Last Post

So this is my last post on the blog. I just filled out my paper work so I'm technically done now. Here's some interesting news for my post-grad career so far. I'm actually doing something that kinda involves journalism. Who knew? I'm starting to review films for a blog called the awardpicks.com. I'm going to start to blog about film, which in case if you didn't know me is an obsession of mine. I've never written formally for a blog before, but have written film reviews. It's for a film called the Disappearance of Alice Creed. You can find the review at this link.

http://www.awardspicks.com/blog/2010/08/the-disappearance-of-alice-creed-best-left-unfound/

I would love to build up a resume of reviews like this to possibly one day write for a publication, or trade.

Last Week at Chisel by Sarah Grant

My last few weeks at Chisel have been a learning experience to say the least. I was given the opportunity to go on a six-day shoot in Hailey and Boise, Idaho. The shoot was for two spots with Idaho Power. I worked as a production assistant - running errands, working as a grip, doing craft services, and any other jobs that came up that they needed me for. The shoot was also really inspirational. First, we spent a few days in Hailey at Sagebrush Ranch. The trainers there use equine therapy to help physically and emotionally handicapped children, adults and veterans. They "provide a unique form of therapy through the use of a horse." There were so many people there with stories of miracles and happiness. I really enjoyed being a part of that shoot. The connection to Idaho Power is that some of its employees volunteer their time there. The commercial will be on their facebook page if you're interested. The other shoot in Boise, was with Global Gardens. It is an organization that helps refugees grow food for their families, and they also sell veggies to restaurants and people in the Boise area. Idaho Power owns a large piece of land and allows Global Gardens to use it for these purposes. I spent a lot of the first day of the shoot with refugee children (making sure our gear didn't get touched...) It was really interesting to talk and learn from them, they've gone through so much at such a young age.

Below is a video I compiled of all of the work that I've done here, along with descriptions of my contributions. It's long, so feel free to scrub though if you get bored. But be sure to watch the piece for Providence at Work - I did voice-over selects (went through hours of footage of people saying sound bites) and edited the piece. It was then passed on to the chief editor to tweak, but I spent many many hours editing it.

The End In DC.

Hello all for the last time this summer. I am ending my internship here in the Capital on a high note. Even as I write this on my final day, I' am cutting one final story that will be airing as I fly home, my sixth story to reach Air. My time with WAMU has been amazing. The amount of learning, voice and story development, and the people I met and worked with have made my time here a very positive experience. I will miss the time spent in the news room here, but I know in time that Ill be right back in it. Hope everyone had a great summer, and if you need me I'll be in the Clark Fork until school starts up again. Peace out.

French internship complete!

I’m back from my internship in Perpignan, France. It was a whirlwind of international reporting, complete with translation, videography, writing, still photography, and website development.

This internship was an excellent opportunity to utilize and hone the skills I learned throughout the last year of grad school at UM. I’m excited to get back to the School of Journalism and apply the new skills and ideas I picked up in France!

Please visit http://www.inperpignan.net/ to view the stories by the 18 students who were a part of the Perpignan Project. You can also go to http://inperpignan.net/?author=12#12 in order to view the list of my four blog posts and my multimedia story, “Saving the Strays.”

Photo: Videoing community members of Saint-Nazaire, France who were looking for stray cats.

Finishing up at KPAX...sort of

Hey everyone!

So I've been working at KPAX since Decemeber and "interning" since May...and this is my first blog post! Over the last few months I've been TD'ing, running cameras and audio boarding the news at KPAX. I've also got to work with making graphics for the shows and cool things like that. My favorite part however, has been shooting highlights for the sports team here. I spend my day golfing er...I mean working with Derek Buerkle and Phil Buck, and sadly yesterday was Phil's last day as he is moving on to Seattle. Hopefully I'll put up a montage of all my sports highlights for the summer. Hope all is well!

-Cody

Summer's Coming to an End

Hi everybody. Summer Semester is officially ending this week. That means I have to have grades in by next Monday. I know some of you are finishing and others just beginning your internships. Some folks have sent all their paperwork in and others have been a bit slow. If you haven't finished the paperwork and work sample, I'll be giving you the grade of "N" which means we're continuing the work until finished. When the paperwork and work sample have been finalized, we'll give you a grade change. I'll be handing everything over to Denise Dowling as fall semester begins. I've been excited to see where you've all been working. It's been great to see the work you've produced. It's been an honor to have worked with you this summer. Keep posting through the end of your internship and enjoy the remainder of your summer. Take care. ray

Chiseling Away

Since I began doing selects for Providence's Year of the Nurse piece, I continued on to edit the entire thing. I think it came together well! I will post it for your viewing pleasure after the chief editor at Chisel goes through it and tightens things up etc.

As soon as I finished my Year of the Nurse edit I got to go on my first location shoot. The shoot was for Montana Lottery--oddly enough Kaelyn's internship. The day of the studio shoot, she came walking down the stairs at Chisel as I was going up, and I was surprised to see a familiar face! I know roughly 3 people in Bozeman, other than my co-workers, so it was great to see someone from school. The next day I worked as a production assistant (although sometimes I wondered if I was just in the way...) and I also helped the art department on two locations for two spots for Montana Lottery. It was really fun to see what everyone on the shoots job entails when shooting an ad, or something that's staged and planned--it's very different from news. But similarly, time is money, and you have to get through takes as fast as possible. We ended up at the first location hours longer than planned, which left us with very little lighting outside for the second location. But luckily we were able to get the shots we needed. The very next day I started selecting the best shots from the shoot so the client could see what we accomplished.

I am fortunate that Chisel gave me the following week off to spend time with my family at my cabin near Thompson Falls, MT. Since I've been back this week, I have been gathering assets (mostly pictures from photo stock sites) for a new website Vanns is launching called BigSkyCountry.com We're editing an animated picture promo for the homepage of their website. BigSkyCountry.com is similar to BackCountry.com, they sell outdoor gear and apparel.

I have two more weeks left at Chisel and then I'll be at, "what am I gonna do with my life?"

So you wanna know what I've been doing this whole time?

Welllllll, it's a long and drawn out story, but this is what we produced for the end of the year, as well a 700 word feature story. Given the circumstances (doing this in three days including the interviews and b-roll) I'm pretty happy with the outcome. Working in another language is tough, but all in all it was a great experience. Cheers!

Tekameli from iei media on Vimeo.

Hello from the Lottery!

So we've been pretty busy lately with trying to prepare for the Great Falls and Billings fairs that are coming up. But besides doing things like folding 1500 t shirts in one week and designing posters and other such things we had the madness of a $48.5 million Powerball winner. It was really great to see a press conference from the side of the organization hosting it. But I can truly say I was appalled by the reporting I saw during that time. The first person who got an interview with the winner actually asked her if he could get shots of her digging through a garbage can (the story was that she ripped up the winning ticket and threw it away and later dug it back out and found out it was a winner). I had a major problem with that. First of all why would you want to stage something like that? You're obviously not going to use it in your story! And also, just as a general rule I try NOT to ask strangers to dig through trash cans. That reporter was pretty terrible but at the press conference no one was asking good questions. All they did was repeat the same questions over and over again while expecting a different answer. But the good news is I am now totally confident that I and everyone else in our class can easily get a job as a reporter!

Here are some pictures fromt the Folk Festival:

The end of KECI

Hi all,

So my internship at KECI is over. I finished things up with them including this demo that I made for their website. They were pretty impressed, and I have to say that I like it too. I spent six weeks on it, and picked out the music and edited the entire thing together.

Final Cut of Demo for KECI-TV from Drew Stanley on Vimeo.

Have a good rest of the summer!

Drew

Just started!

Hello everyone,

I just started my internship in KPAX TV in promotion. So far I'm learning new staff with After Effects and Photoshop. It is very interesting and fun. The first week I'm going to see what kind of promotion KPAX is doing and then help them. I will try to update you. I hope everyone is enjoying summer.

Khushnuda,

LA Internship

Hi all! I am doing my Internship in ARTN (Armenian Russian television network) in Los Angeles. It's a cable television with a head station in New York. They do news, cooking shows and even live shows direct with Russia and Armenia. I love LA it's beautiful over here and so busy. So far I got experience in editing. I did couple commercials and promotions for channel website.
Also, I am assisting producer. Each studio is different, especially from the one I used to work in our lovely journalism building but I learned how to adjust to new things quickly. I love doing that. It's hard but worth it!
Well, I will keep you updated!

I have troubles with uploading video, so I will post ASAP

Upcoming Free Clinic For D.C. Residents

Upcoming Free Clinic For D.C. Residents

-My first aired piece.

Interpretations in France

I’m half way through the internship in Perpignan, France. Between trips to local vineyards and castles, as well as a dramatic train ride on a return trip from Paris, I am getting plenty of reporting into my schedule!

I started shooting video for my multimedia story yesterday, and it was very exciting! The lady I interviewed doesn’t speak English, and I don’t speak French, so I had an interpreter with me. I’m thankful for all of her help, but it’s challenging not to be able to depend entirely on myself for an interview. I even had to put the wireless mic on the interpreter and have the interviewee on the boom microphone because we're using the interpreter's voice for the main sound bites. It makes me appreciate reporting in an English-speaking country!

Each of us has written four blogs about our experiences and observations in France. Please feel free to read my posts on www.inperpignan.net. They are entitled, “Timewise,” “American revelation,” “Unstaged,” and “Enough of the ham sandwiches!”

Ahh the joys of working your way up

So I've been at Aspect for a little over a month. Working in Los Angeles is often discouraging because you literally have to work your way up from the bottom. So far in my L.A adventures have included driving across the city to Venice in search of ice cream cones to give to a perspective client. (Let's just say it's for a little movie coming out next year with blue people that was from an 80s cartoon ;) I've went to Lions Gate to drop off cupcakes. And have burned about 1000 copies of various trailers of Jonah Hex, and the Last Airbender. It's most definably a town that you have to pay your dues in. Looking to be proactive in learning more about editing the next month because the editors have a new string of projects in.

Half Way Through in DC

So I'm entering week six of my ten weeks here in DC, and so far it has been crazy. I have been working with a lot of the reporters and producers here at the station, in several different positions, ranging from transcribing interviews to doing background research, and talking photos. In a story, set to air this week, one of the lead reporters and I spent several days working together investigating campaign contributions made in the Local Mayoral race. In the photo I'm voicing a story that aired about the safety of local DUCK boat tours in the aftermath of the deadly crash in Philadelphia. I'm having a lot of fun here and I hope everyone is having a great summer.

KECI 7/11/2010

Hi guys,

So, my internship is now kind of winding up. I have a little less than two weeks left, but I have done quite a bit. I have helped shoot quite a few commercials, and I have also created a new demo reel for the team. The demo reel I haven't quite finished yet so I haven't put it online, but I have put up two commercials. Rather than eating up a ton of space on the Intern Blog, you can look at them here if you want to: http://vimeo.com/user3229020.

One of them is for Hospice of Missoula, the other is for Missoula Textiles.

Hope you are all having a great summer!

Drew

Middle of Summer

Hello from UM. It's finally summer in Missoula. It's supposed to be over 90-degrees for the first time this summer. I've actually seen blue skies for more than 24-hours in a row. It's also about the middle of most internships. Drew Stanley, Kristina Matsalak and Garrett Browne have already sent in their mid-term self-evaluation forms. I'm hoping you'll send in yours too. Fax to 406-243-4650. Scan and email to ray.ekness@umontana.edu. Or mail it to me at the School of Journalism, University of Montana, Missoula, MT 59812. I hope you're all having fun this summer and learning a lot too. Keep the posts coming. I'd really like to see pictures of you all at work. Take care and enjoy the sunshine.

Chisel Industries in Bozeman by Sarah Grant

Hello everyone! So I shot some footage at Chisel to edit a little video together for the blog but it doesn't look as good as I planned so I'm just going to write something for now.

This will be my fifth week at Chisel Industries, an award-winning marketing firm that develops video for television and web using film, HD, 3D animation, photography, print and interactive mediums. If you're a nerd like me, watch some of their videos on their site. I'm sure you'll be impressed and you'll also see some familiar videos - some of which include The University of Montana's commercials.

I'll recap some of what I've done so far at Chisel. My first few days I helped out on a studio shoot for Music Villa. It's going to be an amazing commercial when it's done. They used SUPER macro lens on instruments and shot some really beautiful footage. You don't even recognize that they're instruments!

A few days after that I started working on a promo for Hatchfest, which is a festival here in Bozeman in September. But the interesting thing about it is that it's not just a film festival. It offers mentorship for young people (like us!). Renowned filmmakers come to mentor young people and students. So the fest not only features award-winning films, but also student/young people's films! Hatchfest isn't limited to filmmaking. It's for musicians, designers, journalists, architects and more! I think it sounds really cool and I can't wait to go this year. I would advise you all to go too since Bozeman's so close to Missoula! It's great for networking, learning and entertainment... and if you want, submit your film!

Continuing on, I didn't complete the Hatch promo (yet) because I got another assignment. About 4 years ago, Chisel did 60 second commercials for the University of Montana. Just recently, UM wanted the commercials cut down to 30 seconds each, and I'm the one that got to do the job. I say "got" because this was HUGE for me. These commercials are what made me notice Chisel four years ago. I knew then that I wanted to work (or intern) for them! So this was really exciting that I got to edit something that I fell in love with so long ago! And of course, it's my alma mater :) P.S. I'm Chisel's FIRST University of Montana grad.

In between now and then, I've helped out Chisel's two animators. I finished an edit for Keen Footwear, more specifically Keen Kids. The client said there weren't enough boys in the edit so it was my job to edit them in. I also put in a lot of hours photoshopping for the Keen Utility footwear spot. The animators then took those PSDs into After Effects and animated them. I'm hoping to do a little After Effects work myself... I've taken one media arts After Effects class and really enjoyed it, so I'm crossing my fingers that I get to do a little bit at Chisel.

More recently, I've been going through lots and lots of takes for the "Year of the Nurse" video. Chisel is doing a bunch of videos for Providence At Work, the videos are for perspective employees of Providence hospitals. So, right now I'm just selecting the best takes and will ultimately put together the VO. And then I might start editing the piece, I'm not sure what they want me to do next.

I realize this is getting a little long, so I apologize. I was hoping to put this all in my video, but it just didn't look as good as I wanted it to. And, I'm not really finding the time to edit it together! I'll see what I can do. If not, I'll make sure to take some stills!

Sarah

First Five Days in France

I'm interning in France this summer, along with fellow classmate, Alison Kilts. So far, it has been an adventure! 

There are about 18 students from the U.S., Canada, and Indonesia, and we are based out of a language school (www.alfmed.com) in Perpignan, which is in Southern France. We are busy getting to know the city, making contacts, touring, taking French classes, and brainstorming story ideas. All of our journalistic work will be on www.inperpignan.net. It is not a working site yet, but it should be ready by the end of the week.

I have had so many exciting moments so far! For instance, I was in the grocery store today, and a lady standing next to me began speaking to me in French. I was pleased that she thought I knew French, but I had to admit to her that I did not speak French well enough to communicate with her. She then began visiting with me in English, and we had a great conversation. Many people here are very friendly and willing to help translate or communicate with us in any way they can. I hope they feel as welcome in the United States as I feel here.

Also today, we toured a French television news station (see above logo). I was excited to see that they use Avid NewsCutter! It was interesting to learn how they produce newscasts (which are only 7-10 minutes long, depending on the time of year) and that they even have time for a two-hour break in the middle of the news day! Their news corporations are also undergoing some of the same economic changes as those in the United States.

I'm looking forward to gaining more insight on different journalistic techniques while I'm here. I will continue to keep you updated!

Gillette Vaira