In keeping with the way I seem to begin every post, this week has yet again been very intense and high-pressured. With the launch of the A/W17 campaign now fully underway, a lot of time is being put into creating up-to-date content. I get the impression that this season, the creative team are trying to be much more daring and striving to create content which is more challenging. In light of this, my role this week largely involved assisting on shoots. The prospect of being partially responsible for the creation of content which will roll across social media, the website, the three-times-weekly email newsletters and various other aspects of the campaign is very daunting. Nevertheless, I really enjoy the freedom to explore new things and take creative risks that comes with this placement. This week, I created a series of flatlays for all of the soon-to-be-released handbags which will launch this coming season and I'm so happy with the results, especially now that Mark, head of creative, has edited them in post-production. Creating effective flat lays requires a really fine attention to detail and a methodical approach in terms of experimenting with all possible compositions and angles possible. I'd really like to use my strength in product photography to my advantage in final year somehow, whether it be during the magazine project or my final major project.
This week I took on a really big responsibility to fill in for an absent team member by being in charge of the social media coverage while assisting on a shoot which involved Shelby tribble, a blogger 'taking over' the Forever Unique social channels for the day. While juggling my photoshoot assistant skills of steaming clothes, hanging samples, keeping things running smoothly and generally lending a helping hand wherever possible, I also had to keep Forever Unique's Instagram and Snapchat feeds updated regularly throughout the day with interesting and integrative content. It was really interesting to learn more about Instagram's business features on this day, and I enjoyed being able to trial functions firsthand, such as linking images and video clips from Instagram stories straight to the shoppable Forever Unique website. It was really refreshing to get out of the office for half a day for a location shoot. I was part of a very small team that day which literally consisted of myself and Eilidh, plus the photographer and Shelby, the blogger, so a lot of responsibility was very much on my shoulders. My experience on shoots at Fabulous was really valuable, but this time it was exciting to get to have more of an influence in styling Shelby's accessories myself and directing her poses occasionally. I had to be switched on at all times in order to also get good quality content to upload to the social media channels, which would have been difficult if I hadn't been enjoying myself as much as I was. 
This week I was also much more involved in the planning process behind the shoots, tasked with creating mood boards for all of the upcoming shoots all the way through to October. I did this by using the creative team's pinterest boards to find inspiring and relevant images before arranging them on inDesign. I was also tasked with the mission of reaching out to companies and organisations which could assist with our ideas. This week, I've send out what felt like several hundred emails to arcade, amusement and fairground businesses as well as the Southport and Blackpool councils to pay to use a fairground setting as a backdrop to the images for Forever Unique's christmas campaign. I've also reached out to several bars in the Manchester area and organised for myself, Eilidh and Mark to visit some to look at for more potential shoot locations. These tasks really reminded me of the event module which we completed for Stephen at the end of the final term of second year, so it didn't feel to alien for me to be emailing a high number of people at once to arrange logistics and costings.
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