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

KECI 6/27/2010

Hey all,

So here's a picture of me editing a commercial for Missoula Textiles, and thanks to my coworkers that decided to surprise me with a picture yet again. Last week we went out and shot a few things for stock footage, and then another news promo. They are planning on letting me do a lot more things on my own next week, they just couldn't in the past few weeks because of contracts, their own projects they are getting paid solely for, etc. I also finished up helping the control room with their switch graphics, so everything is working there, and I learned a little bit on how to program the parts in a switcher to allow you to create your own scrolling graphics on an LED screen.

Two side notes: I turned 21 this weekend, so I've been a bit preoccupied with that, although I don't even work at KECI on the weekends. Also, I found this wonderful link that some of you might already be privy to. It's a page on Facebook that alerts you of production jobs around the States, and it seems to be pretty effective!

http://www.facebook.com/ProductionNotices

For those of you in Missoula right now, enjoy the sun while you can!

Love,
Drew

KBOO Portland

It's now my second week at KBOO radio in Portland. It's a community radio station so there is a lot of local programming and a wide range of shows. I've mostly been working with the PM news department writing and researching stories, but I am going to train to be a board operator during in-studio shows too and hopefully start to anchor and report soon. I really like the station so far and I also like being able to hang out with Alison and have her show me all the good bars and restaurants in Portland...even though she is leaving in a few days.
The link I'm posting should go to a little piece on the Oregon summer lunch program that I voiced over and edited, but it might not. http://kboo.fm/EveningNews

Federal Authorities Offer Baltimore Residents A Way Out Of legal Woes

Federal Authorities Offer Baltimore Residents A Way Out Of legal Woes

KECI

Alright, so here's a picture of me at my internship. I'll upload one tomorrow when we are doing an in-studio shoot for a commercial. This cardboard cutout of Ellen sits up in the lobby of KECI, and when I told the guys that I needed a picture for the internship blog, they insisted on Ellen. I also told them that I needed one where I'm doing something, even though I was editing something on the computer that you can see behind me. Tomorrow!

KECI, 06/16/2010

Hi everyone,

So I don't have a picture yet (I'm bringing my camera in tomorrow to get one), but I'll get one. This story on wolves has a stand-up in it at the very end that I helped shoot, but that's pretty much what I have for stuff that is done for now. Other stuff will be finished soon. For now, I have been helping the control room crew upstairs create prompt graphics for their new switcher using Photoshop. It's just simple things that they want animated, so every time they push a button, a message scrolls across the small little LED screen on the switcher.

Cheers,
Drew

WAMU 885 News, Washington

Hello all from the Nations Capital. I'm spending my summer interning with WAMU 885 News, it is the DC NPR affiliate. Been here for over two weeks now and have been working in the Newsroom on various things. What a difference a day feels like when following the News in a major market, as there has been major stories breaking almost everyday. I will be out this week shadowing various reporters that work at the station, and assisting them with research and information gathering. Hope everyone is having a great summer.

P.S. High humidity is not my cup of tea.

Nameplate

So my co-worker Jon made name plates for all the runners.  First day I got to Aspect one of the guys thought that I looked like the Scottish actor James McAvoy. (You may know him from Atonement, or Last King of Scotland) Since we had to do some sort of a nickname I thought this would be perfect. Jon did a pretty awesome photoshop job. 

Please Post Pictures

Hi everyone. I hope you're all having a fun summer so far. In Montana, we finally had a dry weekend. It seemed to brighten everyone's spirits. I was hoping you'd all be able to post a picture of you working at your internship. Please put it on your next post. And don't forget that you can also post links, video and other pictures to the blog as well. I hope you're all having fun this summer. Keep working hard and thanks for being such great ambassadors for the RTV Department.
ray

Second Week at KECI

Hey again all,

So the first week at KECI was pretty fun. On Friday, we went out and shot a commercial for a place on West Broadway that makes fireplaces (was actually in Frenchtown), and then we went to Caras Nursery and Landscaping and shot some stock footage for a commercial they have planned for next year. We also went and shot a reporter standup earlier in the week, and we are doing another one for the same reporter today. After that, we're going to a meeting with Planned Parenthood to shoot a commercial for them, and then we are shooting something for Missoula Textiles on Wednesday. Soon, we're going to shoot footage for our 4th of July promo with both Mark and another reporter. Kind of busy, kind of not.

Our computer with the only tape logger on it crashed this morning and we can't get it to come back up. They got it in 1999, so it was a bit inevitable. We're just trying to keep restarting it to hope for the best because a commercial that Scott and I edited on was saved to it and we might lose the entire thing if we can't access the hard drive again. You know, kind of like when ISIS dies! I showed one of the guys down here how to put an automatic electronic signature on his e-mail this morning...then went to a sales meeting on what's going on this week. Everyone here is very fun to work with and they seem to let me do whatever I want to help them out.

Until next time,
Drew

First Two Weeks

Well Aspect Ratio has been fun, but a little slow. Being a runner is a great intro job to L.A because you get familiar with your surroundings really fast. For instance I know the best routes now to get to the Disney lots in Burbank. I still feel a little nervous going out on them by myself, but I should have the routine down by the end of this week. Sill don't have clearance to go onto Warner lots, they are very picky of who gets on them. 

 Last week I got to watch a few films the editors had been working on. Can't say the name of the film that I watched, but we'll just say it's going to be out in November, and has two very big movie stars in it,  one of whom directed it. It was interesting to see how they cut it into a trailer, what scenes they used, and what kind of an angle they chose to sell the film with. Considering the film I watched would be a very hard sell, the editor did a terrific job. I'm interested to see what kinds of films they'll have coming through this summer since they are nearly finished with their big summer tent pole projects, one of these being doing the T.V spots for The Last Airbender, and Jonah Hex. 

So far I've had  a lot of Montana contacts in this city. A friend of mine from MSU who works for Disney Animation invited me to a screening of Toy Story 3, and after I went to a little get together that she threw for MSU students new to l.a. It was fun to catch up with my old classmates from MTA. Many of the MSU students didn't have gigs lined up before coming down here so I was very thankful that the RTV department was able to give me a hook up. 

Heading to Seattle!

Heading to Seattle! So I haven't actually started my internship, but it's going to be sort of a whirlwind (Since I have to move all my stuff and find a place to live and try to navigate my way through Seattle traffic) so I decided to just do my informational post now. I'm doing my second internship at King 5 in Seattle, it's the NBC station there and I'll be working on a new show called 'New Day Northwest.' It's a news talk show that shoots live every Monday-Thursday mornings. It's going to be a really awesome experience because I'll be working with only eight other people, and they already have stuff lined up for me to do. I'll be organizing audience members and also greeting guests to the show. They also want my help with pitching and researching segment ideas for the show so I've already started to make lists of story ideas. The people I interviewed with were really excited that I knew how to edit on Final Cut, so I'll probably be logging tape and what not, hopefully my skills aren't too rusty! I'm really excited/scared out of my mind to move to Seattle on my own TOMORROW. That's all for now!

Press Release Party!

So my internship is a little bit different. I'm working as a marketing/advertising/PR intern at the Montana Lottery, which is actually part of the state government if you didn't know. So far (I started May 20) its been pretty slow but I have done a few cool things. Every time a winner comes into the headquarters the other interns and I interview the person and write up a press release that is sent out to a list of newspapers and stations in Montana. The week after I had sent out my first release I checked my email to find that Shaun Rainey had received it at his news station! So for those of you working in MT this summer, you should be getting a lot of press releases from me! The biggest winner we've had so far was a $200,000 Powerball winner from Bozeman and today we had a $190,000 Montana Cash winner from Great Falls who was so funny. He and his wife are both in their eighties so he told us he plans on spending all his winnings instead of saving any or sharing it because "there's not much time left." Actually, that sounds really morbid now that I've typed it out but it was funny at the time....maybe you had to be there.

For the marketing/advertising side of the job I got to sit in on a meeting with our ad agency Citrus and discuss ad campaign choices the Lottery will be starting soon. All I'm going to say is that if you see the commercial that uses the word 'bling' in it I fought hard to get that idea thrown out but the people in charge thought it was a fun word to use. Don't blame me for how annoying that commercial will be.

And lastly we interns had to design a marketing campaign to encourage people to play the game 10 Spot and the head of marketing really liked my idea so now there will be posters sent out to every Lottery retailer in Montana with copy that I wrote! I was excited, I'm just bummed they wouldn't give me a crack at the whole graphic design part!

I hope everyone is getting off to a good start for the summer!

-Kaelyn

First day at KECI

Hey lovelies,

So today was my first day at KECI. The whole commercial production crew is really, really laid back, so that's awesome. I found out that the first commercial I get to help shoot is with Missoula Textiles, and one odd thing about it is my boss and my coworker from the Hilton are both going to be in the commercial. It's going to feel great getting to order him around for once.

Today I got to KECI and there wasn't much going on, so I just logged some tapes and then helped one of the editors write a script for the store Stitches' upcoming commercial. Spoiler alert! We decided to go with a '50s style commercial with a little Grease Lighting action. After that I started editing the commercial for Garden City Heating and Plumbing, which was hard to do since the client wanted to shoot them having a meeting with no audio. Not much to work with there.

Hope everyone's having a great summer, and I'll post more to come.

Drew

Day Numbero Uno

So at Aspect for the first day on the job. Pleasantly surprised upon coming to work this morning to find out that this is a paid internship. Yes, I was shocked as well since most get paid nothing (Sorry Drew Stanley!) So my official title is a runner, which is the starter job here. My fellow co-runners (Christine, Brandon, Zoe, and Jon) are at the beck and call for anything that needs to be run to studios.  Also, we burn DVDs after they have been completed by the editors. Got to check out some stuff the editors completed today for the studios heads to watch. Today so far I've helped do a lunch and a birthday cake run. Yes, birthday cake run, you heard right. I've observed it's a very laid back working environment, and everybody is helpful to show me the ropes.  I think there is going to be a lot of down time waiting for stuff to come through, they just finished up the Shrek campaign so they have slowed down a bit. 

As far as the other runners, most are graduates from film schools. Two from USC that I know of. 

I've been invited to a little dinner that's being thrown by a friend Aria of m MSU students that have just moved here. There is a lot of MSU students here, a handful of people I know from MSU. Will keep you posted one the adventures to come at Aspect, and I'm keeping my eyes peeled for celebrity run ins! 

UM Senior highlighted on NPR

One of this year's graduating seniors, Buddy Cowart, is highlighted in a story that aired on NPR. Click here to listen. The story was produced by UM alum Emilie Ritter. Tell me what you think about the story. Have a good weekend (and if you're in Missoula--a dry one too).

The Portland Mercury

Sooooo, kinda last minute I landed a small internship with The Portland Mercury. It's similar to the Independent; Portland's art and culture paper (pretty wacky if the cover didn't already exude that). I'm working in "Production" with them, but it just entails helping with the design of the paper. I just do corrections on the pages to speed up the process, it's identical to the Kaimin, except worse computers... The environment is super incredibly laid back. Which is kinda nice, because I was checking out my schedule for France, and it's pretty intense.

On another note, Sheya and I just got dinner yesterday, I love to see anyone else who wants to visit Portland! I leave for France in three weeks! I'll keep ya'all updated!

Alison

KPAX internship

Hey all, so I am a a couple weeks or so in as an "intern" at KPAX. I have been working a couple hours each day with our promotions guy, James Rafferty. He has taught me a lot about after effects, but I have just begun to play with it myself. I made a weird little promo for our new billings anchor...nothing that would ever go on air haha. It is so fun to play with! I have also been technical directing quite a bit since many people are gone on vacation. Not too many mess-ups so far! Here is a cute little graphic I made for the five thirty news tonight.

4th Day in Los Angeles

Well, I don't start work at Aspect Ratio until Monday. Aspect Ratio is a marketing company out of Hollywood that does marking for feature films. From what I see from their terrific web site, http://www.aspectratio.com/, it's where all the major studios go. They cut everything from trailers, t.v spots, and even credits before feature films.

L.A is a interesting place, going to take a lot of getting used to. For one thing it's huge, I mean big! It's like about 7 cities in one. Went for a beautiful hike up the Hollywood hills and got a birds eye view of all the major film studios. Will keep you updated later in the week when I begin the internship.