DAY 19 - The Princess and the Frog

So much happened Monday but I have no time to relay it all in detail.  But I will, promise.  In the meantime, watch the Your FX video.



UPDATE:  Monday was Beyond The Trailer day, 1,000 times moreso than usual.  Whether this was mentioned or not, Spencer and I were asked to accompany Grace to the Ziegfeld Theatre to shoot reviews for Disney's new 2-D animated film, The Princess And The Frog.  These reviews make up the second portion of BTT, following the studio segments I shoot.  The appeal in this is the chance to hear what regular, average people have to say, as opposed to sifting through countless reviews by stuffy newspaper critics who seek out themes, motifs, structure, and character arcs rather than personal enjoyment.  And personally, I don't think this sort of show could exist anywhere but the Internet.

The Princess and the Frog is showing at the Ziegfeld and one other theatre in Los Angeles as part of a special two week engagement prior to its wide release on December 11.  Smart move Disney, charging $30 and $50 per ticket!  If you are going to risk going back to 2-D in an animation market busting at the seams with 3-D animation, you might as well milk it for all it could be worth!  I'm getting side-tracked...

At the studio, Grace and I shot the opens as usual, key emphasis on Grace and I, since Spencer "hit heavy traffic" and decided it wasn't worth coming in.  Running the prompter, the camera and paying attention to audio is something I had done before, but never for the entire set of opens.  Do I mind?  Not in the least!  Gives me a greater sense of accomplishment and helps me broaden my abilities.  There's something comforting in the fact that you can do one thing well enough to split the time with something completely different.  I could probably run the camera and sound mix in my sleep now so running the prompter doesn't interfere at all with those now comfortable duties.  Does that make sense?  Some of the opens seemed rushed and short, but Grace seemed fine with what the results were, given the time and circumstances.  This weekend doesn't have many huge releases, just mediocre, so she wasn't completely upset if one didn't come off as strong as it should.  Once we rapped in the studio, Grace commandeered another intern named Rachel (who I had no idea was an intern) and we taxied our way up to 54th St.  Then things got interesting...

We were shut down by Disney.  Well, not shut down, more like a delay of game than a full on rescheduling.  While setting up the camera and getting prepared for the onslaught of joyous children leaving the theatre, a man in a dark jacket with a police badge came outside and told us we couldn't shoot.  "This is private property and it's against the law." he said with a gentle force.  Grace whipped out the business cards and put on the charm as she explained her show and her intentions with it.  "We are just a review show for Next New Networks. We won't force anyone to be on camera if we don't want to..." etc, etc.  The man, whose name was Anthony, looked over the information and proposed that he would "call corporate" for clearance.  Seriously.  He seemed to be transferred from one person to another until he was put in contact with a high-up from Disney HQ in Los Angeles.  How crazy is that?  Minute after minute went by and we watched as the showing's audiences walked right past us, full of countless adorable children who would never get the chance to see themselves on YouTube.  After about ten minutes of anxious waiting, Anthony came back and told us we had the go ahead to shoot, but it had to be at the next showing in three hours and he had to be present to make sure nothing was said against the 2-D film.  I explain this all in such great detail because of the obvious: how many people can say they were "shut down" by Disney?

The next few hours were spent eating lunch at a nice nearby diner, returning to the studio by taxi, reshooting the open for Princess And The Frog (Grace thought the original open was "too snarky" and didn't want to give Disney any reason to force her to shut down the episode once it aired) and returned back to the Ziegfled for a 5:50 shoot, losing Rachel in the process.  It was Grace and I, on the forefront, ready to shoot some children.  Err, videotape some children.  One after another explained with childish sensibilities how much they loved the movie and why, spurned on by Grace's encouraging "Wow, that's cool!" attitude.  The sun long gone, the tungsten light coming from the classic overhang created a professional Hollywood mood and the background was always filled with children and parents.  These elements, though seemingly unimportant, just made everything look better!  The excitement was infectious and I sincerely thought I was a part of something big; the return of Disney 2-D!  (Did I mention I spoke to the VP of Disney in the process?  And by spoke I mean said a few nervous words.)

Now here is the fabulous part of the day.  While eating lunch, I brought up to Grace an idea that was kicking around in my head.  Next New has plenty of subjects covered except one integral one: video games.  Being a gamer myself, I understand it's excessive popularity and there is a great amount of overlap between people who watch New Next programming and who play video games (or so I hope).  Once my idea was in the open, Grace broke down exactly what I need to pitch a show, what numbers and information I have to present, who to present it to, the format, special interactive options, anything you could imagine.  Saying I was appreciative of the information is an understatement.  Planning for the show isn't at a high point, the idea is still in the fetus stages, but there is definitely potential for growth.  This could be the break that I need, the start of a career.  Stay down, hopes!  Disappointment could come in from any angle...

Fabulous Part II: Grace sent an email to Ryan explaining the length of effort I put in on Monday.  "The shoot wouldn't have happened without Brittany" were her exact words.  And, once again, she quoted Ryan saying, "Everyone is fighting over Brittany."  Could my ego get any bigger?  Could I be asking for anything more?  Fingers are crossed tight with the hope that I can extend this internship another semester.  Every day the appeal is greater and greater.  It's not Hollywood, it's not feature films but it's something and in this digital age, it's important.  There's a lot I need to start pondering over the next couple weeks...

DAY 18 - Montage!

I'm finally getting to this entry the night before Day 19 even begins.  Actually, it's 2:05 am on Day 19. I'm going to go through this quickly, since I sadly have more work to complete before I begin to think of shutting my eyes for a night's sleep.  Pardon the watered down, Spark Notes version.

Day 18 saw me doing some of the usual and some of the interesting.  Beyond The Trailer went really well, without a hitch for the first time in a couple weeks.  All the equipment worked fine and spirits were high.  If I had a $1 for every Twilight joke we made...

Back in the day, when my editing equipment consisted of Windows Movie Maker (which to the non-editing crowd, is a simplistic piece of shit), much of my time was dedicated to cutting together clips from animated films or TV shows and timing it to music.  "AMV" was the proper title.  Monday was a continuation of what I had begun on Friday: creating the effects montage for the upcoming episode of Your FX.  I had the chance to do the same thing my much younger self found pleasure in, but instead of movie clips, I was utilizing the hundreds of fan-submitted clips and putting them to a catchy, up-beat royalty-free music.  The end result is quite the work of art, if I do say so myself.  The process was easy for me and all the techniques I learned when a younger, more naive editor came to the forefront.  Erik watched it and seemed pleased so I'm happy about that.  Needless to say I'm anxiously awaiting it's completion.

Also shot the opening scene for the Thanksgiving episode of the Reel Good Show.  Not my best work.  Skipping a crucial step (actually listening to the audio being outputted), led to the tragic mistake of only one person's Lav mic being recorded.  Upon finding this out, we had to shoot portions of the opening over again.  Bad news for my tired arms and my "rep".  Bobby just makes me nervous.  I beat myself up about it for quite some time.  But, despite my shoddy camerawork and sound mixing, the show turned out well and a tad more humorous than others have been.  Not that other episodes aren't funny but this one is more...translatable humor?  Tangible?  Accessible?  You know what I mean. Here's the episode:

Reel Good Show Thanksgiving Special

DAY 17 - A Lost and Forgotten Day

Entry coming soon.  In the meantime, enjoy an old photo of the office. Just pretend those back walls have lots of pictures on them.

EDIT: It seems I completely forgot to add to this.  Much apologies.  I imagine it wasn't too much out of the norm.

DAY 16 - Dropped HD

I dropped a hard drive (HD).  I dropped a HD.  Me, of all people.  Two minutes before leaving the office for the day, as I was walking from my desk to Kathleen Grace's to give her the Working Class Foodies HD, in the span of time that was the fifteen steps from here to there, I dropped it.  My legs froze in place, my eyes bulged out of my head as the heart stopped pumping blood.  Picking it up, racing through my mind were thoughts of whether or not I should test it, check the files, make sure everything was okay and secure.  But I had to get home, my train was leaving soon and if I didn't catch it, I would be stuck at Mineola station for an extra hour than necessary.  With great care I walked the rest of the way to Kathleen's desk, craning my neck in all directions searching for judgmental eyes.  Kathleen received the drive, I left and then proceeded to doubt myself the whole way home.

Why does any of this matter?  For one, it matters because the entire day's and a week's worth of effort was contained on that drive.  A whole episode could be corrupted or erased!  And, as I mentioned in the last entry, this was a guest start episode so repeating it would not be so easy.  Throw in the "Thanksgiving leftovers" theme and it's virtually unshootable a second time around.  

Needless to say, all these thoughts ran through my mind on the long train ride home.  You always hear of those unfortunate interns who trip on the wrong cord and the whole lighting rig collapses to the ground, the one who shredded the contract that took three weeks to process, the one who held a camera in the same hand as a bottle of Arnold Palmer Green Tea Lemonade that was open just enough.  (No, scratch that last one.  That actually did happen to me once.)  Dropping that HD made me realize how fragile this industry is, especially this early in the going.  People make mistakes, but when the magnitude of them reaches critical mass, that said person becomes expendable.  A multitude of kids would kill to have my "job" who may even perform it better than I.  For two seconds, I wasn't thinking, but that's really all it takes for a mistake like that.  The rush of going home probably helped a little in my flurried behavior; I need to relax a tad.  There is a deeper meaning to this somewhere.  I'm groping for it, but the words won't coagulate.  Just be more careful, be more aware of the situation I am in, be aware that it doesn't take much for them to pass over you.    

Seconds prior to the event, Rebecca Lando and I were Google chatting and she told me, yet again, how great of a job I did.  How ironic is it that I dropped the drive seconds later?!  Maybe it's a sign from God, a sign that I should not get too cocky with myself, should not feel so laid back and secure.  I'm still an intern.  I'm still in college.  I'm still nowhere in the industry, despite how well I may edit.  A million other people out there edit too, better than I do.  "Don't get ahead of yourself, kid." God whispered in my ear as the HD plummeted to the carpeted floor.  Looking back on the happening, it's easy to make these associations.  Perhaps I should take it as a warning, a crystallized moment when my entire time at Next New Networks could have been soiled.  Lord, I hope Lando emails me back soon so I know it's okay...

"But Brittany!  What about the other seven hours and 59 minutes of your day?"  After completing the logging process, I began the rough cut for WCF 113.  Staying conscious of the Theo Peck episode, I tried to edit more creatively, rather than simply lay down the process of the meal.  I did that too, but sprinkled in interview segments and "witty banter" along the way.  What I learned from this is that I should stick to the process first.  After three hours, only 2/3 of the episode was dropped to the timeline and some portions were heavily flawed in their flow.  Ambition overcame me.  Overall, it was yet another good learning experience.  I tried a different formula, experimented with it, and discovered that staying with what I know may have been the better option.  As much as this industry is about huge mistakes that could ruin your career, the little ones that help it hold just as much authority.

Beyond The Trailer shoot went splendidly.  Some good jokes were told by all and some major bashing of films and stars always makes things interesting.  Below are links to the episodes from last week that I shot.  Remember, I do the white background stuff, not the on-location shooting.  

Precious Movie Review

2012 Movie Review

DAY 15 - Shifting Gears

After what seemed like a month of merely watching user-submitted videos and responding to fan requests and questions, this week I was back on track with the work that gave me such enthusiasm towards the internship in the past.  Walking through the door on Friday mid-morning, I found Grace seated at the intern computer.  "I need to shoot another open." she said in a calm fluster.  Keeping in mind we had to wrap quickly, for she had more shooting to do on 42nd, I grabbed a camera and her, the other Friday intern, Michael, and I headed down to the studio.  Diversions were few (redistribution of power, finding headphones for the camera, attaching the teleprompter without the mounting ring, something Ryan did all too easily and made me feel a little inadequate) and the Friday team rolled through an open for the film, Precious with time to spare.  And no need for a blue screen this time!

Back upstairs in my usual chair in front of my usual computer, Ryan came over and told me how Rebecca from Working Class Foodies had the HD for me again.  More footage?  More rough cuts?  More editing?  Finally!  Once again I had a chance to showcase my talents in something other than fan communication and website management.  I accept my responsibilities as an intern, regardless of their description, but after a few weeks of watching other interns edit and assist in the studio, jealousy increasingly coursed through my veins.  With haste I gathered directions and my iPod and hurried over to the location uptown.

Drive recovered, I began on what is turning out to be a very elongated and tiresome battle with Episode 113's footage.  Perhaps battle isn't quite the word for it?  Conversation, to some degree.  Each clip is longer than normal, some reaching five minutes on the time counter.  As always, the images are beautiful to observe, the Canon 5D Mark II prevailing as a suitable stand-in for the latest pro HD Panasonic, Sony, or JVC.  This episode's premise is Thanksgiving leftovers (the humor in this is obvious) with guest cook Cathy Erway, creator of Not Eating Out In NY dot com and author of the wittily titled The Art of Eating In: How I Learned to Stop Spending and Love the Stove.  Equipped with a broken spatula, malfunctioning blenders and dull knives, she chops, boils and mixes her way to a...

Now did you really think I would give it away this time?  Despite the slight monotony of logging, I deeply appreciate what it has done to my knowledge of Final Cut.  Quick keys are the epitome of hasty editing.  Without them, you're lost, just another kid who thinks he knows how to play around with software he or she downloaded from the Internet or BitTorrent.  Not to be confused it with "haste makes waste", it's more along the lines of "haste makes people think you know what you are doing".  One clip after another breeds in me a system I'll most likely hold onto for years down the road.  The less than appetizing, humbling experience I had with the Theo Peck episode is finally revealing it's beneficial side effects.  Viewing the posted video online, my immaturity as an editor blazed through like sunshine on a cloudless day.  No, I should not take that one happening as the epitome of my skills, but it certainly saddened my perfectionist self.  Equipped with the knowledge of how to edit together a guest cook episode, referencing Rebecca's cut as a guide map, I'll hopefully be able to create a suitable rough cut involving more than simply "process footage".  While we are on the note of my failures... 

This is, more or less, my cut.  Seriously.  There's maybe one or two things differently not counting the new footage at the beginning and the end, the music and the titles.  But all the video, the process of the cooking: mine.  Wow!

Working Class Foodies: Momofuko Bo Ssam

DAY 14 - Fred. Seibert.

A quick run down of things I did on Monday:

• Edited three tutorials for Your FX.  Erik asked me to bring them down to two minutes or less, but I have a feeling he would have much preferred the less.  The longest one ended up being 1 minute 45 seconds.  I was able to spread that task throughout the day.  
• Shot in the studio with Grace.  Went alright, save her wearing a green shirt in front of the green screen.  Thank God for blue screens!  It was a quick fix.
• Met with Fred Seibert.  My future has been changed forever.  
• About five minutes before I needed to disappear to catch my train, Erik asked me to run a legitimate intern job.  "I need you to get me a soldering iron."  The very short version of the story: ran to the hardware store down 29th street, grabbed the iron, sped walked back to Next New, dropped it off, and then made it to Penn Station in 12 minutes with time to spare.  Awesome.

A while back, I edited an interview with Oren Peli, the director of Paranormal Activity. Here's the final product, posted on the Indy Mogul blog. It was posted way back on October 14, but I never got a chance to search for and listen to it.

Exclusive Interview w/ Director of 'Paranormal Activity,' Oren Peli

DAY 13 - How To Earn A Million

Just barely 10:15 am, the day at Next New Networks has just begun but in my procrastintion and side-tracking I doscovered a blog post written by Tim Shey on the NNN website.  An episode of ThreadBanger   entitled "Top Ten Halloween Costumes 2009", recieved over 1 million views in only one week! That's only seven days! The reason behind such a spike in audience members is credited to new features on both YouTube and iTunes, major video hubs on the net.

On October 24, the episode was chosen by YouTube’s editors for a full-day homepage editorial spotlight, along with the ThreadBanger channel page. The result was a two-day spike in traffic of over 330,000 views on the episode, and another 200,000 views to other episodes on the ThreadBanger channel.

This, combined with a similar situation in the Podcast section of the iTunes store, made this simple episode of ThreadBanger the most watched video created by any Next New network. More imformation and pretty pie charts detailing the audience splits and percentages can be found HERE.

Why is this important? The Internet video, as a form of mediated communication, is so easily distributed and outsourced that this sort of thing can happen over night. This might sound more a testament to proper marketing, but it's also one to the nature of the video itself. Running at only 2 minutes and 40 seconds, it's a bite of information, unburdened by specifics and particulars, cut quick and smooth. From start to finish, the video is laden with pop culture and global politics homages, making the video excessively communicable to a wide audience that, unless they lived under a rock the last year, would easily pick up on the references. The style and structure of the video must be credited just as much as the marketing behind it. Without an effective product, there never would have been anything for YouTube and iTunes executives to go behind and in order to crete an effective product, it must appeal to the strengths and needs of the medium.

UPDATE: Now, onto what I did for the day. In the morning, Ryan asked if I wanted to help the Barely Political guys shoot some footage for a video centered around poking fun at Yankee fans. Sadly, I had to pass. My Boston heart would not have been able to handle standing in a crowd of Skankee fans cheering on their over-expensive, heartless team in the wake of a championship.

Next on the list was less painful. Tasked with finding a group of fan-made tutorials to present to Erik, I toiled away for hours going through the submissions folder, searching repeatedly for any video with "How To..." incorporated into the title. By the end of it all, I had amassed about seven or eight videos of varying quality and after showing them to Erik, was given a list of demands. Message this person to get more footage. Double-check to make sure we didn't use these already. Edit down this one. Monday I anticipate to be doing more of the editing down segment.

DAY 12 - What Now?

Aware I am that feelings are irrelevant in these entries.  The internship is almost halfway through and through the pages of typed entries I feel I have accomplished nothing in accordance with my Mission Statement.  Internally, I am debating how much further I should go into this problem but for the sake of not sounding like a whiner, I won't.  Onwards towards the usual.

Monday was a standard day at the office.  With the Mogulween contest over, my duties were no longer restricted to watching submission video after submission video, a much welcome change.  Spencer, the other intern on Mondays, came in asking a favor of me.  For his other job (or internship) he had to write a review on a band, The Yeasayers, that he saw over the weekend.  He recorded it on what I assume was the company camera and had no idea how to upload it.  Me, being the nice girl I am, tried to help him, but the camera historically is unrecognizable by any Mac editing software. Myself and a few other people ran around in circles until the consensus was to just capture from a deck, not the camera itself.  It's annoying how software/hardware often doesn't work.  You'd think the more advanced something would get, the easier it is to be backwards compatible with the past.  Why can't FCP, a top of the line editing software, recognize one 2006 or 2007 released Canon HV10?

Indy Mogul's YouTube inbox was exploding with messages.  Ryan wanted me to go through it and respond when I could and/or if necessary.  As may have been mentioned before, 90% of the time it's fans requesting certain builds or FX.  I noted down a few specific requests that have been mentioned multiple times.  Probably should have wrote down those who said them too...d'oh!  Young kids make up a bigger part of the message senders and often I feel bad when I open a new one up just for the sake of lessening the "Total Messages in Inbox" number.  These kids think they are talking to Erik, not some intern, yet here I am, ignoring them and their dreams of contact.  The Internet is funny like that but that could have happened in other mediums too.  Back in the day, it was letters to bigger companies requesting this, that and the other.  Now it's email and embedded comment boxes.  False hopes are engendered in both situations unless of course the person is adamant down the line.

Beyond The Trailer went well today, save for a major confusion on my part about which lavaliere was a receiver and which wasn't.  Little things like that I miss all the time.  Often I'm asking for help with things that have the most simple solutions.  A beneficial end result is knowing all the little solutions to the problems but I can't help but feel dumb and inexperienced along the way, especially when you are constantly beckoning on those who have ten times as much work as you do.  Moving on...

[I'm beginning to think I should start posting more of the videos I actually help on, like I did in the first entry.  I'll get those links up soon.]

Last thing worth noting was a little out of the ordinary and interesting.  Ryan Instant Messaged me asking for my assistance in researching for a new webcam for Indy Mogul.  The Reel Good Show uses one for their live episodes.  Seeing as I not too long ago scoured the Internet, comparing and contrasting consumer HD cameras for my own purchase, I knew all the necessary channels and places to look.  Turns out that for Macs, only one webcam really does the trick well.  Now that Macs have an iSight built into all their desktop and laptop computers, the need for a webcam is nearly nonexistent.  Despite this, a few brands still carry models that have UVC compatible ("plug in and go" concept), Logitech almost exclusively.  The work was tedious, but still a little fun.  My Geek status allows me to take small enjoyment in looking at technology products for an hour or two straight.

Here are the winners for that competition I worked so long and hard on: Mogulween Winners!

And here's the video with the trailer I helped cut together: BFX Pumpkin King (starts at 3:54)