The last few weeks of my internship have been very productive. I have done a lot of video editing work. My supervisor reached out and said that one of our bands, Now More Than Ever needed help editing their music videos so they could be in a vertical format so they could share on Tiktok and Reels. I downloaded the files to the group’s four music videos off of our company’s shared drive and started editing. I have converted horizontal videos to vertical before but I have only edited them to 15-30 second clips. What was different about this project is that the band requested that the entire music video be converted to vertical. This was actually quite challenging because the group’s music videos have a lot of things happening in them and when cropped you miss a lot of what is happening. However, I was able to find a solution to this and it was to use keyframes to help shift the view to whatever is in focus. I usually use premiere pro for edits but for this project, since I am creating content for Tiktok I used the app Capcut and I found their keyframe feature very simple to use. I made two types of vertical cuts for the 4 music videos, one was zoomed in full screen using keyframes and the other was the background kind of blurred and the video zoomed out so you could see everything without keyframes. The band loved the videos and were excited to share them. Another task I’ve done these last few weeks was do promotions for Record Store Day. Record Store Day is a big event where independent Record stores get exclusive releases. For this RSD the ambassador was our very own Jason Isbell, we had several artists performing at local stores, and two vinyl releases so I made a few different posts to promote this day. The first was a post on our feed dedicated to our two vinyl releases which were a Jason Isbell record, and a SonVolt Record. I also posted the official ambassador video Jason made. In addition to those feed posts, I designed a schedule highlighting all of the in-store performances our artists had that day. All of those posts did great engagement-wise. In addition to that, I attended the regular meetings and worked on our New Music Friday stories, I also created vinyl mockups for one of our artists, and for my last week I will be working on updating their website. This has been such a great internship and I am very grateful for the experiences and connections I have made.

For the 11th week of my internship I met with my supervisor again, this time it was on Zoom. We discussed the social media idea documents I created the week prior. He really liked all my ideas and we started to come up with a plan to make things work. A big thing we are working on is posting more on our stories. We want to post multiple times a week day sharing things that relate to our artists whether it’s things like a song that is releasing, a tour announcement, a positive press post, late-night tv appearances, and more. I actively monitor the social media pages of our acts each day to see what they are up to and I text my supervisor the things I think we should highlight, then we create a story post about it. We are also focusing on interacting with artist accounts more and sharing their posts and tagging them in our to help boost views and engagement. This new format has been working well so far and lots of artists have been sharing our posts and we have gained lots of engagement through this method. When we post on our main feed it is mainly to highlight the albums that are released that week, however, we are working on other things to post there as well, like reels showcasing new music videos or live performances. A big part of our social media posting is our New Music Friday Stories where I make custom graphics promoting the music that we release that week. Every post I do for NMF includes the artist’s name, picture, song, or album name, and a link to listen to. I really try each week to make an eye-popping design to catch people’s attention. In addition to working on social media that week, I also attended our weekly company-wide meeting. I am feeling excited about the way things are working out for our social media channels.

For the 10th week of my internship at Thirty Tigers, I was introduced to my new supervisor. The week prior the two supervisors that I was previously working with had exited the company. I now work with the head of distribution for the company. We met that Monday afternoon on a phone call and had an hour-long conversation about ideas for future work. A big part of our phone call was about what can we do to boost our social media presence. He said he wants our content to be very accessible and natural and less sales based. We brainstormed a bunch of ideas for posts and stories that would be more engaging. He also discussed how he wants me to be more involved with the company and he will keep me updated on what’s happening with our current campaigns. After that great phone call, I felt very excited about my work with my new supervisor and could tell that we are going to work well together. That week I began to go through the social media schedule doc I made with my last supervisor and began to make edits and revisions based on the ideas discussed in our phone call. Then I began to do some research on social media sites on companies similar to ours and tracked what did well on those pages. I made another document dedicated to inspiration for our social media channels and I scheduled another meeting with my supervisor on Zoom for the following week to go over these documents.

Last week we had a major update in the software, that unfortunately, altered a few link addresses for several customers. The solution was simple, for users to go into their computer settings and clear their cache. However, as I have learned, many people want these things done FOR them. With that being said, the past week has been OVERFLOWING with support calls and chats, so much so that I feel as though it’s been rather difficult for me to get anything else done! I will, say, although I was never feeling too shabby about my customer service skills, my confidence is through the roof after a week like this. 

I also had about an hour-long conversation with a customer’s CPA yesterday, walking her through the financial side of the software and helping her learn about Stripe, our payment process platform that we partner with. The phone call stood out to me, as it was extremely informational TO ME! I was learning all about the ins and outs of being a CPA, sales taxes, and more! And on top of that, she was such a sweet woman. And I know that seems pointless, however handling customers as a part of any job, is not always an easy thing. Customers can be needy and frustrated and rude, meaning those who show care and grace, really leave an impact. 

This last week wrapping up my internship has been bittersweet. As I prepare to make the transition from intern to full-time staff, the other girls here at the company have shown me so much grace and excitement! Like I have mentioned before, I am starting to pile on more responsibilities and the projects are growing larger (but in all good ways). There have been mentions of trips and travels in my near future, representing the company at events all over the United States.

A few weeks ago, I collaborated with another program called Seed Your Future. This program aims to promote horticulture jobs (and overall awareness) to elementary students, all the way to the university level. They strive to share knowledge about careers working with plants and what all the industry has to offer. 

Before working here at Details, I was far from aware of what opportunities were possible in the horticulture and floriculture industry. From marketing to sales, to social media, and more, there is SO much more to be talked about, that students are so unfamiliar with. 

As I talked about in a previous blog post, I spent that week preparing content, interviewing staff members, creating videos, etc. for their social media takeover. Since that week, I have kept close in contact with the head of their executive director, Jazmin. 

I have now committed to work alongside them and have virtual conversations with Jazmin weekly. We here at Details, are in full support of spreading awareness regarding the horticulture industry and my boss is also in full support of me working on small projects with them. In the fall, Sedd Your Future will be hosting a virtual career fair, and ended up registering me to go to one as a “student” to take notes, log my experiences, and give overall feedback for the career fair they plan on hosting in the future. 

I have enjoyed having more long-term projects and especially making and maintaining connections in the industry with those outside of my current company. Especially with Seed Your Future, I hope to help continue promoting as my role goes on. 

For my tenth week of internship with the Stetson Men’s basketball team, I was asked to do some of the same things I have done last week. Early this week, I was informed by my boss Joey that there was yet again going to be a recruit on campus that I was needed to shoot some photos of. I checked a camera out of the library and prepared to take some photos of the recruit and our coaches. This time when I arrived at the fountain for the photos, I was met by the coaching staff and the recruit, as well as the recruit’s family which was new to me. It was nice to see the future hatter’s family getting excited about our campus and their son’s next step in life. I had at this point done this exact shoot before, so going into the process I already knew the basic poses I thought would look best when edited. We stuck to the typical spinning the ball, crossing the arms, and dribbling between the legs and we were done very quickly. Soon after, we did some shots with the recruit and his parents, and then some with the coaches as well. Before I returned my camera, I went to Flagler hall and edited the photos in Lightroom and sent them over to my boss Joey so that he could distribute them to the player and the coaches as needed. I felt happy with the result of the shoot because I know that I was better prepared than last time and got the shoot done much quicker so that the recruit and coaches could be win their way. The only thing that I wish I would’ve done differently was adjust the lightness and shutter speed of the images so that some of the pictures in motion would’ve had better clarity and brightness so I would have to do a little less correction in Lightroom but ultimately I think it turned out alright.

During my Ninth Week of interning with the Stetson Men’s basketball team, I had a very surprising change of pace. This week, there was going to be potential future hatters on campus and the team needed my help. At the beginning of the week, I received a text from my boss Joey informing me that recruits were going to be on campus Wednesday, and they were hoping that I would be able to meet them at the fountain with my camera to take some photos for them and the players. When I met up with the coaches, I ended up taking some photos of just the players as well as with the coaches, and soon after went back home to edit some of the better ones in Lightroom. After polishing a decent amount of photos, I sent them back and forth with my boss Joey determining which would be best to use. Before the week was over, the kids that were touring stetson ended up committing here, and I was able to contribute to making commitment graphics for the players that I took pictures of. It was nice to know that in a small way my interaction and work might have influenced the players to want to choose stetson, and I thought it was a great experience for me professionally. When I have to do this again in the next coming week, I will have my camera settings already prepared and my composition planned for the shoot. The only part of the interaction that I think we could have more efficiently was having the poses for the players already planned, and my camera already adjusted, so hopefully in this upcoming visit I will remedy that.

For my eighth week of internship with the Stetson University Men’s basketball team, I had a variety of different things that I helped work on. For this week, my primary responsibility was to help build templates yet again for game day graphics as well as for other things that the team may post, such as commitment graphics, holiday graphics, or themed game days where Stetson as well as Stetson students will both be encouraged to follow a guideline of how to dress or cheer at a specific game. For Stetson Specifically, it is most common for us to have a white or green out game, so I continued to work on graphics and templates that have mostly followed this color scheme. Due to my work in previous weeks, it was significantly easier for me to create some of the posts that I needed to because of the fact that I have already cut out a high resolution image of every single player on the team, and now my issue I shaving to go back and remove players that are graduating or transferring rather than having to go back and cut out and add players that I hadn’t made cutouts for like in the past. One thing that I had noticed I changed after making the historic season graphic was that I had started to preserve the original cut outs of players. Typically, I wold rasterize a layer while cutting it out and do camera raw filter to the original layer and end up with an image I can no longer change. Now, I have learned to keep the cut out as a smart object and do a majority of my change on a duplicate layer, as well as the camera raw filter so that if I need to reference the original image, I can grab the original and change the color, resolution, or texture however I see fit in the next project. This change of mindset has greatly helped me improve my workflow, and I can tell that my skills are improving over time due to me consistently working with the team.