#melbwebfest

Every festival needs a strong and mighty public relations (PR) team to get the event off the ground and be the face of the festival. La Trobe strategic communication student, Alana and journalism student, Ethan tell us what it’s like being part of Melbourne WebFest’s PR team!

So you work in the PR team for Melbourne WebFest, can you tell us a little bit about what that involves?

Alana: So some of the things we do in PR is on opening night or on our launch – we had the program launch a few weeks ago and what we had to do was sort of man a gust list and make sure everyone’s attending and giving out free drink cards – so we were sort of like the face of the festival. Greeting people, which was good. We write letters to companies asking if they’re interested, so sort of just to promote the WebFest because it’s still so young. We need as much people to know about us as possible to build it.

Ethan: Mostly it’s just about being the face on special nights.

Have you found that nerve racking?

Alana: A little bit, but you know once you practice, I’m sure by the third night of the festival we’ll be pros at it – people will know who you are.

What’s the most challenging thing do you think about working on WebFest?

Alana: Probably starting off, like getting the hang of it – you kind of just get thrown into it, especially in the PR/marketing, not everyone’s done that stuff before. So that was a bit scary. The thing I was most scared about was we had to call hotels and get contact details.

What do you use the contact details for?

Alana: So we wanted to get hotels to get special rooms for our guests and stuff and we had call and get phones numbers and it’s so scary when it’s the first time you’re doing something like that and that was a bit nerve racking but you know you’ve done it now so like anything can be easy after this.

Why did you choose that course to study at La Trobe?

Ethan: I was interested in the media and I had a look at the strat comm and the media courses and just thought [journalism] had the best set out and most interesting out of the three.

Alana: Yeah I like strat comm because it was journalism, media and public relations as well and I wanted to PR, so it was exactly what I wanted to do.

How do you think your course has helped you prepare for what you’re doing on the ground at WebFest?

Ethan: Well I guess I sort of know what people would be looking for if they were going to write about the festival and I think I also have learnt a little bit about how to get in touch with places like through trying to wrangle up interviews and that kind of thing. So sort of finding the right way to go by contacting organisations and that sort of thing.

Alana: I’ve done the marketing, the PR side so how to address journalists – I have to write to journalists so learning how to write – we didn’t really do media releases but letters to corporations and things like that. And the marketing side, which we did earlier on so that helped.

How has it been working with the other interns? How have you found being part of this great team?

Alana: Yeah we haven’t really had a lot to do with the other areas – just sort of ours. Which has been good it’s only a small team. We are the smallest out of the other two – there’s only three of us, I think there’s like six or seven in the other team. So it does kind of make it hard for us and put a bit more pressure on us but we kind of know each other so we work well together.

What kind of job do you think you’d like when you finish at La Trobe?

Ethan: Preferably something in the media, where I can get experience and just to take me to start off anyway.

Alana: I don’t know exactly what kind of PR I want to do yet because there’s so many but I want to try to experience as many different things before while I can.

So, what’s the best thing about working at WebFest?

Ethan: Probably the experience I’m getting and everyone is really friendly.

Alana: Yeah definitely the practical experience and at the WebFest we got to meet series creators and some of the actors in the web series, which was fun. Like there was a few Australian celebrities there. It’s really lucky that we got to meet them.

This weekend was the web series festival in Melbourne. Discovering that this was only the third time ever it had happened in Australia, it made me realise how new web series as a format still are to a lot of people. Exciting to think that our own series is at the ‘forefront’ of this new medium.

A lot of discussions were had on the importance of diversity in casting - ethnicity and sexual orientation. I would recommend Airlock, Starting From Now and I Luv U, But. because of this. All Australian as well! 

Another great thing about the festival was that you could actually meet and talk to creators of so many great shows, instead of stalking them online. It was a very inclusive atmosphere. You could have a chat with anyone. It felt like a really welcoming community.

Speaking of, we met some of the wonderful team behind Words from Wilde and had a good time getting pretty nerdy talking about our favourite and new literary web series, such as NMTD and Call Me Katie.