Sonoma International Film Fest

I saw an infographic recently that talked about creativity. It described how only 52% of American’s say they are creative. I am one of those 52%. I’m lucky enough to have a job that allows me to be creative, come up with ideas (lots of Bright Idea’s… haha) and share them. Most recently, I got to apply everything I have learned over the years into a single task. This included ‘covering’ and marketing the 15th Annual Sonoma International Film Festival. It was the perfect project.

In college at Elon, at internships and at my current job I learned about digital media convergence, journalism, advertising, marketing, videography, photography, editing, writing, social media and more. This project involved nothing less than all of those items. Thanks to The Pendulum, The Aegis, the Elon School of Communications and of course A. Bright Idea– I was prepared for the undertaking. We were tasked with advertising and marketing the event for the months leading up to it. This involved writing articles, creating and including ads, and heavy social media to encourage not only ticket sales, but ‘buzz’ about the event. We compared social media strategies with others who would be covering the event, comparing places we’d be, #hashtags to use and more.  It also involved creating a :15 short video about our company SomethingAboutSonoma.com to play as a trailer before films. Watch our spot here.

Then came the actual event… and it was all a blur from there. Five days, many many hours, thousands of photographs, tons of video, lots of wine, incredible amounts of food, a handful of parties, great music, more dancing, in depth interviews and of course FILMS.

I got to listen to and interview the likes of Christopher Lloyd (you know, the doc from back to the future), John Waters (famous director– who’s actually from Baltimore!), James Suckling (major wine-guy), Robert Kamen (Winery owner and famous writer), Ben Flajnik (the Bachelor) and so many more. I had an absolute blast writing articles, shooting video, tweeting, Facebooking, taking picturs, conducting interviews, shmoozing, and all the likes of digital media convergence bundled into one nice little five-day package. Getting to meet all of the people who made the festival possible was awesome– and they were more than accomodating. The likes of Executive Director Kevin McNeely and his team including Pat, Brooke, Celeste, Donna, Peter, Kim, Ginny, Leslie and MC were incredible. I also made so many new friends of people I see all the time and recognize, but didn’t actually know.

You can of course see all my coverage on our website blog for  SomethingAboutSonoma.com, and also the videos on the Sonoma International Film Festival site here. Our recap video (which funny enough, includes my photo with John Waters as the thumbnail– I honestly didn’t choose it or mean for it to happen) is below!