Grants:Programs/Wikimedia Community Fund/Rapid Fund/2024 International Film Festival WikiPortraits Initiative (ID: 22592299)/Final Report

2024 International Film Festival WikiPortraits Initiative

Rapid Fund Final Report

Report Status: Draft

Due date: 2024-10-30T00:00:00Z

Funding program: Rapid Fund

Report type: Final

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General information

Applicant username: Jenny8lee
Organization name: N/A
Amount awarded: 5000
Amount spent: 5000 USD, 5000

Part 1: Project and impact

1. Describe the implemented activities and results achieved. Additionally, share which approaches were most effective in supporting you to achieve the results. (required)

Meryl Streep

WikiPortraits sent and supported several photographers at the Cannes Film Festival, including commons:User:Kevin Payravi, Arielaortizb, Xfranksun, and Johnsearsmedia. During the Festival, we attended red carpet premieres, film screenings, panels, press conferences, and Q&A sessions to photograph notable individuals whose Wikipedia articles would benefit from new or updated photos, as well as "rising stars" and other individuals we believe would be beneficial to photograph for future coverage on Wikimedia projects.

Davi Kopenawa Yanomami

We were able to photograph a number of internationally recognized celebrities, including Meryl Streep, George Lucas, Emma Stone, Francis Ford Coppola, Greta Gerwig, and Chris Hemsworth. This was done through a mix of attending press events, interview sessions, and award ceremonies.

One of our major focuses was photographing the Directors' Fortnight, an independent parallel section of the Cannes Film Festival that features up-and-coming directors from around the world, such as George Lucas back in 1971. Many of the films included an Q&A session with the cast and crew, providing an excellent opportunity for us to photograph directors and actors despite not having press access. As Directors' Fortnight features films from around the world, we were able to photograph many individuals from diverse and underrepresented backgrounds.

Karla Sofía Gascón

We also sent two photographers to stand outside the concluding awards ceremony press conference. While we didn't have access for that event, we were able to photograph a majority of the winners as they came out of the press conference to pose for photos and interview media. We quickly uploaded our photos of the award winners to the Wikimedia Commons, and they have seen wide usage across Wikimedia projects and beyond. Attitude, Causette, and cinematographe.it are a few of the articles published by external websites that used our photographs under their free license.

2. Documentation of your impact. Please use space below to share links that help tell your story, impact, and evaluation. (required)

Share links to:

Project page on Meta-Wiki or any other Wikimedia project
Dashboards and tools that you used to track contributions
Some photos or videos from your event. Remember to share access.

You can also share links to:

Important social media posts
Surveys and their results
Infographics and sound files
Examples of content edited on Wikimedia projects

We primarily used the GLAMorgan tool to track usage of our photos across Wikimedia projects:

We have uploaded 186 photos so far, with more to come as we continue to sort through our photos, edit, and upload.
Used on over 50 language versions on Wikipedia
Used on articles that gather an estimated total of 3,000,000+ views a month
Our most-viewed photo in July 2024 was this photo of Anya Taylor-Joy on the English Wikipedia article Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, which received 647,784 views (coinciding with the release of the film).

Additionally, share the materials and resources that you used in the implementation of your project. (required)

For example:

Training materials and guides
Presentations and slides
Work processes and plans
Any other materials your team has created or adapted and can be shared with others

3. To what extent do you agree with the following statements regarding the work carried out with this Rapid Fund? You can choose “not applicable” if your work does not relate to these goals. Required. Select one option per question. (required)

Our efforts during the Fund period have helped to...
A. Bring in participants from underrepresented groups	Strongly agree
B. Create a more inclusive and connected culture in our community	Agree
C. Develop content about underrepresented topics/groups	Strongly agree
D. Develop content from underrepresented perspectives	Agree
E. Encourage the retention of editors	Strongly agree
F. Encourage the retention of organizers	Strongly agree
G. Increased participants' feelings of belonging and connection to the movement	Strongly agree
F. Other (optional)	A large part of our focus was photographing individuals from underrepresented backgrounds, particularly by photographing the Directors' Fortnite section of the Festival. In terms of retention, several of our photographers are relatively new contributors to the Wikimedia movement; this grant has helped spur their contributions and become regular contributors.

Part 2: Learning

4. In your application, you outlined some learning questions. What did you learn from these learning questions when you implemented your project? How do you hope to use this learnings in the future? You can recall these learning questions below. (required)

You can recall these learning questions below: This project, in conjunction with our work at Sundance 2024, SXSW 2024 and the International Journalism Festival, helps to build a repeatable and scalable template for experienced Wikimedia Commons photographers to get press credentials at well-established cultural events. Our intent with this, compared to our previous projects, is to elevate the Wikipedia presence at global-level events such as Cannes and Venice Film Festivals, given that the Germans have covered the Berlin Film Festival since 2017. We would learn if other international cultural events would be receptive to Wikimedia photographers with an assignment letter for the foundation and the German precedence. Secondly, we are learning different funding models to get more professional-quality Creative Commons-licensed portraits onto Wikicommons. Our rapid grant for SXSW covered only one-third the total cost of the 10-day project, with the rest coming from private donors and sponsors. With this rapid grant, we want to see if there is a blend between self-financed and wholly paid for WikiPortraits festival coverage — partially subsidized/reimbursed trips in exchange for uploading photos to Wikimedia Commons. We did a micro-version of this at SXSW 2024, where a photographer who was already on assignment at SXSW was willing to add her celebrity photos to WikiCommons in exchange for two nights of subsidized housing. We believe there are a number of professional level photographers, both already active on Wikimedia Commons and ones that could be recruited, who would donate their time and pay for part of their own travel if they can get credentialed access from big film festivals. They do this in part so they can build their portfolios.

Historically, volunteer Wikimedian photographers are not plugged into the media infrastructure that is built around credentials. Given the support of letters from senior leadership at the Wikimedia Foundation, we hope that the press office decision makers of these global caliber events will become more receptive to having Wikimedia photographers participate, as it only serves to amplify the cultural impact of their events across the many language wikis.

Regarding "We would learn if other international cultural events would be receptive to Wikimedia photographers with an assignment letter for the foundation and the German precedence."

We missed the window for photography credentialing for the Cannes Film Festival, as the deadline is several weeks earlier than normal reporting. We did, however, obtain industry passes to attend the films and panels, using our WikiPortraits project, which is an achievement in itself. Our discussions with the press office and our track record for this year leads us to believe that will be credentialed next year. This is helpful for the press conferences, but actually less helpful for other events, like the honorary Palme d'Or, where photographers are only given a short window of access at the beginning.

Regarding "Secondly, we are learning different funding models to get more professional-quality Creative Commons-licensed portraits onto Wikicommons. Our rapid grant for SXSW covered only one-third the total cost of the 10-day project, with the rest coming from private donors and sponsors. With this rapid grant, we want to see if there is a blend between self-financed and wholly paid for WikiPortraits festival coverage — partially subsidized/reimbursed trips in exchange for uploading photos to Wikimedia Commons.":

For Cannes, we covered (most of) the lodging costs for our photographers. Photographers were responsible for covering their own transport (which the photographers were happy to do given the opportunity to attend Cannes Film Festival). Cannes is not a cheap city to stay in during the Film Festival, so the entirety of our budget went to covering the lodging for our photographers. We were able to make it economical by co-lodging with others attending the Film Festival, lowering overall cost. We had additional grant money to help cover the cost of the credentials. Given how hard our photographers worked, we feel that is a fair and appealing exchange: housing + credential.

5. Did anything unexpected or surprising happen when implementing your activities? This can include both positive and negative situations. What did you learn from those experiences? (required)

As we starting photographing and covering the Cannes Film Festival, we were surprised at the lack of coverage on the English Wikipedia of the Cannes Film Festival at-large. We took the time to improve some of the coverage and plan to continue to update articles related to the Festival.
Since we missed the deadline for photographer credentialling, we were very unsure about what opportunities we'd have to photograph notable people, especially the most famous celebrities. We found success by simply standing outside of the main press conference room, where many other media photographers and fans would gather. As cast and crew entered and exited the press conference rooms, they would often interact, pose, and take interview.
We brought 4 photographers, which actually ended up not being enough to fully cover everything we wanted to cover given how exhausting the pace is. With several concurrent tracks at Cannes, there is a lot of opportunity to take photos and we were not able to cover it all. We also need more people to help upload the sheer volume of photos if we want our photos to be timely additions to Wikipedia pages.

6. What is your plan to share your project learnings and results with other community members? If you have already done it, describe how. (required)

In addition to our documentation on-wiki, we have an ongoing grant to create assets and translations to share with other communities.

We will also be presenting about the WikiPortraits initiative at Wikimania and WikiConference North America 2024.

We've been talking to other Wikimedia affiliates (particularly Canada, Sweden, Italy, and Germany) about potential collaboration and how we can support them sending photographers to similar events. We are hoping to support a photography from Germany to attend the Venice Film Festival, and are working with Wikimedia Canada for press access to Toronto Film Festival.

Part 3: Metrics

7. Wikimedia Metrics results. (required)

In your application, you set some Wikimedia targets in numbers (Wikimedia metrics). In this section, you will describe the achieved results and provide links to the tools used.

	Target	Results	Comments and tools used
Number of participants	100
Number of editors	60
Number of organizers	2

Wikimedia project	Target	Result - Number of created pages	Result - Number of improved pages
Wikipedia	50
Wikimedia Commons	120
Wikidata	100
Wiktionary
Wikisource
Wikimedia Incubator
Translatewiki
MediaWiki
Wikiquote
Wikivoyage
Wikibooks
Wikiversity
Wikinews
Wikispecies
Wikifunctions or Abstract Wikipedia

8. Other Metrics results.

In your proposal, you could also set Other Metrics targets. Please describe the achieved results and provide links to the tools used if you set Other Metrics in your application.

Other Metrics name	Metrics Description	Target	Result	Tools and comments

9. Did you have any difficulties collecting data to measure your results? (required)

9.1. Please state what difficulties you had. How do you hope to overcome these challenges in the future? Do you have any recommendations for the Foundation to support you in addressing these challenges? (required)

Part 4: Financial reporting

10. Please state the total amount spent in your local currency. (required)

5000

11. Please state the total amount spent in US dollars. (required)

5000

12. Report the funds spent in the currency of your fund. (required)

Provide the link to the financial report https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1s2hjeQIanAQXeEtUjmThdSLHar3F4IArvVFtV7_d3i4/edit

12.2. If you have not already done so in your financial spending report, please provide information on changes in the budget in relation to your original proposal. (optional)

The rapid grant spending matches us up our original proposal. But we included the full costs of doing the project, where the gap was covered by private funds.

In all, it was over $10,000 for housing and badges, not even including travel.

13. Do you have any unspent funds from the Fund?

No

13.1. Please list the amount and currency you did not use and explain why.

N/A

13.2. What are you planning to do with the underspent funds?

N/A

13.3. Please provide details of hope to spend these funds.

N/A

14.1. Are you in compliance with the terms outlined in the fund agreement?

Yes Your response to the review feedback. 14.2. Are you in compliance with all applicable laws and regulations as outlined in the grant agreement?

Yes

14.3. Are you in compliance with provisions of the United States Internal Revenue Code (“Code”), and with relevant tax laws and regulations restricting the use of the Funds as outlined in the grant agreement? In summary, this is to confirm that the funds were used in alignment with the WMF mission and for charitable/nonprofit/educational purposes.

Yes

15. If you have additional recommendations or reflections that don’t fit into the above sections, please write them here. (optional)

Cannes is a highly productive festival for WikiPortraits, with more than 100 notable movies from around the world premiering across all the sections (in competition, Un Certain Regard, Directors' Fortnight). There are endless targets between directors, actors, producers, screenwriters.

But Cannes is also very tiring schedule for 12 days, with schedules that start at 8:30 am in the morning and ending past midnight, plus press conferences and scheduled shoots.

There is only so much we feel comfortable pushing our volunteer photographers day after day if we are only covering their housing (not even their travel!). So in future, if we have a way to design this, I do think we could design this to have more photographers and spread out the work. We also need more help with uploading if we want these photos to be timely for when the pages are searched for (less critical if we care less about timeliness).

For future Cannes we do think we need to get badges for the photographers even if they receive media credentials, because otherwise they don't have the right to see the movies/talks. For George Lucas, they were let in to take photos in the beginning and then ushered out. This is our way of saying thank you for their hard work.

Review notes

Review notes from Program Officer:

N/A

Applicant's response to the review feedback.

N/A