Week 1 at VIA

I started my internship on Monday, August 26. This first week I got to do a lot more than I ever imagined I would my first week here! To start, Neil Prisco and I set up the audio cables for spot shooting that we were going to be doing that day. I learned that audio cables go in the order or ROYGBV (red, orange, yellow, green, blue and violet) when you plug them in. So we plugged only the red cord in (because we only needed one microphone, as only one woman – Sarah – would be speaking on camera), passed the cords through the wall and then Neil taught me how to plug that cord into the microphone, and how to discretely clip that microphone onto the talent (under clothes or over the shoulder).

Next, I learned how to import text into the Prompt program, for teleprompters. I practiced pacing of the words while Neil read them to work out speeds for actual shoots (which was much harder than I thought it would be!). I also learned how to set presets on an audio board and how to adjust gain throughout a shoot when volume shifts.

To begin the spot shooting, I learned how to unlock the studio camera and then positioned it at a medium shot. I wore the headset to communicate with those controlling the teleprompter speed in the other room to remove excess wording and go back to one. I counted down to 1 with Neil to begin each take. Finally, I edited the spots on Adobe Premiere to cut at the correct times and delete the bad takes.

Today was my last day working for the week, and it was also the summer intern Andrew’s last day working overall. So, I spent the day working with him to learn how to put lower thirds on promo spots. We used Premiere to import the appropriate footage (20 & 30 second spots), then used After Effects to create the lower third logo and label with the show’s name and the date it would air (we had to make one with the day and the date, one that said the day of the week it would air, one that said tomorrow and one that said today or tonight, all including the time). Finally, I imported the necessary audio tags and matched it to each spot at the appropriate location, leaving 5 seconds between each spot.