A big part of my tasks from the past two weeks was subclipping the footage we shot at Everest Academy two weeks ago.  What that means is that I would go through all of the raw footage, find the useable bits of b-roll, trim it, label it, and put it into a special subclip bin.  All of this was done on the editing system known as AVID.

Avid, or the Diva of editing programs? See what I did there? No? Oh, it’s alright… it’s just that avid backwards is diva. See? Yeah? I’m clever, right? It’s alright, I’m done.

Another part of my week was writing my last blog, but talking about writing a blog in a blog is just weird.  So is talking about how weird it is to talk about writing a blog within a blog.  Oh no, this blog has turned into Inception.

On Thursday of Week 6 Ed and I were hired to help shoot a live Web Broadcast at the Field Museum, for Black History Month.  I haven’t shot anything live since school, so it was fun to get to do that again.  Having a director on headset directing my shots was something that I’d forgotten I enjoy, and I got to get a lot of audience reaction shots, so that was cool.

In my last post I mentioned that Greg had asked me to submit a treatment for the “Real Father’s Initiative” video.  I was thrilled when, aside from a few tweaks, Greg went with my treatment as the video we would shoot.  I was excited to have had early creative input, and that’s one of my favorite parts of the creative process.  Unfortunately, unforeseen circumstances caused our shoot to be postponed, and it looks like we’ll have to rework the idea somewhat, but we will see.  I’m excited to hopefully be able to be a part of that early pre-production process again.

In the weekend in between weeks 6 and 7 I visited my old college town, Bloomington, Indiana, for the first time since getting the internship.  It was fascinating to listen to old friends still talking about school projects, and while I can relate from experience, it was hard to relate with them on the student level anymore, which was kind of a wakeup call of sorts.  Also, I got to see a 35mm film print of “Metropolis”, the new restored version with lost footage, all with a live orchestra, at IU’s new cinema.  It was a mind blowing experience.  I’ve seen “Metropolis” a few times on DVD, but I’d never imagined how powerful it can be in a theater setting.  I was leaning forward in my seat for most of film, in awe of the spectacle.

Coming back from Bloomington, I was excited and refreshed to hit the office.  This week marked my return to transcribing, although I didn’t get to work on it as much as I had planned.  Greg asked me to research stock footage for a project, and I was also given my first editing task!

The stock footage was of super stylized football footage, and I learned that almost any kind of footage you want is already available as stock footage.  My editing assignment, on the other hand, was a great experience.  My task was to take all of the blooper footage I could find from our shoot at Everest Academy and assemble a fun little blooper reel to be shown at a gala dinner.  The shoot had yielded lots of blooper footage, so going through it all was fun to do.  This was also my first time editing on an AVID system, and so that was quite the learning experience.  Although most concepts are the same as Final Cut, which I know well, there are a handful of solid differences that took me some time to get used to.  I still wouldn’t claim to know AVID very well, but I learned enough that I was able to put together a minute and a half long blooper reel that I was very happy with, and I think will be a lot of fun to show at the dinner. Check out this fun video:

Even though the past two weeks have been slower in terms of shoots, I feel as though I’ve grown a lot and learned some interesting things.  Next week I’ll get to meet the famous former intern Dave “The Doctor”, and then the next week is our big trip west, which I am pumped for.  Until next time, my name is Sam and you just read my blog!

-Sam

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