Last Day

So today was my last day at the internship. Kind of sad, I wish I could have stayed a little while longer. It's unfortunate that I have to leave just as I'm beginning to really get into the groove of things here. I've learned a lot, though, and even managed to help out some, so I think it's been well worth it. Today was a good day to end on, doing some tough editing to wrap up my time here. We brought in the footage that we shot yesterday and managed to throw together a rough cut of the whole 30-second spot. It was tricky, because the vision for the commercial hadn't quite been refined enough to provide a solid shooting plan, so we were flying by the seat of our pants to some extent when we shot everything. But, we moved some stuff around, made some plans to cheat the audio a bit, and generally managed to get something worthwhile thrown together. I felt pretty good about it.

I got a DVD with all of the projects on it that I was a part of while I was here, including the two commercials that I edited almost entirely alone. That'll be a fun thing to include in my demo reel as I work on that this next year. I also got a really neat card singing goodbye card signed by all the people at the office. And a cool BBM Studios shirt, so I can show off the company a little. :-) I'll definitely miss the people here, especially the guys in the video department. Hopefully someday I'll be back to visit Rapid City and be able to drop by and say hi to them.

All in all, it's been a good time over here. I am excited to get back though. Not too excited about the 15+ hour trip ahead of me tomorrow morning, but it'll be worth it to get back to friends and family in Arkansas.

Last Weekend in Rapid City

So this was my last weekend here. I'll be sticking around for a few more days to cram in a bit more on-location experience with the internship, then I'll be heading back down to Arkansas for the rest of the summer. Tomorrow will be a commercial shoot, then we'll start editing on Tuesday. After that, the shooting schedule for the second commercial will determine if I stay or not. If we're able to schedule it fairly quickly, like for Wednesday or even maybe Thursday, I'll stay around for that one. Otherwise, I'll be one my way come Wednesday. Tomorrow should be fun. The basic idea for a series of three commercials is people who have the worst jobs in the world, and the commercials are advertising online business classes with a university in South Dakota, and the idea is that by taking online classes and getting a degree, you can get out of your terrible job. The one we're shooting tomorrow is basically a guy whose job is being a human piñata. So we're going to try and hang him from a swing in a backyard and have a bunch of little kids in birthday party hats run at him with wiffle bats. :-)

This weekend was fairly relaxing, and I also got in some solo shooting experience. There's a volunteer building project going on just outside of town. Basically, they're building a playground in seven days, using only volunteer workers and donated materials and equipment. Our company donated a website for the organization that's in charge of the whole thing, and they sent me over there Friday morning and Saturday afternoon to get some still images and some video footage of the ongoing construction work. So that was pretty fun. It was nice to be trusted with shooting something on my own, even if it's a relatively minor project, and one that's very easy to do.

In other news, I've been digging deeper into After Effects, doing some tutorials and things like that when I'm not busy with internship work. I'm loving this program more and more every time I learn something new. I'm at the point right now where I can do basic stuff relatively quickly and easily, and I sort of have a feel for how some of the more advanced things are done, but I'm still just barely scratching the surface. Hopefully next semester I'll be able to get my hands on some books and get some cool stuff done, maybe even YouTube or Vimeo-worthy, or, God willing, demo reel-worthy.

Almost Done

So I'm almost done with my internship. I'll have my hours officially completed before the week is out, in fact. It's too bad I can't stick around longer. I feel like I'm only just now starting to get into the groove of how things work around here. I'm definitely going to stay a little into next week, and hopefully be involved with one more video shoot before I head out.

The past couple of days have been fairly relaxed. The main thing that's going on is the scramble to get a script/talent/locations ready for the new commercials we're starting on next week. Other than that, I've been editing a 30-second spot for a local restaurant. That actually received official approval yesterday, so it'll be sent to the TV stations soon, and that'll hit local television this week I think. It's an exciting feeling, knowing that something you've worked on personally is out there like that. We also got approval on the other Reptile Gardens commercial, the one with all the crazy green-screening that had to be done. We were just a wee bit nervous about that one at first, because we knew that if they wanted any changes made to it before it went out, it would take us forever, because we only keyed out the footage that was being used in that particular edit. So that was a relief, getting approval for that one.

Today I'll be working on a digital billboard in After Effects. In addittion to TV commercials, that's another thing that my supervisor does a lot of work on. Basically, instead of just a static image to be put on a billboard, it's an 8-second animation to be placed on a digital motion billboard. Pretty fun stuff, I get to put my graphic design into action as well as learn some After Effects animation. I know the basics of key-framing, but it takes a heck of a lot of work to actually get something looking nice!

More Editing

So today I didn't do much, but I did get to do some editing. Before I left for Germany, we did a shoot for a local restaurant, and because of a bunch of other high-priority stuff that came up while I was gone, the footage was still ready to be edited after I got back. So I worked on that today. It was a fairly quick edit, much quicker than I was expecting. One of the other video guys looked it over after I did my first rough cut, and he only had one or two small changes to make, so I guess I did a good job. I finished up a first version right before I left this afternoon, and it'll be ready to be sent off for approval as soon as we can get around to it.

I basically have about a week left before I'll have officially completed enough hours to get credit for my internship. I'd like to stick around and get some more experience, but since I wasn't able to get a paying job on the side, I'll probably end up heading back down to Arkansas once I have my hours done.

Green-Screen Magic

So my supervisor and I are pretty happy with ourselves after the results of yesterday's work. Neither of us has hardly any experience keying green-screen footage, and the footage we were working with was especially bad, since he also doesn't have much experience shooting green-screen. Anyway, we slaved over each little clip, spending sometimes up to 45 minutes trying to get rid of one little problem area. Somehow or other, we came out on the other side with one or two really solid techniques for achieving a decent key on what was otherwise a terrible shot.

I now have a lot more experience with After Effects, which is quite exciting. I did a whole lot of rotoscoping yesterday, to clean up some of the areas of the clips that just would not fix themselves through normal keying techniques. Today, I'll be putting the last touches on a clip that I didn't have time to finish yesterday. After that, probably not much will be going on till next week. I think I've been requested by some of the people downstairs, since they need some extra help doing some Photoshop work today, and we don't have much else going on with video for now.

Took a Trip

So, I just recently got back from a wonderful trip back to Europe for a few days. I headed over there to see my little sister graduate high school. Ridiculous! There's no way she's old enough to graduate! Craziness... anyways, the weather for grad was fabulous. It rained a little before and a little after grad day, but the day itself was just about perfect. So that was cool. I got to see all the people there who still remember me, which was fun. Took pictures with people whenever I got the chance. In a couple years, there won't be anyone there except teachers who remember me! That's a bit of a crazy thought... Hopefully I'll be heading back there in about three years, though, to see my little brother graduate as well. That's a hopefully at this point, since I have absolutely no idea where I'll be and what I'll be doing in three years!

Good trip. Now I'm back, and being assaulted by jet lag. Which is weird, since I almost never get major jet lag coming back this way. For whatever reason, I was dead tired when I got back, fell asleep on the couch, woke up at 1 in the morning and completely threw off my internal clock. I think I'm almost back to normal, though, which is nice.

We're doing some green-screen keying at work now. My first day back, I worked on a couple shots for a commercial we're editing. It's difficult work. The guys there really aren't set up for green-screen. We have limited equipment, and nobody there really has any experience doing it, so this is a learning experience for me and for them. Needless to say, the footage is really, really difficult to key, and we're spending an average of about 30-45 minutes per 5-second shot to get it looking decent. The commercial's still going to be obviously green-screened, which is unfortunate, but we'll be coming out the other side with a whole lot more experience in what the problems are for green-screen shooting, and what the solutions are for keying bad footage. Woot!

Ow... in a good way

So today I finally went hiking. It was great fun. I think we got to the start of the trail around 11:30 or so. Took us a little under 2 hours to get to the top. Took some pictures, ate lunch, climbed around on the rocks for a while. Then back down in about an hour. Very tiring, but very enjoyable and well worth it. I've got a monster of a sunburn now, but I'm sure it'll be gone in a day or two. Just in time to get to Germany! Which I'm quite excited about. I'll fly out very early Monday morning. Right now, though, I'm off to nurse my wounds, and be a bum in front of the TV while my arms recuperate...

Super Long Day

So today was super long. I was up early this morning so I could be at the office at 7:30am to head out to a shoot. We're doing a commercial for a local restaurant, so we had to be in and out before they open at 11am. I was basically a grip, which is what I'll probably have to be for a while until something comes along where we're not so pressed for time (which might be a while, given the natue of small-market advertising). Eventually, though, my supervisor wants to hand me the reigns for a project. Today I was basically setting lights, handling equipment, occasionally offering a second opinion, and other such things like that. Including having my hands show up in the edge of a shot to be the waiter setting a plate on a table. :-)

After the morning shoot, we piddled around the office for a little bit, and I captured all the footage into Final Cut. I'll be editing the spot, which is exciting. Then we left in the early afternoon to go shoot footage for two more commercials for a different restaurant. For this one, we unfortunately didn't have much of a script to go off of. We had written narration for both spots, and a very vague shot list that had been handed down from the big boss, but that was about it. He showed up at the beginning and gave us a really quick run-down of the sort of thing he was looking for, then took off and left us to it. Naturally, the restaurant had an unexpected lunch rush, meaning we started way later than we wanted to. The shoot took way longer than expected, and we basically scrambled around like ants trying to get everything done as quickly as possible and still have it look good (this was actually one of the projects my supervisor was hoping to have me shoot, but because of all the delays and such, it didn't work out. I did get to try out a couple shots, though, which was fun).

All in all, I finally ended up back at the house at around 7:15pm, about 12 hours and 5 minutes after leaving this morning. Quite the tiring day, but it was good experience. Tomorrow should be pretty slow, and I'll most likely be done early, which will be a nice follow-up (my supervisor even offered to have me just take the day off, but I see no point in that).

This weekend should be fun. Plans are, once again, to head up to Harney Peak. This time the weather is supposed to be good, and I'll be going with a group of guys instead of on my own.

Yay Commercial!

So today I got to see the finishing touches put on a commercial that I edited. That was quite exciting. My supervisor did the little tweaks like color correction and audio sweetening, mainly because I don't know enough about the program to do it myself. The edits themselves were all mine, and he didn't even have to make very many changes! That was the really exciting part. So sometime soon there'll be a commercial for Reptile Gardens on local TV that I edited. I'll find out later from my supervisor if I can post the finished product on YouTube for people to see. If not, I'm sure it'll go up on the studio's YouTube page, so I'll probably be able to post a link anyway. And... that's about all from today.

Flash Flood Warning? Sure.

So today was pretty relaxed. I've started the hunt for another place that I might have to stay for a couple days in June. Frank has some company that might or might not be visiting this way, and there's probably not enough room in the house for all of us. I'm not too worried about where I'll stay though... I figure if nothing else, I can always just sleep in my car for a couple days. :-) Hopefully I'll be able to find someone with a spare room, though, or at least be able to camp out in the church building or something fun like that. Of course, if the company doesn't end up coming while I'm here, it won't matter anyway.

You might guess that today was a fairly uneventful day since I spent so much time on that one topic. And you would have guessed correctly. Probably the most exciting thing that happened today was the flash flood warning in the afternoon. It started raining, very hard, and didn't let up for quite a long time. It even tried to hail for a couple of minutes. I was watching episodes of a "Newhart" marathon when this text started scrolling across the top telling me that a flash flood warning had been issued my area. Fun stuff. No flash flood, of course, just the warning. Which is nice.

Fun Friday... Almost Fun Saturday

So Friday was good. I spent the majority of my time at the internship working on the commercial that we just shot. My supervisor was only in for the morning, so he handed the tape off to me and had me start piecing it together, which was an exciting responsibility. I think I've actually gotten a decent start on it. Obviously, he'll have to do some final tweaking before it's really done, but I think I didn't do too shabby of a job for my first time editing a professional TV commercial. Not to mention the fact that I did it all on Avid, which I still just barely know my way around. If I confine myself to just simple cuts, though, I've pretty much got the shortcuts down, so I'm making progress.

Today was supposed to be spent out on the hiking trails, specifically Harney Peak, which is the highest mountain in South Dakota and the highest point in the USA east of the Rockies. But, the more I look at the weather forecasts for today, the more I'm thinking I'll be postponing that till next weekend. Everything I'm reading says mostly cloudy (some go as far as misty or foggy), with a slight chance of thunderstorms. I'm sure I'd still have a good time, but I'd rather postpone a possibly good time and wait for a more certain great time. And next week is supposed to be sunny, so I'm not worried.

Commercial!

So today was a pretty fun day. I showed up at the office at 9:30, and we headed straight off to a back yard where we unloaded all the gear for a commercial shoot. We're doing a thirty second spot for Reptile Gardens, one of the big tourist attractions in the Rapid City area. They're exactly what the name implies they are; they've got alligators, porcupines, frogs, snakes, all that fun stuff for people to see. If you're from Tanzania, they're like the Meserani Snake Park. Though here, they're probably a lot safer about things, this being America and all. Which is good or bad, depending on your perspective. :-)

Because it's Reptile Gardens, our commercial involved a lot of cool animals, which was fun and tiring at the same time. The animals were awesome, but we were also at the mercy of their cooperativeness, or lack thereof. So we actually ended up taking about twice as long as my supervisor had hoped, just because we were constantly having to wait for the birds or snakes or porcupines to decide that they wanted to do what we wanted them to do. Eventually we got it all done, though. I was mainly a gofer for the afternoon, moving lights, plugging in extension cords, setting up and tearing down tripods, moving plants around, all that good stuff.

So today was fun. I enjoyed myself, and was thoroughly tired-out after a day of doing some actual work for once. I might even get to do some of the actual shooting on the next commercial we work on, which I'm even more excited about. We'll be doing that early next week, so I'll have updates about that when it happens.

Long Day

So today was fairly long for me. I was up at 5:30 this morning so I could be at the office by 7:00am. The reason for such an utter unhealthy hour was to be on time to a marketing conference in Deadwood, where some of our own RSA employees were giving a presentation on social media networking. I tagged along as the video guy to record their presentation for posterity and possible later reuse, maybe on the website, depending on what we decide to do with it. We were at the conference for quite a while before it even came around to our turn to present, and then I had to stand at the tripod for two straight hours filming, so it was a bit of a tiring day. It was nice, though, to have somewhat of a change from what so far has been fairly monotonous office work.

Tomorrow should be super fun. Starting at around 10am, we'll be going out to do a shoot for a new commercial we're making for one of the big clients in Rapid City, which I'm really excited for. This will be the first time I've worked hands-on with a truly professional video project. Hopefully tomorrow I'll be able to update in more detail about what exactly I'll get to do.

Some Slow Days

So yesterday and today were kind of slow. We don't really have much going on at the office right now. Mainly we're just waiting for the shooting days to finally roll around. Today I did a little bit of work on a short commercial, mainly hunting down some sound effects online and getting everything synced up with the video. I also did get to go out on a real quick shoot with one of the main video guys. He's putting together a video for the technical college in town, and was shooting an interview with the owner of a construction company who was talking about why he likes hiring graduates from there. Nothing too fancy, though I did get a few pointers on setting up lights for an interview; lighting is something I'm terrible at, so that was good for me. Things should start picking up even more tomorrow. I'll be at the office bright and early, ready to leave at about 7:30am to record some of the presentations at a conference in Deadwood, about an hour's drive from Rapid City. Then on Thursday we'll be shooting a commercial, which should be exciting.

Some Sightseeing

So this morning, I went to the college-age Sunday school class at the church nearby. As I expected from first impressions of the service I attended last week, the class was very small. Apart from me, there was the teacher's daughter (who normally attends a different class, but came to ours this morning because there wasn't anyone there), and one other girl. So it's not quite what I'm normally used to, but it's not that big of a deal. We talked about some useful stuff, so it was an okay morning.

The rest of the day was mainly spent doing some sightseeing around the Black Hills. I saw Mt. Rushmore, the in-progress Crazy Horse Memorial, and a quaint little place called the Cosmos Mystery Zone, or something like that. I'm not quite sure what I was expecting from that last one. There were signs for hundreds of miles on my way into Rapid City, and all over the place between there and the actual site, but all they said, apart from the name, were things like "Feel it!", "Experience it!", "Survive it!" or other such nonsense. It was actually fairly interesting, though definitely nothing deserving of all the ominous signage. It's one of those "gravity hill" places where things look like they're defying the laws of physics, peoples' heights change, all that fun stuff. And they had a crazy-house setup that we got to walk through. Seen it all before, but it was still interesting.

Mt. Rushmore was cool. I'd been there before, but it was a long time ago, and all I really remember is the bitter cold. Fortunately today saw absolutely gorgeous weather, so I didn't have to go through that again. Crazy Horse Memorial is interesting, though more so for the history and museums and such than for the carving itself, which is really cool, but still far, far from being complete.

And that was my day.

Saturdays... ahhh...

So not much to mention today. I applied to three more jobs this afternoon, bringing the running total up to six. The one that I have the most hope for at this point is a bookstore in the mall. The person I talked to there was apologetic about the fact that they're "only looking for super-part-time." I was thrilled to tell them that that's exactly what I'm looking for. So hopefully I can expect to hear back from them. We'll see, at least. Didn't do much else beyond that, just standard Saturday relaxation. I decided against going around on a B-roll shoot; mainly on account of my wallet not wanting to pay for more gas than it needs to until I have an income.

Tomorrow morning I'll get to check out the college-age Sunday school class at the church I'm going to. Hopefully that'll be a good time. I know absolutely nothing about it, so we'll see what happens.

Thumbnails and Stuff

So today was another fairly slow day at the internship. Everything will pick up next week when we start the commercial shoots, but until then things are just slow. Today I catalogued some stock footage DVDs, sending the files through Photoshop to create thumbnail pages that give a quick preview of what sort of footage is on each disk. Busy work, really. But I'm okay with a little busy work, as long as I get to do something exciting later. With some of the downtime, I brought in my hard drive and rendered out a YouTube-compressed version of the final project for my Intro to Cinema class that I worked on recently. "Yams" is now available at http://www.youtube.com/robertheadrick. Check it out if you've got 10 minutes to spare.

The weekend's looking to be fairly relaxing. My supervisor sent an XL1 home with me, so if I get bored on Saturday I'll drive around town and shoot some B-roll for fun. I'll probably head out to Mt. Rushmore on Sunday, so I might even take it with me there. In any case, I'll be taking some still photographs as well, so I should finally have some Facebook material to show from my summer. Looking forward to next week, and the commercial shoot!

The Grind

So today I got more of a taste of just everyday humdrum work. My supervisor will be out for a couple of days, and there aren't really any big projects going on at the office, so today was mostly just busy work for me. We had a stack of old DVDs of commercials the company has created over the years that aren't backed up anywhere, and were just cluttering the desk space. So I went through and recorded them into .mov files through Avid, then catalogued them by company name. Quite boring, and lots of downtime while the files are exporting to the .mov format. So I watched a few tutorial videos on lighting, and did some preliminary brainstorming on new ways to incorporate embedded videos into the company's website. And that was pretty much my day. I think next week is supposed to pick up a bit more; we're going to do some shooting for a new commercial. I've already been through the very daunting task of being asked to write out a shot list - I'd never written a shot list for a professional commercial before! And these professionals are asking me to do it like it's just another piece of paperwork! Yipes. Welcome to the real world, Robert. It's exciting.

I'm an Avid Learner

So today I got to take some baby steps in learning Avid Media Composer. My supervisor had a 1:20 ad that he had edited to go on a company's website. Apparently they liked it so much that they requested that it be shortened into a 60-second TV commercial, and I was given the job of re-editing a few of the clips to trim off the excess 20 seconds. Of course, it was more like my supervisor doing the editing, with me as his robot, because I had to continually be reminded of how to do things in Avid. All of my Final Cut shortcuts that come so naturally do nothing for me in Avid! But it was fun, and I enjoyed it. I think I could pick up Avid fairly quickly if I had enough reason to use it.

No word back yet from the TV stations. So far it's just the internship for me, and no income yet. My supervisor faxed my paperwork to the right people this afternoon, so hopefully we'll be hearing back fairly soon from them on whether or not I'll be able to get paid for the internship.

Yay for Video Billboards

Well, I've finished up day two of the internship. Today I got to do some work on a piece of actual advertising. Not a lot of work, but I got to do it! We started work on an 8-second piece that will run on a digital billboard. I did a little bit of animation with some of the titles, as well as doing the rotoscoping to have text pass behind the main character in the shot. I hope my supervisor will have more After Effects work for me to do, since I definitely do not know enough about this program! Today was a combination of fun and some frustrated re-working of mistakes.

I also turned in my applications, with resume attached, to three different TV stations in town to try and get some part-time work while I'm here. All of them have told me that they're taking applications, but aren't really looking for any new employees right now. So I've still got my fingers crossed on that. I figure I might just go ahead and hunt around for some generic retail jobs as well, just in case the TV stations fall through.

Welcome to RSA

So today was the first day of my internship at Robert Sharp & Associates. I'm working with the video and animation section of the company, called BBM Studios. The first day was pretty basic. I got the grand tour of the offices and was introduced to enough people that I'm definitely not going to remember very many names tomorrow. Then I was given a few minor tasks to do. I logged two tapes from an earlier shoot, set up a more recent tape to be captured for editing, and got started cataloguing all the video and audio equipment so the studio can start renting them out. I'll be working on that some more tomorrow, then we'll see where I get to go from there.

I made a quick visit to several TV studios after work this afternoon and picked up some applications. I'll be filling those out tonight and making the rounds again tomorrow. Hopefully I'll be able to set up some part-time work fairly quickly.

In other news, it looks like I might get paid for the internship after all! Nothing's certain yet, so I can't celebrate till after all the paperwork goes through. Apparently South Dakota recently started a program where the state will give money to companies who hire interns for the summer. My supervisor didn't find out about it till very recently, so I'm filling out the paperwork tonight to see if I can qualify for that. I would be absolutely thrilled if it works out!

Nothing much else is going on for the time being. I'm reading through one of my textbooks for next fall, "Making Documentary Films and Videos" by Barry Hampe. I'm pretty darn excited for that class. Reading the book makes me want to go out and film something, so I have a sneaking suspicion that I'm going to enjoy the class.

Welcome to Rapid City

Well, I'm here. I made it safely after just a little over 15 hours of travelling. Fortunately, I had John-Mark with me to drive some of the way up to Sioux Falls, where I dropped him off, so I didn't have to do the whole trip straight through. Still very tiring, though, and I slept well last night. :-)

To start off with, South Dakota is extremely gorgeous. Coming from Sioux Falls across the State, I had about 300 miles or so of nothing but scenery (and billboards for tourist attractions). Hopefully I'll get a chance to do a little sightseeing while I'm here. Apparently Mt. Rushmore is about 20 miles down the road, so I'll definitely go take a look at that one of these weekends.

I'm living with a retired guy named Frank. He just recently lost his wife, so he's looking forward to having someone else in the house to talk to again. He's a nice guy, very relaxed. He's been living in Rapid City since 1949... so just about 3 times the length of time I've been alive! He's retired, and has a hobby researching family geneology. So his house is very neat and tidy, and his office has books and papers and computer equipment piled up to the ceiling!

I visited Frank's church with him this morning. It's a small place, definitely not what I was expecting or hoping for, but I think it'll be okay. I think God has had in mind all along for this summer to be a little different from what I was planning. Which shouldn't surprise me any more, since that's usually the way things turn out!

Tomorrow morning I'll start my internship at Robert Sharp & Associates. I'll be working there 30 hours a week to have my required hours completed in about 5 weeks or so. All in all, I should be up here for around 6 weeks, since I'll be taking a week out of working to go to Germany and see my little sister graduate! I'm pretty excited about that. Tomorrow afternoon I'll also be heading around to some of the TV stations in town to see if I can get some part-time work to pay the bills. 

Speaking of bills, praise God for Frank! Because of him taking me in, I won't have to pay any rent at all, which would have destoryed my finances for the summer. Plus he's one of those guys that won't even let you look at the bill when he takes you out for lunch. So that's been a direct answer to prayer. The next thing I'm waiting for God to work out is the part-time job, so I'll hopefully be able to give an update on that soon.