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