takes up seating space and we might not get a lot of use out of it
o   After a lot of ideas are drawn, we decide to come back to the stage design next meeting with a few more ideas
o   We also decide to get some time in the hall to physically move things around so we can see what the stage will look like
o   This leads us to talk about set up and sound check time
o   We want to find out if we can get in to the hall a day or two before the concert date so we have more time to sound check and we can set up the stage so we won’t have to cram everything in to one day which could be stressful and a bit tight on time
o   Mr Lambert says, from experience, it normally takes about an hour to set up the stage if everyone helps out. This gives us a lot think about with the timings of the day of the concert. 
·         Next meeting we would like to finalize the stage design so we can get in to the hall and move things around to visualise what we have to work with.


4/2/16


·         Pete starts off by talking about what we discussed last meeting
·         He then talks about cutting down the acts in the show
o   We decide to cut out one of the bands from the lower years, but did toy with the idea of cutting out the band which is made of 3 members of the class and another person from a lower year because they were in the concert already and the more different performers we will have the more tickets we will sell
o   Caleb has also combined three separate solo acoustic acts to cut out on repeated styles of music, and we can fill the time with different styles of music and performers
·         We then start to talk about interval time
o   We’ve heard feedback from previous shows that intervals can be a bit long and sometimes boring. It can also be hard for elderly people or people who find it hard to walk to have to walk out the hall in between acts
o   Because of this, we decide to cut the interval down to ten minutes and leave the hall open so people don’t necessarily have to get out of their seat and others can get refreshments and come back and sit down
·         We continue on from last meeting on the topic of stage design
o   Someone brings up the point that we don’t actually have to change the layout of the stage because a change in layout will not make much impact on the audience so we decided to focus more on the decoration of the stage than the layout.
o   We also have access to the projector on stage so we can have backdrops to the performers.
o   I decided to go to talk the art teacher to see if I can get some original artwork or photography from students in the college to display before the concert and during the interval
o   Caleb came up with the idea to display the names of the performers on stage behind them but we decided this would be too hard to sort out with all the logistics of it so instead we decided to display the poster design for the concert
·         We then go back to talking about the running order of the concert
o   We decide that it would be nice for the year 13s to finish as it’s their last concert at the school
·         We finish the meeting by talking about advertising
o   Georgina thinks that she can get a digital design on the computer by the end of the half term
o   We talk about the lack of advertising from the most recent show which was a pantomime put on by the year 13 performance studies students where the posters were put up about five days in advanced so we want to be more organised.
o   We planned to get posters printed on the day before we break up for half term so they are ready to be put up the day we get back to give plenty of time for people to know about it



11/2/16


·         The meeting starts off with Caleb coming in with tech sheets for each act to fill out for the technician with what equipment they need. This means we will have to get the acts together at some point to fill out the sheet
·         Caleb has finalized the line-up and says he will write it up in time for the next meeting
·         Alfie has printed off some copies of a marketing plan he has drawn up and handed out to all of us
o   This is a week by week plan starting from after half term leading up to the concert with what we need to do to advertise the concert
o   Gina says she can probably get a final ticket design finished and ready to print off today so that we can get the printing done over half term
o   We discuss the final ticket design and make final decisions such as the information and background colour
·         Mike, Tei and Josh will go and talk to the technician after the meeting to enquire about getting in to the hall to do a location recee to move the stage around and see what works with our design and what our audience capacity will be.
·         After the meeting finishes, we go and talk to the technician
o   We found we could get in to the hall most days after school; we just needed to talk to the caretakers to get in.
o   He told us he wanted to see a stage design about a week before the concert so he could help us build the stage. This meant we had to decide on the final design in the next couple of meetings and draw out a plan for him
o   We also ask him to help us draw up and risk assessment for each show based off of what our stage design is going to be.


                        25/2/16


·         Mrs Pearson (head of faculty) comes in at the start of the meeting to talk to us about the posters which we put up earlier this week
o   She suggests altering the design to make it look a bit more eye catching.
o   We didn’t add that it was year 12 organising the concert on the posters that we put up, so this was also going to be on the altered design as well as a tagline which we had to come up with.
o   Mrs Pearson says that she can put us in contact with the usual Front of House volunteers for the concert to be on the door and manning the refreshments.
o   As well is this, we talk about the idea of having an Easter egg raffle in the interval which would make more money
·         Once Mrs Pearson leaves, we go on to talk about tickets and marketing
o   So far we have been sticking to the timeline which Alfie produced before half term
o   Although we have put up posters, we haven’t actually printed tickets yet, but that will be done later today.
o   After tickets go on sale, we will create social media pages for more awareness of the concert.
o   After some discussion, we decide the tagline will be “Putting a Spring in your Step”
·         Mrs Pearson comes back to give us some information on refreshments
o   We decide that we could buy our refreshments from Morrisons or Tesco. Mrs Pearson informs us that she normally spends around £70 on refreshments for shows. Which she normally still makes a profit on.
·         Finally, we finish off by saying we want to get into the hall sometime next week after school to plan out staging.


3/3/16


  We start off by taking about advertising in assemblies
o   There was one assembly this morning  but we were a bit too disorganized to contact the head of year to get in
o   There is another one tomorrow morning, and every morning next week. We have a group of volunteers (Tei, Ed and Caleb) who are going to go into assemblies.  Hopefully we can contact the heads of year to get in
o   We also discuss splitting in to small groups and going into tutor groups to press the message a bit more
We then move on to talking about stage design
o   We talked to Mr Tucker earlier this week to see what we had access to on stage and when he wanted to see the stage design plan to help us build the stage.
o   We have access to the projector, so we can add a back drop to the stage and make it more interesting to look at for the audience.
§  We discuss what we could have as a backdrop and a few ideas come up:
§  Stock photos (Spring themed)
§  Some original photography from school students
§  Possibly a different background for each acts
§  Mr Tucker also has a library of graphics and pictures so we can choose from them
o   We cleared out the under-stage, and in there we found some good decorations for the stage to make it look better
Finally we discuss marketing
o   Last week, we altered the design quite significantly, however it is currently being changed to make the text easier to read.
o   Alfie has made social media pages which are ready to publish as soon as we have the final poster design.




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