Week Four at NP

What a week! Where to start?

Tuesday

On Tuesday, I was the only intern in the studio because the others were on a New Perspective shoot. Over the weekend, the others and I had received an email from the man from the organization we met with the previous week. He had scheduled our first interview, with the founder of the organization, for the next Tuesday, June 30th. We then had a week to prepare, which was good.

Mostly, I helped out the New Perspective staff with anything they needed, mainly duplicating DVDs of NP projects to be sent to clients since the DVD copier happens to be in our intern office. Then, I got a special surprise...

The founder of the organization showed up at the studio, one week early. Apparently, he had been misinformed, or had misinterpreted the date of his interview as being for today's Tuesday and not the following Tuesday (the 30th). My supervisor came into the intern office, and informed me that he was in the lobby, ready and waiting to be interviewed. As we both knew, the studio was not ready, the equipment was not set up, and the other three interns were not even there, so there was no way that it was going to happen. I was surprised, but calmly went to see him. Since we had not been the ones in contact with the founder about his interview date, I did not feel guilty about the mismatch, but I still felt bad about having to turn him away when he was ready and eager. He was disappointed but seemed to understand when I explained it to him, and he calmly left.

When my colleagues returned from the shoot, I brought them up to speed, and for the rest of the day, we helped out around the studio and observed some projects being worked on and edited. We also got our first taste of blue screen in the studio with a NP client. We helped Mike (the man in charge of the equipment) take the set down after the brief shoot. Afterwards, we asked Mike a lot of questions about the equipment, and we talked for almost two hours straight. We learned a whole lot about the camera (a Panasonic Varicam, which from afar looks a lot like a SDX900), P2 workflow, other recording formats, as well as general industry wisdom.

Wednesday

On this day, all four of us were at the studio. At one point, we sat and observed in a room where a particular project was in the final editing process. The blue screen we had seen the previous day had been taken away and the actor who had been filmed now had various pictures and graphics around him. We got a feel for the general exchange of ideas and workflow that occurred between staff members when editing a final project together, just before being sent to color correction. The process was very similar to my own personal process when I'm about to put a final project together, which was encouraging to me.

The others and I also came up with some questions and general interview information for when we would interview the founder the following week (this coming week). We then had a meeting with our supervisors at 3pm so we could go over the questions and details of how to set up the studio and how to work a successful interview. Afterwards, we decided who would conduct the interview and who would primarily run the camera (me). I should note that when we decide on specific positions, that person is the 'primary' person working that position, but turns will probably be taken with those who would like experience with that particular aspect. So on Tuesday, I might be taking turns running the camera with one or both of the other two interns. We will also be switching positions up when we interview other people and get B-roll footage at the headquarters.

Thursday

On Thursday, all except one of us came into the studio at 7:30am for a NP shoot for a medical video. The shoot ran all day, but thanks to the quality of the actor we were working with, the shoot went a lot quicker than expected. We got some more in-studio experience, and learned a little about how a teleprompter worked and was set up. We were completely finished by 4:30pm, with time to spare. We then left at 5 as usual.

Saturday

Yes, Saturday. Earlier in the week, a film shoot in a church was being planned with 3 cameras. Two NP staff had been determined, and they wanted to bring one of the interns to work the third camera. We decided among ourselves by picking numbers. I chose the lucky number, so I had my first film shoot as a New Perspective member!

Call time was 6am, so I had to wake up at 4:30am. Not very difficult for someone who often played in almost 30 golf tournaments a year, many in faraway cities. Mike, Greg, and I stopped at McDonald's for breakfast (a first for me already) and then headed to the church. Five new bishops were being ordained and we were going to film the entire ceremony. We were filming with HVX 200s using P2 cards (my first time using them, as well as HD in general). My position was in the center balcony overlooking the ceremony. My camera angle would be the go-to shot in editing if something wasn't right with the other two angles.

We were hoping we wouldn't need to change P2 cards in the middle of the ceremony, but it ran an hour longer than we expected. Luckily, we had each brought 2 extra cards (16 GB ones); and both of them got used. I changed cards twice during the ceremony, ultimately filling up three cards, and some of one. Besides not having to capture anything, what's great about shooting on P2 is that there are two cards in the camera at one time, so when one fills up, recording automatically goes to the second card, with no interruption in recording. There is also no interruption when changing cards, since you just take out the full one while the other is being recorded on.

I had filmed with 3 cameras in a church before, so the experience wasn't entirely new, but I still learned a lot and there were quite a few differences with this shoot. The choir was singing right behind me, so I didn't have much room to move around. I even got bumped a few times. At one point, a man's foot had stepped on my power cord, bending the plug backwards (the outlet was in the floor, so this was easy to do), which made me loose power intermittently for a few seconds until I could move through the sea of legs to plug it back in. I had to do that again later in the ceremony but I didn't lose power again. Other than that, the shoot was very successful and enjoyable. I didn't sit for 3 1/2 hours, and my legs kept tightening up, but I didn't sacrifice any shot and felt good about that afterwards. We returned to the studios, exchanging our own experiences on the way, then went home. I looked forward to sleep.

What a week and what a month it has been! I look forward to our first interview with the founder this week. I have butterflies already, but am excited and optimistic about how it will play out. I will post about how it went after Tuesday.

Areya