Four weeks in and I’m batting 1000. Four flights with the SolidLine crew, and four flights delayed at least an hour, in two cases almost four hours. The team is starting to think I’m cursed and I can’t blame them. Other than that things are going great!
With all of the traveling and shoots we’ve been doing, Monday was one of my first days in the office. I was able to jump right in doing some sound design and mixing for one of their more narrative projects. Sound is what I have the most experience in and it felt good to be able to contribute to the post production side of SolidLine.
Tuesday I finished up some of the mixing and I helped add a few different styles of music to a project coming up. I learned a lot about giving the client options. Greg picked out three songs, each in vastly different styles, and I put each of them to picture. From there we were able to export the video and send it to the client so they could pick which one they liked the best. It is much more efficient to show the client the music with picture so they can get a feeling of how everything will go together, instead of just sending them the songs.
That afternoon we headed out to Midway for our six o’clock flight to New York’s LaGuardia airport so we could drive out to Yale. Four hours later we actually took off and landed in New York around one in the morning. After the two hour drive to New Haven, Connecticut we ended up going to bed (or in my case going to floor) around three thirty in the morning. We woke up at eight, hit the hot tub, and groggily went out to shoot.
It turns out all the traveling and lack of sleep was worth it though because we got an awesome room at Yale that looked very Ivy League. I learned about set dressing and how to make the background of an interview look as good as possible. We moved some books around on shelves, maneuvered chairs and couches, and lit up the background to insure that everything looked professional and interesting, including the awesome stone fireplace. Luckily the interview itself was great and the background complimented the great footage and facts for the patient safety documentary SolidLine is currently producing.
After the shoot we packed up and headed back to LaGuardia. When we got their our flight was already delayed, but we were put on standby for an earlier flight to Chicago. An hour later we watched our standby flight leave without us and we ended up having to wait another two hours. In that time Greg also got a call that one of our cases didn’t make it to the Southwest holding area and wasn’t labeled with our flight info. This created some unneeded turmoil and Greg and Michael coming to the conclusion that, most likely, the case would not be there when got to Chicago.
When we eventually got back to Chicago we weren’t surprised to find that, as predicted, our case hadn’t been so lucky. We packed up what we had and hoped that the case would find it’s way back before our shoot on Saturday (this was Wednesday). Greg and Michael drove me back to the suburbs and we all said a half-asleep goodbye with another successful shoot under our belts.
Check out my video of our Yale shoot!
The next couple of days were low key. I edited the video that’s on here, updated the SolidLine Flickr page with my pictures (check it out), and finished up some sound design for one of the videos. Saturday is when things picked up again. Geez these guys even work weekends! I met the crew (luckily our case arrived at 4pm Friday after Michael spent many hours on the phone) at UIC and we shot another great interview with Rick Boothman from University of Michigan. We have filmed at UIC a few times so we know the lay of the land and we were able to get everything set up and ready to go in around an hour. The interview itself went excellent, more great information that is going to help the video messaging. Plus we were all packed up and back on the road by noon! Now I could relax and take it easy for the rest of the weekend!
A month into my internship I have already learned so much. I now feel comfortable setting things up on the shoots while anticipating what the rest of the crew wants and needs to get the best shots possible. I have been given some projects to work on that I am really enjoying and I appreciate the chance to get as much experience as possible. I’m sure these next few months will only get better.
Dave ‘The Doctor’ Rokos
State count:
This week I went to New York and Connecticut, total count – 12.
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