My schedule this week was a little different because Nicole had asked us to come for four days instead of the normal three. Monday and Friday we were there for the whole day, whereas on Tuesday and Thursday we were only there till noon. The reason for the change was because one of the summer camps had an “outreach”, where they basically go on field trips all week, which requires some of the staff to go on the outreach as well. Basically we had to fill in for all the missing staff this week. Overall, most of the days were like any other, but Tuesday was significantly rough just because we had huge groups to tour, but it was nothing we couldn’t handle.

Last week I mentioned that we started working on painting planets, and I was expecting to continue working on that project, but Nicole wanted us to stop so that we could work on a couple of props for next week’s Harry Potter camp. The teacher in charge of the camp had been out of town for nearly a whole month, so we had to help her out. The camp is supposed to start with a “sorting ceremony”, where the kids will be placed into one of the four Hogwarts houses, thus we needed to create the famous Sorting Hat.

First we cut the base out of cardboard, molded the hat’s skeleton with chicken wire, and later glued the wire to the base:

Then we made paper mache and covered the entirety of the wire and base:

Once the newspaper was dry, we spray-painted the whole hat brown and added finer details with acrylic paint. We also glued foam inside the hat so the wires couldn’t prick someone’s head.

This was easily one of the funnest projects to work on since I have enjoyed Harry Potter since I was a kid. Besides the hat, we also made a simple “brick wall” out of construction paper to recreate the train station entrance and cut out banners for all the Hogwarts houses.

This week at MOAS was not the typical week; instead of our usual three day schedule, we work every day except Wednesday. On Monday and Friday we had normal full day, while Tuesday and Thursday were half days where we mostly came in to deal with the morning tours. The education department staff was stretched rather thin doing a variety of outreach programs and camps, thus this week’s tours mostly fell upon us. We had numerous groups a day, some that were fairly large but, we were still able to organize their schedules pretty well.

Registration for camps on Monday went without a hitch, many of the campers were returnees and those that were new brought in all the required paperwork. Each day that we came in and we did our routinary morning check-ins on the Children’s Musuem to ensure that everything was functioning for the tours and the camps.

The more interesting part of our week was spent doing projects and crafts for this upcoming week’s camp for 7-9 year olds based around Harry Potter. We started out by creating a Sorting Hat out of paper mache, chicken wire and cardboard. For Thanya and I, this was the first time, in a long time, that we had to work with paper mache so there was a bit of re-learning. Additionally, of all the projects this was the more time consuming due to the process and nature of paper mache. We wanted to ensure our work resulted in a sturdy outcome since the hat would be handled by a good deal of kids and the department wanted to use it in future camps.

Apart from the hat we created a “Brick Wall” that would stand in for Platform 9 3/4 and the house banners. While the banners where pre-designed they did require a couple of hours of cuting, adhering and arranging to get the final result. The final steps of set-up will be done Monday morning so I’m really excited to see the final result.

Another interesting lesson I have learned by interning at the museum has been the value of the limited amount of materials that are available. For instance, as I mentioned in my previous post, I have been working on the labels for one of the exhibits. However, when I was printing, I forgot to adjust the printer settings to the thickness of the paper I was using, so the first page of labels was smudged. Consequently, when I went to get another sheet of paper, I noticed I had used the last one. Due to the economic crisis in Venezuela, that paper has become very expensive and difficult to find, so I apologized profusely with my supervisor and she told me to print it on the other side of the sheet since the labels were going to be put up against the wall anyhow. She also reminded me to cut and keep the half of the sheet that was blank since there were only 4 labels(and they only took half of the sheet). She was very nice about my mistake, and I understand the museum is on a tight budget and that is why she always tries to recycle and reuse as much as she can.

I don’t think it matters whether one is working for a company with a tight or unlimited budget. It is always important to avoid wasting the materials that are available since this could benefit the company by avoiding unnecessary costs and it is a more environmentally- friendly approach.

On the other hand, on Friday I finished the week by organizing all the files I have worked on since I started, which led me to remember my Digital Video class from last semester. In the past, I have struggled when working with video since my audio files and my footage are always scattered in multiple flash drives and folders; so, last semester, as I worked on three different video projects, I learned to organize my files correctly, which of course,  saved me a lot of time. Thus, my goal on Friday was to properly name all the files and classify them by date and project, so that my supervisor can easily access them in the future.

These past 3 days at the museum I have worked on a few different projects, such as creating labels for an upcoming exhibit, trying to finish the newsletter, taking and editing more photos of the current exhibits, and finishing the image to promote the tours at the museum. Also, one of the images I created for the Instagram story was posted earlier this week! The museum also shared my photos from the press conference with a local newspaper and they used it in the article about the burglary. Check them out below!
On the other hand, attempting to finish the newsletter has been time-consuming but fun. After the layout, the images, the fonts, and the buttons were beautifully displaying in the emails I sent in Gmail, I noticed the same did not happen in Outlook. So, I have been redoing a couple sections in which I used div tags—I thought I could get away with using a couple but now I understand why tables are the best for emails—I have also been checking my links, and the image blocking options in Outlook to ensure the images are displayed properly. Additionally, I have been consulting with my supervisor to make sure I am including all the external links. Lastly, I have typed detailed instructions about how to upload images to the free hosting service, so my supervisor can easily do it after I leave, and I am planning on also typing instructions on how to change the links for the buttons.
By this point, I am very familiar with the graphic elements and the visual identity of the museum, which has been helpful when creating the images to promote the tours and with the newsletter. I think I will mostly be finishing the newsletter, taking photos of the art workshops for children, working on content for social media and organizing all my files before finishing on July 31st.

Hi friends!

So this past week I met with Gerri Bauer in the Office of University Marketing. She is the Social Media and Interactive Marketing Manager and is in charge of the main social media accounts for Stetson.

One of the main things we talked about was the importance of creating a social media calendar. Posting frequently allows your audience to have more opportunities to engage and interact with your business/company/university/etc. The idea of the social media calendar is that you would know what your posting, when your posting it, and what you need to do if you still need to gather things to post.

Gerri and I talked mainly about Instagram and Snapchat, in terms of social media. We went in and analyzed the Instagrams of other Stetson departments as well as other schools. Our findings showed that instead of just posting pictures, these accounts will post a photo with an added graphic to share more information about upcoming events. So while taking good photos is important, more and more accounts are incorporating simple graphics to enhance their message. Considering that some people just enjoy scrolling through their feed, they don’t always take the time to read an entire caption – thus the integration of graphic use.

Since it’s summertime she didn’t have much for me to work on, so I began to create and outline a social media calendar for CEO. It was a lot harder than I thought,  because I am still learning about the department as I’m working here.

She did send me on a mission though to Snapchat the “Hatter Chatter” livestream and also post about it on Instagram. I was so nervous and it didn’t go as well as I thought it should have.

It’s all a learning process though, and Gerri even said she would love for me to work with her during the school year! I’d have to volunteer my time though because I already have a work study position with CEO. But since I’ll be learning I really don’t mind volunteering my time.

That’s it for this post!

See you next time!

Taylor Hamilton

At this point, I’ve gone through and posted all of the remaining senior thesis exhibitions from previous years that were given to me. Some of the portfolios were too bare-bones to compile into concise, informative posts.

For example, usable documentation of the exhibition is missing from Eliza Colmes’s 2015 portfolio. The featured image of the post was found on her facebook profile. There is video documentation of the exhibition included in her portfolio, but it is far too large a file to upload. The only thing missing from her post is a gallery of works from her exhibition.

The title of Gisela Fernandez’s 2014 exhibition, as well as the titles of her works and her artist’s statement, are missing from her senior portfolio. This post will remain drafted until more content can be found and included.

This week we didn’t have that many tours to give, but it was a crazy week nonetheless. A YMCA group visited the museum every other day, and they turned out to be a handful. Not only were the kids rambunctious, but their arrival also brought on some other chaotic events. I was elsewhere when it happened, but apparently their bus driver was supposedly “driving irresponsibly”, which had upset a Summer camp parent, so she had called the police. I didn’t learn the outcome, but it put everyone in the museum in a foul mood. From this situation, we simply carried on with our work in order to try to diffuse the tension. Another problem we’ve been running into are docents. They’ve had irregular time to work, despite what the schedule says, which isn’t that bad since we usually cover their tours whenever they don’t show up. This week they did show up, and they were pretty particular over which age group they wanted tour and how they would go about it. It took patience, but we made sure to accommodate the tours to their interests to the best of our ability.

Regardless, as I mentioned last week, we started working on painting these sphere planets, and we finished the more crafty of the planets, Saturn. Apart from painting the sphere, we had to create a way to imitate the planet’s rings, so we poked shish kabob sticks through the sphere, painted a ring out of cardboard, and superglued the ring onto the sticks.

We also touched up another fossil, which is meant to have a “cockroach-like” texture.

On Friday, I was on my own since Ariana had to leave town to drop off her brother to a college orientation. I kept myself busy with my drawing tablet and began sketching illustrations of the Ground Sloth coloring book. It isn’t nearly finished, but here’s a work-in-progress screenshot:

Finally, for one of the summer camps, we had service dogs and their trainers come in and give a lecture about their work. I was mainly to make sure the kids didn’t lose their minds and pet the dogs without permission, but nevertheless it was a neat treat to see the dogs, and in the end the trainers let us pet the cute dogs.

This week was a sort of odd week for me because it was in between Embark and the start of my rehearsals for the show I am stage managing. Most of the week I was on paints during the day painting smaller things that needed to be completed for the second show of the season, The History of America (abridged). My favorite thing that I painted this week was a giant bullet. I actually cut it out and painted it, I cut it out with a jig saw, sanded it, and then did a 4 color blend for the paint. In the evenings I was working front of house for Million Dollar Quartet, for this I was working in the box office doing will call tickets. After the show had started, I helped organize all the tickets so that we could cross check our records and make sure everyone was checked in on the computer. Once this was done, I filed the next night’s will call tickets by last name into the file folders.  Towards the end of the week HOA had moved out of the rehearsal space and it was my turn prepare the space for The Whipping Man rehearsals. First I had to clean the space and rearrange the furniture in the room to make room to tape out the floor. Taping out the floor is when you are using tape to mark on the floor where everything on the ground plan will be. For WM we have two platforms, 3 steps, and 5 pillars on the ground plan, so as ground plans go it was fairly simple. It is crucial to tape out the floor before rehearsals start because without the tape, the director cannot start giving the actors blocking because they do not know the dimensions of the space so if they were to start blocking, they would have to re-block everything once the set was taped.

Camps were resumed this week and as usual, Thanya and I were in charge of registration for the youngest group (4-6 yrs.). As people showed up we guided groups of campers and parents to their respective classrooms. There they would meet the teachers and know where the classes were being held. After the groups were all set up we did our round in the Children’s Musuem to ensure that all the exhibits and displays were functioning correctly. While we waited for our 10 am tour group we did touch ups on a fossil cast that will be used this upcoming week for the marine science camp.

Due to unforeseen issues the YMCA group we expected that day arrived at a later time and that gave us the chance to begin doing the planetarium project for Seth. We properly attached the hemisphere that made up the planets and fixed surface imperfections with plaster of paris. Most of the prepping was completed by the time the group showed up. This particular tour took longer than usual since the group was very rowdy and uncooperative. Even so, we managed to start painting some of the planets and plan for the addition of Saturn’s rings. The project of course continued on into Wednesday where we successfully made Saturn, rings and all. We again had a group show up at a later time than expected but, we managed to get everyone set up.

This upcoming week will be a packed one, since Julia and Nicole will be teaching classes and Zach will be out for a the marine science outreach camp. That led to some changes in our scedule to better assist the education department. We will additionly be concluding the project with the planets and starting a new one so, we’ll see how this all ends.

This was the second week of Embark, the structure of this week was the same except we had a showcase on saturday. This showcase was not like an ordinary showcase that you would see at a theatre camp where they would probably performing a show or they would have at least been rehearsing specific things the whole time to perform at the end. Instead, this showcase showed one activity that we did in each class for each group. Each group performed a different activity for their classes even if they had done the same activity as another group in their class. For improv the C1’s did ata-freeze and for acting the C1’s performed the Pledge of Allegiance with different “intentions” each time, the intentions they did at the showcase were using the pledge to intimidate someone, to sooth a scared bunny, and to be threatened. The C3’s played a game called Ant Farm for improv, Ant Farm is a game where you start with having a group of improvisers onstage in a line, two of them step forward and they are given a location or theme. They are then told flail and they begin to flail their bodies and when the prompter says stop they must freeze and begin a scene starting from that position. Whatever character they choose to be is the character that they will be for the duration of the game, it is key that they make a bold physical and vocal choice for their character. Now, as the scene is going along one of the improvisers in the back will clap their hands and tag one of the two people onstage out and they will create a character and begin a scene (going along with the location or theme). This continues on for the duration of the game and each improviser may only ever play the character that they started off with. For acting, the C3’s did two person scenes, these scenes were all done using the same scripts. At the beginning of the two weeks they were handed a page long script and asked to memorize it. Then during the two weeks we worked on how you could make the scenes be about anything even if you were using the same words because it is not about what you say, its about how you say it.