Week Six at NP

This week was pretty neutral: not too little work, not too much, and as usual, all enjoyable.

Tuesday 7/7

This day was mostly quiet. It was just Dan and I. Sarah is on vacation. I spent most of my day dividing the founder's interview transcription by which excerpts we might use and which ones we won't. I noted the timecodes for each excerpt so that we can go straight to their respective places in the video during post-production. Since it looks like we're only going to have 3 weeks of post now, we need to save as much time as possible.

In between transcribing, I answered a slew of phone calls at the front desk for New Perspective for about 2 hours.

Wednesday 7/8

The action kicked up quite a bit on Wednesday. In the morning, me, Dan, and Mike stood in for characters to act alongside actors who were auditioning for our friend Donald's film. Donald is this year's New Perspective Filmmaker In Residence student, meaning he gets to make a professional short film using NP's facilities. I had acted in minor roles before but had not stood in for an actor's audition, so it was new, enjoyable experience. The audition took place in the studio. Five actors were scheduled to come in, 3 men and 2 women. I stood in with the 3 male actors individually for the same scene. The two characters in the scene were having an argument, so there was a lot of yelling (which was quite fun, even though the emotion in the scene was pretty intense). All of the actors handled the cold reading very well, but it was clear who our preferred ones were at the end. Whenever Dan or Mike were standing in, I would operate the camera, the DVX100. We also took turns running the lights.

After lunch, Dan, Mike, and I drove over to the North Shore of The Point in downtown Pittsburgh to take location shots of Heinz Stadium for a NP project. We took turns with the camera, and matched the storyboards we had been given almost exactly. We also got a lot of exercise and sun. The whole shoot took about 2 hours.

Afterwards, we sat in a meeting for a conference call between four of the NP staff and the clients of the project for which we had just taken photos. I was slightly surprised how laid back everyone in the meeting was, including the clients.

Thursday 7/9

Today, I was the only intern in the studio. In the morning, I went to the basement and upstairs tape library to find tapes for a NP project. Afterwards, I went back to dividing the founder's interview transcription.

After lunch, Shirley, the woman at the front desk (who usually answers the phones) needed me to make copies of a Powerpoint presentation, which were needed for an important meeting in an hour. Only 6 copies were needed, but the presentation was 30 pages, and the printer could collate only 5 or 6 at a time. The printer had some issues with the last 4 pages. After we got the printer working again, Shirley and I attempted to staple them all. It worked for one copy of the presentation but not the others. So we quickly figured out a way to bind them with a special machine with 10 minutes to go. Luckily, only 4 copies really needed to be bound. I finished them just in time to give them to the meeting coordinator as he was leaving. My arms got a great workout from working the binding machine too.

I then went back to dividing the transcription, which I finished today. Another productive week!