DAY 4 - The Run Around

Today, I'm going to try my best to keep a very up-to-date account of what is going on.  This could fail, it could work splendidly but we'll see how it goes.  I have arrived at the office, right on time and am ready to work!  My brain has been in a dark place and I'm hoping that NNN will help loosen me up.  For now, I'm heavily enjoying the useless chatter amongst the Fast Lane Daily team.

EDIT: The up-to-date account did not work so well.  The day was a whirlwind to say the least.  Where should I begin...

I began tweaking Hungry Nation promos when Erik, one of the head honchos of Indy Mogul struck up a conversation with me.  He wanted to know what my specialties were, what I would like to do most at NNN and what I had been working on up to that point.  Little did I know this was all a lead in for a new, what shall I call it, assignment?  One of the shows on Hungry Nation, Working Class Foodies, was looking for a production intern as well as someone to help assemble rough cuts.  That day, they were shooting in their usual location uptown on W 86th St and it wasn't long until I was en route to join them!

After a few wrong subway transfers and a couple wrong turns I found my way to the apartment of Rebecca Lando an NYU graduate with a passion not only for filmmaking but also cooking.  For those of you out there who don't know WCF, the show is about two siblings, Rebecca and her brother Max, who seek out interesting recipes that can be made with a budget of just $8.00 per person.  The show is still in it's infancy, with just a hand full of episodes, but it's quirky, fun, and the relationship between the siblings and the recurring cameos by their dog Humphrey make it fresh and entertaining.  (The fact it is shot in beautiful 1080i with the dazzling Canon D6 Mark II by the great cinematographer D.A. Pennebaker's son, Kit, helps a little as well!)

Sadly, I arrived at the apartment at the most inopportune time: when the pork was cooking in the oven.  Instead, Rebecca gave me the run down on the editing front and equipped me with everything I would ever want or need to know when the time came for me to sit down and assemble a rough cut for one of the episodes.  (I shan't get into the technical descriptions.)  I then had two choice: sit and wait for the video files to transfer to the Hardrive I would take back to the NNN office downtown or join Kit and Max as they went to a nearby farmer's market and Whole Foods to shoot the purchasing of ingredients for the next few episodes of the show.  As easy and interesting as it was to talk to Rebecca, I decided to join the boys to get some idea of how things were done on the production end of the show if nothing else.

More or less what I ended up doing was follow them around, looking over Kit's shoulder from time to time to watch his shooting.  I talked with them a little to get a better idea of how the show is organized but overall it was unexciting.  Strange saying that, but perhaps I was just exhausted from the day.  I'm sure that if I came to them while in the midst of shooting the cooking portion of the show, things would have been a lot more interesting.  Maybe I'll talk more on the shopping later...

After about an hour or so I got back to the 86th St apartment and found the HD fully fitted for my editing pleasure.  Then it was the long, confusing and frustrating journey back to Next New Networks, where I spent the last couple hours of my work day logging footage.  I was glad to find that their system of logging was a lot less intense than others I had encountered in the past.  I'm worried that I should have been able to accomplish more in the couple hours I had available to me, but taking my time and watching all the footage instead of lunging into a rough cut immediately makes a little more sense.

It's a little scary being thrown into this position so early.  I've been given all the footage for a single episode and am trusted enough to assemble it into something Rebecca can finalize and then later air on the website.  Obviously, if they didn't think I could do it, I wouldn't be writing about this internship, but the pressure it definitely there.  Just keep telling yourself you know what you are doing.  Once you get the "vision" you cut faster than anyone else you know.  So I've never edited a cooking show before, there are six online for my viewing pleasure that I can draw from.  To be honest, rough cuts have never been my thing either.  My meticulous and perfectionist nature have always caused me to skip the rough step and go straight to finalization.  Not to say once a scene is edited it's finished forever.  If we were talking about writing a paper, I would just skip the outline and first draft step and go straight from idea to 2nd draft and beyond.  Learning to do this will be a great thing for the future, though, and the confidence I get from it will without a doubt carry over to other things at Next New.  Slowly, it's building, and I have this internship as much for that as I do for experience.

Wow!  A little soul searching there, huh?  Hopefully that's okay...  That's a rap for the Day 4 entry.  Day 5 is just around the corner...