Week 6 started off differently because I couldn’t come to the office on Monday due to not feeling well. However, Thursday was busy and quite entertaining. When I arrived, I met with Dave as usual. He told me to continue working on the episode of “The College Tour.” This time, I had to start putting the A-Roll and B-Roll together. This part is fun because it allows for creativity and freedom of choice, but it can be challenging when specific B-Roll footage is missing or isn’t good enough to use. In such cases, you have to improvise. For example, if a student talks about a specific award or event that wasn’t captured, you might use general shots of the university or related visuals, like a building where the event took place or a flyer.

I almost finished editing the first student’s segment when it was already 3 PM. At that point, the other interns and I had to go to a camera workshop before our first shooting day on Monday. We went to the storage room and met with Chris, the Director of Photography. Since our intern project’s first shooting day was coming up, we needed to learn some camera basics.

I learned so much that day. Chris talked about camera functions like ISO, shutter speed, and aperture; different lenses, including anamorphic ones used for filming movies, and their differences; camera monitors and how to use them; and even how to coil cables properly, which is not as easy as it sounds. We discussed the visuals for our project and what equipment would be best to use for the mood we’re aiming for.

We also packed the equipment into cases to make it easier to pick up on Monday. The workshop took another three hours, but it was incredibly helpful and fun. I am very excited for our first shooting day!

Week 5 at the internship was productive. On Monday, I followed my usual routine: arriving and meeting with Dave, then continuing to work on the same episode from Week 4. Since last week, I’ve been selecting the best takes, which is a very tedious process. I had to watch all the takes the students did and choose the best ones. Sometimes, the takes were very similar, making it hard to choose, or there were no good takes at all, so I had to pick the closest to good. After a while, I finished selecting takes for all 10 students.

Dave then asked me to start organizing the B-Roll. The process was the same as with the A-Roll. There were different folders with general university B-Roll and 10 folders with different students, each with their own subfolders. I had to put each video on the timeline and label it with the folder name, for example, “student walking by welcome center,” and so on. This task took a while, and after organizing the general university B-Roll, I only had time to organize B-Roll for 2 or 3 students. Monday seemed a bit boring, but I realized that knowing the process of organizing footage and putting everything together is important for working on bigger projects with their own structure.

Thursday was more exciting. After coming in, I continued organizing the B-Roll of the 10 students. Once I finished that, Dave asked me to work on the promo for the new “The College Tour” episode. The process was the same as before: cutting each student’s take into four different sentences and putting together four shots of different students saying those sentences to make one promo. For example, one student says, “Welcome to Stetson University,” the second student says, “In Deland, Florida,” the third student says, “This is the College Tour,” and the fourth student says, “Streaming now on Amazon Prime Video.” I chose the students with the best energy and put it together.

While I was in the middle of this, Michelle, one of the senior editors working on a Ukrainian documentary, asked for my help translating some parts and showed me the process of working on something big like a documentary. I helped her translate, and while she was finishing the first part of the documentary and editing the last bits, I gave her some suggestions. She really liked them and ended up using them.

After we finished working on the documentary, I went back to my computer and completed the promo. Dave said I could go home early since I got everything done. That was my day at Adrenaline Films on Thursday.

Week 4 at Adrenaline Films was very productive. On Monday, I started by meeting with one of the other interns, Em, who is a Production Intern. We had to meet because of a project that four of us interns need to complete by the end of the internship. We decided to create a music video/short film. Em and I began working on the script and other pre-production tasks since our pre-production deadline is June 10th.

After making good progress, I met with Dave. He asked me to continue working on the VelociCoaster teaser that I started two weeks ago. My task was to review his comments on my first version of the video and make changes to improve it. Once Dave was satisfied with the revised video, he asked me to shorten it to 30 seconds. This was challenging because I had to decide which shots to cut and adjust the soundtrack and sound effects to match the video perfectly. After finalizing the 30-second version, Dave approved it and gave me a list of deliverables to export in three versions: original frame, square frame, and vertical frame. Adjusting each shot to fit the different frames was tricky, especially since some footage wasn’t designed for vertical format, so I had to get creative. After exporting the videos, Dave reviewed them, and we completed the VelociCoaster teasers.

Next, Dave gave me a hard drive full of footage purchased by a university. My job was to double-check each video to ensure they were usable and not shaky or too short. There was so much footage that I only got halfway through before the end of the day.

Thursday was very informative. I started working on a new episode of “The College Tour” from scratch. Dave showed me how to organize the footage for easier editing later on. My first task was to organize the A-roll of the 10 students featured in the episode. I sorted all their takes into different piles on the timeline and labeled them with the first words of their sentences, double-checking with the script to ensure everything made sense. I also trimmed the first and last few seconds of each shot. Organizing, cutting, and labeling the A-roll for each student took a while. After that, I began building the actual timeline for the episode, selecting the best takes based on sound, appearance, and shot quality. I only managed to start on two students before the end of the day, but I realized how much time and patience go into editing bigger projects like this.

Week 4 was a learning experience and very informative for me.

The third week of my internship was shorter than usual due to Memorial Day on Monday. However, Thursday was quite busy. I arrived and met with Dave, our Post Producer, who assigns me tasks. Dave mainly works on The College Tour series, and he had me assist with that project.

Each College Tour episode is about an hour to an hour and a half long, featuring ten students who talk about the college, campus, academics, activities, and more. My job was to cut the episode into ten individual segments, each showcasing a different student. I then added intros and outros so that each student had their own segment for the college to use on their social medias. After Dave reviewed and approved my work, I exported each segment to the server.

The second task involved creating promo videos for a new, unreleased episode. I had footage of students saying specific lines to promote the episode on social media. From the ten students, I needed to create three promo videos featuring four students each. I followed an example Dave provided from a previous episode. Although I couldn’t finish completely due to missing B-roll and footage, I completed most of it and will continue when the new footage arrives.

These two tasks took up my entire day, but I felt very productive and helpful, contributing to the promotion of a new episode of the show.