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.