2020-07-22 University of St AndrewsStudents’ Association — Ents Committee Meeting

Those present Ryan Delaney, Lucy Brook, Kian Cross, Andrew Barron, Sam Lane, Nikita Shvedov, Alan Chodyniecki

Absent Will Jamieson

Date 22nd July 2020 6:07pm–7:02pm

Ryan sent an email to Tom, Ian, Chris, Phil and Julian asking for information needed by Ents:

How many people will be allowed in the tech box and will social distancing/masks need to be enforced?
Can we have meetings in the Union, or will they need to be online?
Generally, what access will we have to Union space?
For the time being we should assume access will be limited and therefore much of what we do will need to be digital.
A podcast or show on STAR was mentioned.
The video cables attached to the projectors vibrate, which may cause them to cut out.
It was mentioned this may be because some of the screws used to tighten their 'position' are missing.
We might have a functional lighting model we can put in Blender/Unity. It is a bit broken at the moment but is in the process of being fixed.
Lucy mentioned the University may have access to 601 from 9 until 6 on weekdays for lectures.

There is not too much information about what will be happening in Freshers Week yet.
As more information is received about Freshers Week, it will be shared.
Current ideas for outdoor events are open air cinemas, small gigs etc. These may then also be live streamed (with a small cost to view).
Tom (DoES) has done a survey indicating people would pay approximately £5 to view a live stream, however this may vary if the stream was, say, of a comedian they were familiar with.
When live streaming is confirmed, Andrew & Sam can sort a nice camera.
This will probably begin as a hire, however if Tom wants to continue with live streams and people are paying to watch them, we may purchase one.
Ryan said Tom said, in a normal year, Ents would be justified in buying a camera — so it might get bought either way.
If we want multiple camera angles, we may need to purchase additional equipment.
We will need to purchase additional equipment to make our existing equipment safe outdoors.

Freshers Fayre will be virtual.
We need to make a sub-committee introduction video by 30th July (which is longer than 2 minutes).
Because people don't usually like being in these videos, we will use the footage we have from freshers and refreshers.

This will be two weeks of virtual content from the 24th August and is for students in quarantine.
Tom wants sub-committees to at least host a Q&A. We would also like to fill some of the other slots, so we need to find some content we can produce, which will last an hour.
Lesson on how to rig your own studio/instruments.
Let people have a few seconds to control the Union lights from online. This can then be livestreamed. It could be done in Vision if we do not have access to 601.
Something similar to the above could be done for projections.
For sound we could have a multitrack editor on website. We have multitrack recordings from previous events. People can then mess around with these to get an idea about mixing.
Introduction to DJing.
We probably will not have physical access to the Union for this.
Once Ryan has chatted with Tom, he will setup smaller groups for some people to work on the light/sound ideas.

Sam would like to restructure the flow of training content production.
Due to lack of venue access, Sam suggests we can produce blog posts and videos for website/social media. The general flow is:
1. Someone comes up with an idea/concept for training.
2. Someone produces that training (e.g. someone who understands projections well, would produce the projections training resources).
3. Then it goes to Sam (or someone else who is capable of assessing it).
4. Then it goes to marketing to be published.
The blog posts can be apart of a Wiki.
Lets push getting things out because it would be good to get Ents public and out of just St Andrews.
We can make the general inventory public (i.e. the categories of things we have) but not the full inventory (i.e. how many and where they are).
We could potentially create a second email list for people outside of St Andrews to sign up to.
We can have public posts, which link to private posts containing venue specific information.

Alan — Organise 'Meet the Committee' social media posts.
Everyone — Send Alan a photograph of themselves for the 'Meet the Committee' posts.
Ryan — Write a description of what Ents is and record a 30 second video (including his face).
Ryan — Setup a chat with all those who are interested in creating the Freshers Fayre video, currently Alan, Sam and Andrew.
Ryan — Create a marketing channel on Teams.
Ryan — Get the wiki up in the next few weeks.
Ryan — Ask Tom if Ents can get their own droplet, so Ryan doesn't have to host.