Today was my last day as an intern at Postage. In all honesty, I don't think I was really needed today. I came in around 10 to a weekly meeting between Joe, Allen, and Courtland, whom they hired part time to keep him working for them rather than going off to another internship in Philly. I wish someone had told me they were planning on having a meeting, even if I couldn't be of any help in it since until today I was sorta part of the team. Though, throughout this whole internship, I haven't felt like I was included in the "team". I never had many projects that spaned week to week, so each day I went in, I would have to ask for something new. And like today, when I had something needed to work on, I needed new footage or files or something from them and they said they would give it to me, but would forget about it for an hour before I would bring it up and then they'd get around to it.
All that being said (I think I'm just bitter since today wasn't such a great day) this has been good experience in post-production. It has taught me alot and also what I still have to learn. I think if I'd been more included in "team-ness" I would've gotten more out of it, but I think they may've avoided that because I wasn't permanent and because they didn't know my skill set at the onset and that limited me in what they thought I could do or what they would give to me. I don't know, since I can't read minds and I'm too polite to actually ask them about it. I'm not good with confrontation like that. But I do have a bunch of projects that I worked on to show my class next semester.
Look out, World. Adieu.
[Hours 10.15-1.15]
[Total Hours: 164]
Tuesday, April 19, 2011
Wednesday, April 13, 2011
Finishing things up
Popped in to Postage today to work on/finish up the FUBAR Making-of that I started yesterday. Got the extra assets from Joe and incorporated them successfully. Did some color corrections, though sometimes Final Cut decides to show me the correction while it plays and sometimes it doesn't, so it's a little hard to tell if all the colors work well together. Added some supers of names and titles, but didn't really have time to find a proper background paper or grunge swipe, so it's just white text, which I'm not overly fond of. On that note, added some real quick-and-dirty credits at the end which I'm sure will be changed, if only to add proper titles at the very least and to add that I edited the whole thing together at most. Oh, and also to add all the logos and such for FUBAR, AppMobi, and Postage at the least. Maybe that's what I'll be doing next week, who knows at this point.
[Hours: 12.15-3.15]
[Total Hours: 160]
[Hours: 12.15-3.15]
[Total Hours: 160]
Tuesday, April 12, 2011
FUBAR Follies
Had a strange cycle/deja vu moment this morning when Allen decided to have some cleaning time right when I got in. My first day, I think it was, I began mostly by cleaning surfaces with Windex. Rather fitting, since that first time I was nervous about it since I didn't know where anything went, while today I just picked stuff up, moved it, cleaned, moved it back, threw away trash, etc. I also got to help put together a little shelf with big dreams. It was such a cute little shelf, it needs a theme song or something.
After the little cleaning and building binge, I got to work putting together the FUBAR: Kilroy 24-hr game-making-a-thon(?) video. There was alot of footage to go through, but I'd gone through most of it at the end of last week. I knew they wanted it to be short, so I kept most of the clips under 2 seconds (where possible). The only thing I had to go on for the video was that Allen wanted it to give the feel of what it was like. Until I showed it to them half finished and then they gave me more specific directions
They wanted to make sure to say what it was, where it came from, why they were doing it, who was doing, all that within the first 30 seconds or so. Also, change the music since the file I'd chosen was too overpowering of the video (and they'd just used it for another piece). And for notes I think I had to write down the funniest four word combination: "Helaine pencil fire zombie" which made total sense for its context, but take it out and it's pretty damned funny.
Anyway, they liked the overall feel of what I'd put together by the end of the day. There were some extra shots they suggested and that I added and some other footage they wanted in that I didn't have that Joe will hopefully get to me by the next time I work on it. I'm glad I held my tounge about that. How can I put something in if I don't know it exists or where to get ahold of it (since it wasn't in the footage folder)? That aside, I'm going to try and go in tomorrow after class to finish up the basic layout since Allen said they wanted to show it to some folks on Thursday, and to get a few extra hours in before they kick me out next week.
[Hours: 10-6]
[Total Hours: 157]
After the little cleaning and building binge, I got to work putting together the FUBAR: Kilroy 24-hr game-making-a-thon(?) video. There was alot of footage to go through, but I'd gone through most of it at the end of last week. I knew they wanted it to be short, so I kept most of the clips under 2 seconds (where possible). The only thing I had to go on for the video was that Allen wanted it to give the feel of what it was like. Until I showed it to them half finished and then they gave me more specific directions
They wanted to make sure to say what it was, where it came from, why they were doing it, who was doing, all that within the first 30 seconds or so. Also, change the music since the file I'd chosen was too overpowering of the video (and they'd just used it for another piece). And for notes I think I had to write down the funniest four word combination: "Helaine pencil fire zombie" which made total sense for its context, but take it out and it's pretty damned funny.
Anyway, they liked the overall feel of what I'd put together by the end of the day. There were some extra shots they suggested and that I added and some other footage they wanted in that I didn't have that Joe will hopefully get to me by the next time I work on it. I'm glad I held my tounge about that. How can I put something in if I don't know it exists or where to get ahold of it (since it wasn't in the footage folder)? That aside, I'm going to try and go in tomorrow after class to finish up the basic layout since Allen said they wanted to show it to some folks on Thursday, and to get a few extra hours in before they kick me out next week.
[Hours: 10-6]
[Total Hours: 157]
Tuesday, April 5, 2011
My Own Stuff
Mostly just worked on my own stuff today. I don't know if that's because I just started working on it while I was waiting to be assigned something and when Allen saw me working on it he just let me continue or if they really didn't have much need for me today. Either way, I got my commercial for Allen's class done and even got a bit of help on it. I guess I was just really tired today and didn't actually go asking them for work and was quite content to work on my own stuff. Tried to do stuff for my copywriting class too, but had such writers block that I couldn't. Allen tried to help get me in the right frame of mind to do it, but it didn't really help all the same.
A production crew came to interview Allen and me for a new promotional video for PCA&D. We were for the internship part of the reel, go figure, right? I think I rambled a bit, but hopefully they got what they needed. They had to get some B-reel footage of me working in FinalCutPro too, so Allen had given me footage from the 24-hr-Game-Making-a-thon they'd done a few weeks back to do a <2:00 video of "what it was like" for them. I'll be working on that next week and the following week and that'll be it.
I finally remembered to have Allen sign the paper that says he'll be a good internship mentor and it asks when the intership is to be over and he asked me when I wanted that to be. I told him truthfully that I had hoped we'd be done by the end of the semester, so that's when he set the end date for, whether or not I have the full hours or not, he's not going to tattle and I guess I won't either. I'd been good about logging my hours here, but it turns out that that fear was unfounded. I'm also not sure if PCA&D actually asks for a timecard, but I've been going in about once a week for 5 1/2 months and I think alot of interns go in 2-5 times a week for only 3 months. Also, I'm not even sure how acurate I've been with my time log. I usually round to the nearest hour or half-hour rather than quarter-hour and sometimes if I felt I hadn't done much that day yet stayed longer than I'd planned, I'll round down the hour if I've stayed till a :15 or :45.
[Hours: 9.30-5.30]
[Total Hours: 149]
A production crew came to interview Allen and me for a new promotional video for PCA&D. We were for the internship part of the reel, go figure, right? I think I rambled a bit, but hopefully they got what they needed. They had to get some B-reel footage of me working in FinalCutPro too, so Allen had given me footage from the 24-hr-Game-Making-a-thon they'd done a few weeks back to do a <2:00 video of "what it was like" for them. I'll be working on that next week and the following week and that'll be it.
I finally remembered to have Allen sign the paper that says he'll be a good internship mentor and it asks when the intership is to be over and he asked me when I wanted that to be. I told him truthfully that I had hoped we'd be done by the end of the semester, so that's when he set the end date for, whether or not I have the full hours or not, he's not going to tattle and I guess I won't either. I'd been good about logging my hours here, but it turns out that that fear was unfounded. I'm also not sure if PCA&D actually asks for a timecard, but I've been going in about once a week for 5 1/2 months and I think alot of interns go in 2-5 times a week for only 3 months. Also, I'm not even sure how acurate I've been with my time log. I usually round to the nearest hour or half-hour rather than quarter-hour and sometimes if I felt I hadn't done much that day yet stayed longer than I'd planned, I'll round down the hour if I've stayed till a :15 or :45.
[Hours: 9.30-5.30]
[Total Hours: 149]
Wednesday, March 23, 2011
Waiting to Wait
Yesterday was not an overly eventful day at Postage. Allen gave me a new Dutch Apple promo to fix up the way the client asked. This client is...difficult in that she doesn't seem to know what she wants and contradicts herself in what she asks for. It can be very frustrating, especially when you can't just come out and tell her she's asking for something oxymoronic. So, did that for a while. Joe asked for a vecorized logo of the salon they're making a website for. Got to work on the Chameleon Club documentary a little bit too, but that was putting in a cut paper animation for bands that we only see pictures or performances of, but aren't talking to the documentary. That took a while since I felt the need to render after I put in each lable, and it took a good 4-10 minutes apiece, depending on how long the paper needed to stay on screen. So I would do something that took one minute, and then wait 4-10 while it rendered. I took the time to do dishes and clean up some stuff around the studio since I shot my product commercial in the evening and I wanted things to look nice. I don't think that counts towards internship hours, though.
[Hours: 10-6]
[Total Hours: 141]
[Hours: 10-6]
[Total Hours: 141]
Tuesday, March 15, 2011
A Lesson in Frustration
So, today was a bunch of little puzzle things that just got frustrating, but in a good way. Not "fun" persay, but "challenging".
My first assignment wasn't a challenge at all, since it was simply to watch the full Chameleon Club documentary all the way through. It was a bit under an hour and it's not all finished yet, but I got to point out certain things to Allen that I may not have been able to otherwise, such as the flashing color bits in the last section to make it look more like old footage rather than new footage, but there was so much of it that it became a distraction.
There was an entire section that had one long clip that didn't need to be so long, and yet, didn't have any others, but needed some. My job was to cut down that one clip and try to find others to fit within that section. This included going through a whole bunch of extra footage looking for something that wasn't there. This was a little frustrating.
The next job I had was to find when interviewees first appeared, write down the time, their name, and their title. This was frustrating because I didn't know who most of these people were and half the clips didn't tell me who they were. Allen said that he was "testing my research skills" to which I replied, tounge-in-cheek, "Well, I was a soc research major for three years and I found that I try to find the easiest way of finding something out" and in this case, that was asking Allen. He laughed at that.
Finally, I had to find the name titles that Jason had made and make one for each of the interviewees. That took me mostly till the end. I came up with a color scheme for everyone. Regular employees get red, artists get orange, managers and owners get gree, Rich Ruoff got blue, since he founded it, and others outside the club scene got yellow. Rendered them all out and that was it.
Also, gave Allen the B-roll that we shot in DC. He found a stock site that has some footage for other places, so he may not use the stuff we shot, but he did say one of my shots looked like a good shot, so even if he doesn't use it, I know it's nice. So yea, that was basically it for today.
[Hours: 10-5]
[Total Hours: 133]
My first assignment wasn't a challenge at all, since it was simply to watch the full Chameleon Club documentary all the way through. It was a bit under an hour and it's not all finished yet, but I got to point out certain things to Allen that I may not have been able to otherwise, such as the flashing color bits in the last section to make it look more like old footage rather than new footage, but there was so much of it that it became a distraction.
There was an entire section that had one long clip that didn't need to be so long, and yet, didn't have any others, but needed some. My job was to cut down that one clip and try to find others to fit within that section. This included going through a whole bunch of extra footage looking for something that wasn't there. This was a little frustrating.
The next job I had was to find when interviewees first appeared, write down the time, their name, and their title. This was frustrating because I didn't know who most of these people were and half the clips didn't tell me who they were. Allen said that he was "testing my research skills" to which I replied, tounge-in-cheek, "Well, I was a soc research major for three years and I found that I try to find the easiest way of finding something out" and in this case, that was asking Allen. He laughed at that.
Finally, I had to find the name titles that Jason had made and make one for each of the interviewees. That took me mostly till the end. I came up with a color scheme for everyone. Regular employees get red, artists get orange, managers and owners get gree, Rich Ruoff got blue, since he founded it, and others outside the club scene got yellow. Rendered them all out and that was it.
Also, gave Allen the B-roll that we shot in DC. He found a stock site that has some footage for other places, so he may not use the stuff we shot, but he did say one of my shots looked like a good shot, so even if he doesn't use it, I know it's nice. So yea, that was basically it for today.
[Hours: 10-5]
[Total Hours: 133]
Saturday, March 12, 2011
Bits of Everything
I forgot again to write about last Tuesday. Oops. I had to come in late anyway because Allen and Joe had some meeting that they can't tell me about yet. Hopefully I'll find out at somepoint, but not yet. Did 4 things on Tuesday:
1. Vecorized icons for Stabb Gunner
2. Researched hair salon web sites for Joe since they'll be making one for a new salon outside of Philly and they wanted to know what good sites were already out there.
3. Rearranging images for theFictory website. That took a bit, measuring out new columns and new rows and resizing images and such to already specified dimentions.
4. Shrunk down 3 new series of images for a new game Joe's working on.
Overall, it was a very relaxing day. I still amuse myself realizing when I'm "Joe's Intern" vs. "Allen's Intern". The assignments are always different. Both are nevery quite out of my ability, but just enough challenge to not be boring.
[Hours: 11.30-4.30]
[Total Hours: 126]
1. Vecorized icons for Stabb Gunner
2. Researched hair salon web sites for Joe since they'll be making one for a new salon outside of Philly and they wanted to know what good sites were already out there.
3. Rearranging images for theFictory website. That took a bit, measuring out new columns and new rows and resizing images and such to already specified dimentions.
4. Shrunk down 3 new series of images for a new game Joe's working on.
Overall, it was a very relaxing day. I still amuse myself realizing when I'm "Joe's Intern" vs. "Allen's Intern". The assignments are always different. Both are nevery quite out of my ability, but just enough challenge to not be boring.
[Hours: 11.30-4.30]
[Total Hours: 126]
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