I started with the Twitter account. I went on the Twitter application on my phone to create an account. I searched and searched, but found no “add account” button. Taking into consideration that I don’t remember my own Twitter account’s password, I could not log off to create another one because then I would not be able to log back onto mine. Things got a tad complicated, so I decided to move on to the Instagram and try making a Twitter account from my computer later on.
So now, it’s time for Instagram! I simply clicked on “Add Account” and since theupside was taken, created theupsideshort. Short, simple, easy to find. Since we do not have a postcard yet, I will leave the profile picture blank until we finalize that or create a logo I could use. For the name, I typed in “The Upside” and all that was left was a bio! I did not want to put any useless information and can’t really add something like “Academy-award winning short” because unlike the website, Instagram is more public and I would rather not get in trouble. I simply decided on adding the link to the website and moved on to the following.
Once again, I needed this account to feel real. If I were trying to get my short film out to the world and wanted others similar to my account to follow me, who would I follow? I started by looking up some academy-award winning shorts and followed the ones that had Instagram accounts. They all had much less "following” than "followers” and followed directors/producers or other relevant accounts. I then looked up the directors of the academy-award winning shorts and followed all of those accounts that I found. It still seemed just a bit too little, so I looked up some common animation companies/short film-producing companies. Finding these was much harder than I had expected, but at 13 the number seemed pretty similar to the other short film accounts I had looked into, so I was done.
The most popular Instagram pages have high quality images posted with fun, quirky comments. To make it as realistic as possible, I created two folders on my photo gallery and labeled them “to post” and “saved story.” I will prepare all of the images I want to post in the future ahead of time and insert them into these folders, so I can later post them daily/on different days quickly. I went through the camera pictures we took whilst filming on every single day and separated the nicest ones, also adding some that I knew would make for funny posts. I will not only post at all different dates and times, but I will add a variety to not make it boring! I will upload single pictures, a combination of pictures at once, and videos. As for the comments, I plan on involving emojis (commonly used by the target audience we desire) and hashtags to put the account on the discover page and attract followers.
The second folder I created is labeled “saved story.” I will post a new story every single day and save them all under a highlighted story for anyone to find at whatever time. This will add a nice touch to the account and make it more interactive. I labeled the highlighted story “B. T. S.” for behind the scenes. I knew I wanted to add polls, questions, gifs, stickers, and many other things to make it interactive and visually appealing, but I had no idea how. I did some searching on the App Store and found “Pic Collage.” After a lot of playing around and learning, I figured it out! I separated other pictures we had taken on filming days and started joining them together in different templates and organizations. I looked up stickers and added the ones I felt fit. I then saved the picture and went on the Instagram to finish them. I drew on the collages with different colors and tools, added the gifs and other things I wanted to add, and finished up the stories with some nice final touches. I then saved the image and added it to the folder. Re-doing this entire process for every picture was VERY time consuming. But, I absolutely love how they all turned out and is exactly what I would post if I were trying to make my account known.
By pre-preparing all of the saved stories and posts, my only work now is to remember to post daily and make up some new, fun comments for each post. I know that this account and all of this extra work was not a necessary component of the project, but I think it adds so much that the time it required was worth it.
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