Internship, April

The past two weeks at my internship have definitely been tedious. I only had two task to finish and I just finished them as of today. My first task was to finish digitizing and then compress the video files so they could be sent off for translation. Now, the week before last, I had edited the footage so it would be ready to be compressed. Even though the director sat down and hand-picked the videos that needed to be edited, I had to later search through a few other videos (upon her request) to see if there was any other video that might have been overlooked that needed to be in the final edit. It didn't take to long to go through so that wasn't bad, but it turned out that there was some more footage that needed to be edited into the main video. So, it ended up being a video that was made up of 10 segments from 10 different tapes of video. I think there were like 20 videos, more or less. That project took me long to finish because there are like two computers operating at 100% so I was always on and off of the computer. But I finished editing and compressing those videos today.

I actually forgot I had to do another little project last week. I guess because everyone else that works there has written a little blurb/mini essay about themselves and their interests, I also had to write one. So, it took me a while because I am a slow writer; it took me a few drafts but eventually I wrote something worth reading. So, i'm not sure if it is up on the website yet because they just got there website redone. In the midst of all of this we have been critiquing and suggesting minor changes in the website that is now being created and finalized. That was kind of cool, because for once I guess I knew more about a specific topic than anybody else in there because it was strictly graphic design related.

The second project that I had to do was some footage transcription. I actually had to do it for a trailer but that only took about 2 hrs. or so, but that wasn't really a project. For the documentary they just made titled the "the List", they needed a transcript for it. This job I was not too excited to do. I guess the cool parts about it where that I am learning more and more about editing (because I get to see all of the raw footage and the final condensed footage) and I got to see how a script is written and actually write it. It actually was okay at first because at the time it was given to me they had only edited about 40 minutes of the film. Of course right when I finished it they gave me the rest of the film. (That sucked) This was tedious not because the documentary is about an hour and a half, but because there were many foreigners in film. Mostly everyone that was in the film were native of Iraq, so it was very difficult to understand their speech. That took me a solid 3 full days to finish.

As far as the environment goes, things have gotten a lot better. I'm more comfortable with everyone in the work area and vice versa. And I just got invited to a theatrical play with a couple of co-workers, so thats pretty cool.

internship, march

This week was a bit more tedious at my internship. The director of the organization needed some old footage to be digitized and edited, a little, so it could be further worked on. At first glance it seemed like this documentary was finished, but now that I think about it, I wonder if the filmmakers are going to go back and try to find the people that they once documented. I did over hear the director speculating about trying to get in contact with that family, again. This family lived in Macedonia approximately 10 years ago by a group of rebels. They became refugees; some of the refugees survived, some traveled and some died. This one particular family became refugees in a camp in an area in Kosovo. These families, of course, did not speak any english. My job was to first digitize all of the video that they had; there were 5 videos given to me and I had to digitize all of them; each video being about an hour long. After digitizing them, I had to keep a track of everything (visually) that happened. So, if there were a large group of people walking in line to a water well or if a kid was playing by himself and crying in a relatively deserted area, I had to track it. That task, itself took hours to do. After that I had another job to do. I had to locate the beginning and the end of whenever one of the foreign refugees would be interviewed. I then made markers and put those at the start and end points. With those marked points I edited out those specific sections and created a new file with only those sections in it. So, I put fade in and out effects on each sections, leaving 2 seconds of blank filler space at the beginning and end of each section and then digitized the whole video, so it could be sent off to a translator.

Internship

Last week I went to my internship on Tuesday and Thursday. The entire week was both hectic and boring. The problem was for everyone else excluding myself and another intern it was relatively boring. The film that the organization is trying to finish (at the time) was due to their funders on Thursday. So, with that being said everyone that worked there was heavily occupied with the parts of the project that they had to finish in a day or two. The computer that I usually use to edit their video was being used by another worker to finalize a corporate video, so I was unable to do what I usually do there. So, for that entire week I spent my time further learning how to use their programs. I practiced using the programs by using some of their old and unused video, text and audio. I also watched the footage of the film that is soon to be due and I had a fairly in depth discussion with the video editor about the effectiveness of the film, permission and borrowing issues, the goal of the film, studio equipment and paths to take to be successful filmmaker.

I am very much looking forward to doing some other work for this upcoming week.

First Day

Finally, the day has come. On Tuesday, February 22, 2011 I spent my first day at principle pictures as an intern.

I was not given a specific time to come in and I did not want to take any chances of being late so, I woke up early so I could most-likely get there before anyone else did. I arrived at the address around 8:30. The door was closed, so I just waited outside in the lobby area. I waited there with my head down for a while and then 9:30 hit and the director of photography walked in and walked by me upstairs. He almost got all the way upstairs, but then he walked back down and said "are you here for principle pictures". I responded, "yes". Right then and there I knew everything would be okay.

While they settled down and sent out and read e-mails and stuff, I sat and read some articles from the Economist. After everyone was settled down, Seth (the cinematographer) called me over to the open computer. I cant lie, I was very excited. He pulled up Avid Media Composer and Lynda.com. Basically he set up a whole bunch of tutorials for me to watch, because in the future I will be doing some editing for them. There were over 7 hrs. of tutorials for the program, which really means about 14 hrs. because you always have to rewind some things and try some things out. So, I watched all the videos that I could possibly watch in that day (which was up to chapter 10 - i have about 4 more chapters to go) before the place closed up. I came out of there with over 5 single spaced pages of notes on how to use this program. I am very excited to learn and begin using this program; Seth and Keith (the director of photo.) explained to me that Avid Media Composer is what most professionals use, whether it be for a film, broadcasting, etc.

So, today was a good day.

It seems that my stress has not stopped yet. The firm that I am doing my internship at had not responding to the next set of emails that I had sent. The e-mails that I had sent to the program director and an assistant of the director's entailed the possible times I would be available to work. After a few days I had become really worried once again. So, I talked to my advisor and told him what my situation was. My advisor contacted the program director and it seems that there was a misunderstanding of whether the internship would be for credit or not. There was probably a misunderstanding because a bulk of the meeting that a had with them the prior week was with one of the cinematographers and only a short amount of time was spent talking to the director. In that short time with the director, we were both trying to figure out whether this would account for credit or not - she had no idea whether I would be able to come in for a certain amount of hours, so I too was confused on whether I would be able to do the internship and get full credit for school. Because she had a meeting, I talked with the cinematographer about how you have to do a mandatory 15 hours for it to be considered an internship. So, between me and him there was an understanding that this would account for school credit, but between me and the program director there was a misunderstanding.

As a graphic design major at Emmanuel College it is required to do an internship for one semester. Originally I thought I would do my internship within the marketing & pr department at school. I already work there and the work that I would be doing there is directly tied to what I do for my major and a little more. Because I have gained an interest in film, I desired an internship with an organization that does film work. I research some areas within Boston but most of what I found was related to acting, as opposed to filming and other work that goes on beyond the camera. I knew what I wanted to do but I could not find the outlet to begin doing what I wanted to do. I talked to a professor of mine, Cynthia Fowler, and she knew of someone who worked with film. Professor Fowler gave me the name of the contact and the name of organization that she headed, Principle Pictures. I went on the website and looked at the organization's work and I became very interested in participating in their mission. I decided that this is the place that I wanted to do my internship at. I emailed the company a cover letter, personal statement and my resume. It took a while for someone to contact me back, but about a week or so after I had sent my information I had heard back from them. They had then wanted me to come in for a meeting. I would email them back and fourth trying to set up a date to come in but because of the director's busy schedule it was very hard to schedule a time that was manageable for both parties. This stressed me out greatly because I have to do this for school credit and I was getting caught behind, as far as hours are concerned. About two weeks after I had sent the original email out a date was scheduled for me to come in - February 8th, 2010 at 1:00.