Last week I talked about how I am preparing for the Young Sound Seekers Camp, and I want to provide an update on these preparations. First, I have been using Reaper a lot and recently finished a mix of a song I found online. With this mix I just finished I am sending it to Dr. Underriner to get his thoughts. I sent him the Reaper session and the bounced mix. Although I have gained some experience with Reaper I want to practice a little bit more. This practice is messing with a recording session I did with Dr. Underriner as well as getting some field recordings and seeing if I can make a clean transition between the different recordings. For the field recording, I want to go to a bike path nearby my house and record in the morning, midday, and later in the afternoon and try and mix them and have the listener feel the time changing. It isn’t just Reaper that I have been working with during the past week I have been using a free video editor called Hitfilm Express. I originally wanted to learn Davinci Resolve but after some time on it, I realized there was a lot locked behind a paywall, also there were a lot of unneeded add-ons. Hitfilms however, is very close to Adobe Premiere and After Effects, both of which I have tons of experience with. My time with Hitfilms the past week was taking a roughly 2-hour video I found of someone playing video games and cutting it down to 20 minutes. I also added light effects like screen shake and moving certain elements into the frame. Overall, I think I have prepared my technical skills for the camp, now I think this week I will prepare what I want to do while the camp is going on. 

To prepare for the Young Sound Seekers Camp, I think I should make a list of goals I want to accomplish. First, I want to be as informed as possible about how Reaper works so that when I show up at the camp and the campers need help I know what to do. To learn Reaper I will be practicing mixing music for a couple of weeks to understand how the DAW works and try out different plugins. I will also be going outside and doing a few field recordings and using Reaper to edit them since that is the camp’s focus. Hopefully, by the time June 19 comes, I will have an excellent understanding of the software and it will allow me to help out the campers at an efficient rate. My job for this internship isn’t just to help out the campers but to also make some kind of promotional material for the camp. I hope on making something that can be used for years to help have more people want to join the camp. To make sure I create something that is high quality I will be spending some time looking at the camp schedule and making a list of ideas of things to record. A problem that I need to come up with a solution for is the sound of the recordings. Right now my camera does not have a port where I can plug a mic in. Even though there is a mic in the camera the quality of the sound is not that good. So, I want to try different things to fix this issue. An idea I have right now is to find a way to put my iPhone on top of the camera with some kind of mount and use the voice memo function on it. Depending on how that goes I may have to find a way to record video while using a zoom recorder from the Stetson library. If I do have to go with the latter I may need to ask for some help so I can record a stable video that is not too shaky. Overall I know that if I put in the work before the camp starts I know that I can help out the campers and make something worth sharing.

During my 2nd week of work, the workload I was given had slowed down considerably. I’m now regularly relied upon to use my relative experience with websites and social media to innovate upon our current systems, which are relatively outdated. Among my improvements will be a new tagging system to organize photos and videos, new ways to take photos for our clients, the list will keep growing as long as I can keep finding improvements to make. I’ve again been called to fill some social media requirements, as my boss has asked me to create short 30-second videos to intersperse and fill our social media distribution for a few months. As i’m proficient with Premier Pro, that shouldn’t be hard at all. Simple fades from picture to picture with a backing track will be more than sufficient. I’m somewhat frequently asked to use the company’s money to buy things they deem necessary, like new cameras or printing services. Much of the time, they come to me not to actually buy anything, but to help them decipher and decide the best option for their purposes and needs. Not everyone knows what picture resolution is, apparently. We have a ”picture day” scheduled on next week’s Friday. It will apparently not be a short ordeal, and should take no less than 4 hours. As a photographer, I understand that the photographic process takes time, but it will still be 4 hours that I won’t be able to use for work. I might be able to sneak my IPad on site and get some work done on the side while they’re busy filming.

This week was my last week of the internship, but I will continue on working for my supervisor just for fun for a little bit longer, since I really want to help her in creating a few videos for her agency. This weekend I will work on creating a collage of photos and come up with a slideshow that exhibits a few of accomplished models and show their works, so people coming in for interviews will see that there are success stories and will have a positive attitude for this industry. I have already taken photos of the job pictures and comp cards in her office and am ready to start creating something exciting and appealing. My supervisor told me to be creative and  not be afraid of trying something new and create an eye-catching video. She also gave me some notes on what I should include and how I should approach this project. On the days I worked, I have had a great deal of communication with our clients, assisting them with anything they need and gave them applications, which also I had to redo for her, since some requirements have changed. Initially, it kept people confused on what they had to write on it. I used her Mac computer to complete this task and also answered a couple of emails pertaining to the appointments. There was a problem with one of the calendars on the phone that we use for keeping track of meetings; by the end of the day, I was able to fix it and now the calendars are synced and updated. I was very happy I could help her with that, because earlier one of the clients stopped by the office and my supervisor wasn’t aware that she had an appointment that day, and that caused a confusing situation for her. This week was very energetic and I had lots to do and am excited to continue being creative and putting a personal touch on given projects.

This week I have done lots of little tasks along the way. On Monday, my supervisor’s agency has been quite busy and she would also go out on location with her clients for the photo shoots. So, I was left at the office and had to work with images of clients and use Photoshop to fix lighting and erase bruises and that sort of thing. I also had to delete lots of images of the models and leave two or three for later reference and that was not an easy task, since some models had ten photos and I had to choose which ones I want to leave by picking the best ones from the looks. I was also working on answering emails and communicating with client’s parents at the office and answering questions they had, if any. At the beginning of the workday I also gave her a new revision of the list with the other agencies’ addresses and she was pleased with my work and even liked that I made the text much bigger for better reading. We also talked about the new project I am going to work on, which is a video slideshow, which basically will be a collage of different videos and photos introducing new models we have. I said that she could email me with some materials, so that I could start on working on it this weekend. The work week was fun and exciting, and I got to see the whole process of getting the model ready for her photo shoot again.

This week I was helping my supervisor with answering emails as usual and work day was not that busy as well, because a few of her clients has come for an appointment and I was answering emails that only could be answered by me, and had to wait for her to be free to ask her specifically what I needed to type and what should I answer them. Those questions were just mostly pertaining to her. I also talked to my supervisor about new projects that I could do, and she was very happy I asked that. She said she was already thinking about me creating a video that we could show to new, potential clients in their first meeting. I also have to change my previous assignment, because the address given for one of the businesses have moved to a new location. She said I could do a video project and work on her website as well. She said I should think about what ideas I have for the video and tell her next week when I see her, so that I could ask her for pictures and videos I could use. It would be sort of a slideshow that I would have to make. As for the website, she said she would give me the code of it next week, so I could take a look and update it if I can. This will give me a chance to practice my skills that I have already learned and show my creative side in these projects.

This past weekend went really well. Our broadcasts have been looking better and better and the whole crew is getting into a groove. If you haven’t been watching our broadcasts on ESPN+ I highly recommend it cause we’re killin’ it. After the Kennesaw State series with softball I helped out the camera crew disassemble the the cameras and tear down the production. I learned how to coil wires properly! Who knew there was a right way and a wrong way – I sure didn’t. I should throw that on my resume. This week we have the ASUN Beach Volleyball Tournament that we’ll be airing on ESPN+ since we’re hosting it. Tournaments are always a little nerve wracking but once you start it’s like any other game. Tournaments are a great source of experience though and a good way to show you’re the real deal. All of the events are back to back to back so you have to be quick with prep and cognizant of everything that’s going on. Apart from the actual broadcast, in order to to enhance the viewer’s experience we try to tell stories. Stories are why people watch and it’s on us to present them. And that means I need to always be ready graphics-wise with story related material. For example if there’s a team who has never been in a tournament before and they make it to the finals, that’s huge. And I should be ready with something graphics wise that helps explain that. Everyone loves a good underdog. Aside from the technical side of broadcasting I’m learning that we’re here to not just record the show but to be a part of the show. It makes the job all the more fun.

And we’re back at it with even more baseball! I thought I was ready for baseball but I forgot just how slow the games can be. The game vs UCF lasted FOUR hours. It’s good though because it’ll start building up my stamina for the tournament that’s coming up and prepare me for longer days which is always beneficial. During the set  up for the NJIT series I shadowed a co-worker for a bit and he showed me how they set up cameras and where everything plugs in and such. It gave me a sense of just how much goes on in the preparation of these games outside of the graphics. This coming weekend we have a softball series and those are always nice and relaxing. For some reason softball and baseball have two very different flows. I’ve learned that you can’t come to softball with the same mentality as baseball. Even though the sport is pretty much the same the broadcasting side is paced differently and it takes getting used to. This job really makes you learn how to be flexible in a live setting; In fact, I’d say it’s crucial. Flexibility is everything in the real world.

This upcoming week marks the start of the grind for baseball season.  We have five games scheduled to broadcast for the week so it’s going to be a busy one for sure. I’m still doing headshots for use of the day of broadcasting. I’d say I’ve gotten pretty good at them now haha. This past week was a slow one but I’m ready to start really getting into baseball. Baseball is the sport I know the least about to it’s always great to get a lot of experience with it to gain familiarity with the sport with rulings and such. It’ll provide valuable work experience and flexibility with what I’m able to do in the future.