Author Topic: Help with organizing talent info for film festival  (Read 13899 times)

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dee4156

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Help with organizing talent info for film festival
« on: Nov 12, 2018, 07:12 am »
Hey hive :)  I am currently helping out with a small, international film festival (60+ films) and I'm the main contact for all talent involved with the films. I need a clever and easy way to track who's attending, who's sending their "people", who those people are and their titles, what day they arrive in town (for airport trans), if they need accommodation and for how many people, what their film is and category, what workshops they're hosting/attending etc. Unlike other "attendee registration" boring forms sent out associated with event software, I basically would like to take the info they send me in a personal email and transfer it to their "file" (or spot?) that I've created if that's possible. Or maybe there's another way? A database is the first way I came up with to do this but I'd rather avoid spending days learning software. Also I have no budget. Ideally I'd create a document that was easy to access all info for me and my team of festival organizers. Over our first couple of years, a google doc spreadsheet was created by someone (festival organizer above me.. not an SM lol) which I had access to, however I found it daunting to access the info I needed and it was difficult to keep up to date. There's got to be a way to quickly look up someone's name and see all their deets.. Any thoughts??!! Thanks! :D
"Life is tough, but it's tougher if you're stupid" ~John Wayne

Maribeth

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Re: Help with organizing talent info for film festival
« Reply #1 on: Nov 12, 2018, 10:44 am »
Have you thought about a Google Form? It would probably take a little trial and error, but you would essentially create a survey that people fill out, and you can have the responses auto-populate on a spreadsheet. It's not exactly what you described (having the info arrive in an email and go right to a collection point) but is fairly customizable and the document created would be easy to access for all involved.

dee4156

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Re: Help with organizing talent info for film festival
« Reply #2 on: Nov 13, 2018, 06:35 am »
Great idea! However these are actor and producers we're talking about lol. The last few years they were asked for info and only a few actually submitted it. It was then my job to follow up and get it out of them which I did but it all came in last minute and scattered. Maybe this would work though! Big learning curve for me though since I know how to navigate around spreadsheets but you lost me on the rest of the instructions...
"Life is tough, but it's tougher if you're stupid" ~John Wayne

abhibeckert

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Re: Help with organizing talent info for film festival
« Reply #3 on: Nov 14, 2018, 10:37 pm »
As a computer programmer who works with databases for this kind of stuff at my day job all day...

For stage management I prefer to keep it simple and go with a spreadsheet. I actually prefer even simpler, and use the "table" functionality in my word processor, because those tend to print better. And the printed contact sheet in my folder is the only one I care about.

Make sure there's plenty of blank space next to each entry so you can write stuff down. And if you're sharing the contact list with other people, make sure to include a date when the document was last updated.

Inevitably there will be corrections or additions you'll need to make to your contact sheet, and when you're flat out busy it's easier to make those corrections with a pencil on the printed copy. Once you have a spare 20 minutes, then you can type it up and re-print a fresh contact sheet.

Nothing beats the flexibility of paper. You tried to call and it went to voicemail with someone who sounds 30 years too young? With paper you can underline and add "wrong number?" in the margin. With a spreadsheet or database unexpected things like this can be a headache.

Also make sure you can open (and edit) the document on your phone.