Matthew's Moments

The time is finally upon us, friends. It is time for the last blog post of the spring semester. I truly never thought this day would come. I'll be honest with you, these blog posts were not easy for me. I was just thrust into the world of AP format, and never really learned how it worked. Between floundering while trying to figure out a completely new styling format and having to come up with creative things to write about that fit into the three weekly categories, I always found the blogging assignments looming over me. One thing I will take away from this class is learning to insert my own personal style into my assignments. I just let myself have fun with the assignments and found others enjoying them as well. My favorite projects were the live tweet and video assignments. I had a blast tweeting nonstop at Ohio Northern University's Fearless Shenanygans performance, and I know the cast members enjoyed reading all the funny things they said during the night because they sho...

Well this week we finished up reading Katie Paine's book, "Measure What Matters." Through reading the book, we gained insights on why it is important to measure and how to get started with measuring by asking ourselves a lovely set of ten questions to help us with the research step of RPIE (research, planning, implementation, evaluation). I noticed how a lot of what Paine wrote about connected to public relations work in a broader sense than just checking social media. Starting in Chapter 3, we started learning about how to measure. Paine broke down seven simple steps to "the perfect measurement program," and even included an extra chapter to make sure we understood how to choose the right tool for measurement. Once we got into Chapter 5, the book more or less started getting slightly redundant. Paine took the time to relate the seven steps of measurement (in one version or another) to so many different situations like measuring public relations in a social ...

Goodbye my sweet libretto binder The Ohio Northern Theatre Arts Department closed the spring musical, "Sweet Charity," on April 22. The show ran for a total of five performances. I just wanted to take time in this week's "ONU Blog Post" to reflect on being able to play a part in the wonderful world of "Sweet Charity." First, I'd like to share how thankful I am to have been able to be involved at all. I have thanked my director, Courtney Kattengal, over and over for allowing me to be a part of the show. When I saw the cast list at the end of last semester I was really confused because "Sweet Charity," is famous for being a dance heavy show and I have felt like a weak dancer for such a long time. When I first came to Ohio Northern University (ONU), I was not ready for the slap in the face that dance training brought me. I literally couldn't touch my toes and would cry after some of my ballet classes because I felt like I was in way ...

Saturday, April 21 marked the two show day of Ohio Northern University's production of "Sweet Charity." Two show days are infamous among actors because they truly suck the feeling of life from all of the cast and crew involved. This production is especially draining because the ensemble and a lot of the leads are constantly singing, acting, dancing, changing costumes or moving set pieces. Our productions Oscar Lindquist, played by Riley Alexander, still has control of promoting the show through social media. In honor of the two show day, he decided to take to Instagram's story feature to ask cast and crew members what their favorite part of having two show days is during intermission of the first show. He posted the stories on the Freed Center for the Performing Arts' Instagram channel, @freedcenter. The amazingly creative responses can be seen below and costume credits go to Ameera Ansari: Hallie Heffernan, the titular Charity Hope Valentine, answered Al...

After reading Chapter 11 of Katie Paine's "Measure What Matters," which dealt with rebuilding reputations after crises occur within a corporation, I found the topic of trust really sparked my interest. Trust is a concept that floods every aspect of our lives, and one that is especially prevalent in the topic of public relations. I really liked how Paine outlined trust in in the chapter by breaking it down in a few different ways. First, she broke it down into three dimensions of trust that are measurable by the Grunig Relationship Survey. The three dimensions and their descriptions are below: Competence - the belief that an organization has the ability to do what it says it will do Integrity - the belief that an organization is fair and just Dependability/Reliability - the belief that and organization will do what it says it will do consistently and dependably This is a good way to define trust in a very general sense. Paine then breaks it down a little f...

April 16 was the first day of tech week rehearsals with costumes. Things did not go very smoothly for me with this rehearsal because I have nine different costumes and ten different scene changes. This might not sound too bad, but these costumes are pretty elaborate and the set pieces are gigantic platforms which needed hydraulic brakes to make sure they stayed in place while people stood, swung on or danced on them. As you can imagine these platforms are pretty heavy which is not fun when you have ten very fast scene changes which often occur at the same time as my costume changes. Long story short I ended up crying onstage just a little bit because I was trying my best to get everything done that I needed too as fast as possible, but I still messed up my scene/costume change going into the famous "Rich Man's Frug," dance number in the show. Many other members of the ensemble had similar problems as this show is massive, but we are all got through it together. To show ju...

Countdown clock from the Freed Center's Scene Shop. They like to have fun and make jokes there as you can see here. Ohio Northern University's (ONU) Theatre Arts Department entered the dreaded "tech week" for their production of "Sweet Charity" on April 13. This musical follows a hopelessly romantic dance hall hostess, Charity Hope Valentine, in New York City in the 1960s on her quest to find love and a life better than the one she has. Junior, Hallie Heffernan, has done an incredible job on this role and it is not one you are going to want to miss. However, this blog post isn't about the show or the cast. This blog post is here to explain what a tech week is like for students. faculty and guest artists at ONU. Many of you may not know what this tech week is, or why it is dreaded, but fear not because I am here to explain. Tech week occurs the week before a show opens and is time for the cast to move into the actual performance space and fina...

In Chapter 8 of Katie Paine's iconic social media/public relations book, "Measure What Matters," she breaks down how to score and measure one of the hottest commodities in social media analytics: an influencer. Now you may ask what an influencer is, and I am here to answer that question for you! Influencers were the outcome of social media mixing up the communication chain of media. Before social media, we got out information from and trusted spokespeople from large companies, but now we trust people who have accumulated a large following of people in a certain industry. This new person that we trust is known as an influencer. You can find influencers in every industry from sports to healthcare to entertainment to government. These influencers are so important because influencers do exactly what their name implies: they influence. In an ideal world you will have an influencer who posts about your brand and they influence their followers to partake in your brand. Co...

Penny from "The Big Bang Theory" is all of us. Thank you for being so relatable, Penny.  Do you ever feel like you have hit a wall and no matter what you do you can't get through it? Have you ever thought about how nice it would be if you didn't have to do any more work ever? Have you passed being burnt out and skipped all the way to being an insignificant pile of ashes? Do all of the assignments due at the end of the semester make you want to cry and curl up in a ball? Would you rather have someone demolish both of your knees and elbows with a hammer and then run over your body with a fully packed camper instead of writing one more blog post? If you have answered yes to any of these questions, then you are like me. We have both reached what I like to refer to as the slump point of the semester. You know you are in the slump when school seems overwhelming and you want nothing more than to go back to the past summer/winter break where you had no responsibilities...

For those of you who have yet read the bio on my blog, my Instagram username is @MJBrightbill. As we've talked about in class, Instagram is used to put your best foot forward and tell the story of your brand. This week I chose to review my Instagram posts from this semester and relate them to how they relate to the brand that is Matthew James Brightbill. My first post from semester was a picture with my friends Christian Hill and Ryan Book. They are a part of MT21 (a nickname for the musical theatre class of 2021 here at Ohio Northern). This picture was taken on Snapchat by me, and I thought that I looked really cute with my friends so I decided to post it when I took it on Jan. 21. The picture was taken at a friend's birthday party. This tells the story of my brand because friends are a very important aspect in my life and I want to show myself as a sociable person. Also, I am with people from my niche major, so that helps tell the story of what I am passionate about. Ano...

Did you get a chance to see "Jesus Christ Superstar Live" on NBC this Easter and absolutely love it? Could you kick yourself for missing out on NBC's production with John Legend, Alice Cooper and Sara Bareilles? If you answered yes to either of these questions then I have some great news for you! Ohio Northern University's first ever student produced musical, "Jesus Christ Superstar" is coming to you less than a week after the live television event on NBC. The Audacia Theatre Project is the company putting on the musical and is run by Bryanah Austin and Michael Swain-Smith. As Swain-Smith was cast in "Sweet Charity," he took the assistant director position. Austin headed up the production and oversaw the work of a producer, costume designer, set designer, choreographer and artistic director. This girl came up with a concept for the show, designed the costumes, sets and choreography to fit with her concept, and took on the hard work of getting her p...

In Chapter 3 of her book, Katie Payne broke down the seven steps to the perfect measurement program. Payne explained how these seven steps are basically the scientific method of measurement and analytics. These seven steps are found in some shape of form in every measurement program regardless of who the stakeholders are and what the metrics are, just like the steps of the scientific method are found in some shape or form in every experiment. The measurement steps reminded me of the scientific method while reading this little introduction, and then I realized that these measurement programs are experiments themselves. Below is a graphic displaying the scientific that I found online, and I will explain how measurement programs are just as methodical as scientific experiments. The first two steps of the scientific method are to ask a question and research. These steps are very similar to the first three steps of the seven steps for measurement. When measuring, Paine tells us that w...