My life this summer…

This post was created in June and as I abandoned my blog for three months it never got completed.

But for anyone who is wondering about what I did this summer, here is what I put together.

DISCLAIMER: It is really really REALLY LONG. But if you scroll down to the end there will be photos and videos.

One Step Closer to the Real World:

The best experience of my life.

This summer I had a great opportunity interning with JM Associates Inc. They are a privately-owned production company that is responsible for producing multiple outdoor shows seen on the ESPN networks as well as Versus and Outdoor Channel. They have won multiple Emmy’s in the short turn-around category. This means that there shows aren’t live but are filmed and then shown within a week or so on television. Also, since the company was purchased by Group CSE based out of Atlanta in 2007, JM has also been doing numerous advertising campaigns for multiple companies such as Coca Cola, Arkansas Scholarship Lottery, Real Tree Outfitters, Geico.  My supervisor, Billy Chapman, told me early on that I would have the opportunity to learn every facet of how a show is made. I learned studio production, field production, post production and even a little bit of web production. Although it was not a reporting gig, it was great experience to get out of news and still learn very important facets of the television business. However, this does not mean I didn’t use my skills that I have developed in broadcasting because from day one and throughout the summer I carried over a lot of what I learned at Mizzou and put that toward JM.

I started out on the basics. My first day I was nervous, but very quickly I got settled in. The staff at JM was unbelievable. They were fun, easy-going, laid back, but very professional at what they do. Anthony Clayton is an editor that I was paired up with for most of the summer. He has worked at JM for five years and knows anything and everything I needed to know to get acquainted with the company. The first day, I learned about the cold room which is where are the servers and Beta stations are located.  JM, as I mentioned, does a lot of short turn-around programming. When I arrived they were in the mid-season of their biggest cash cow, the Bassmaster Elite Series.  I started on what they call digitizing. After the crew gets back from a tournament, the camera men have what can be almost a 100 tapes to be logged in and digitized onto computers. This has to be done very quickly and very efficiently within a couple of days so the editors can start to put together a show.  I picked up quick on how to log in the footage, but I had some minor setbacks day to day on what kind of settings it should be in and where the footage should go. JM has multiple shows done in HD (High-Definition) and SD (standard digital) as well as a massive EditShare network where everyone at JM can log on and access all of the footage and editing projects. I am not going to lie that at times I messed up and put the footage in the wrong place and had logged it in on the wrong setting but after awhile it became a routine and I felt very confident by the end of the Summer on what I needed to do.

Digitizing was one of the main things I spent a lot of time doing. Every week, new shows arrived and tapes needed to logged. And every week, I began to incorporate more of my journalism skills. I essentially was the only one, unless I had help from Anthony, that gets to see all of the footage from the tournaments. So all the good stuff, like the fish being caught and the SOTs (Sound On Tape) as well as footage to build the packages and segments had to be properly labeled by me. At first, I just put the footage into the computers without a whole lot of consideration. But then, I realized how vital my step in the process was and became more detailed in my labeling. Therefore, when the footage gets to the other editors in the next step, I have helped them out a lot by labeling what is good and what works to tell a story. As a journalist, a story should flow from the beginning to the end, and even though I wasn’t writing a story, I had to use the SOTs the fishermen said and match it up with footage that follows along the lines of continuity. Also, one of the things I learned from my broadcasting professors is that visually you want to take a viewer’s eyes to where they normally wouldn’t go. This trick makes it more appealing to viewer’s and also provides very creative camera angles. I became very good at pointing out these types of shots to editors so they could use them in the show.

The big project that I worked on and spent most of my time with in the summer was the College Bass Championship. I started with the show from the very get go and worked on it all the way until we shipped the master tapes off to ESPN. I started working on in June by labeling all of the footage from the regional tournament qualifiers that are being put together for one hour long show on ESPNU. After the labeling was done, I sat down with the editors and watched them work on the show and how they edit multiple things together at once.  It was cool to sit down with these guys for a couple of days and learn some cools tools that I can use at KOMU this year when I edit together my packages for the newscast. I also sat down with one of the editors, Jake Kelso, when he sat down with Billy Chapman for the final critique before the show was laid to tape and sent to ESPN. This step is very similar to when a story at KOMU is sent to the tiger chair to be edited before it goes on air. I even related this scenario to the main bossman Billy, and I remember that he told me how important of a step this can be for the editors. It is always good to have another eye that can provide some constructive criticism.

But back to the College Bass Championship. The site of the tournament was held in North Little Rock, Arkansas, which lucky for me is where I live. It was also where I got my first taste of field production for JM. When the tournament time arrived, I helped out with the stage set-up at Academy Sports and Outdoors. This was the site for the live internet broadcast of the weigh-ins for every day of the tournament. It was cool to see how a live broadcast works over the internet as well as to see what it is like to be apart of the road crew. The road crew drives a huge production truck to every tournament. Since this tournament was only ten minutes away, it was a lot easier for them but it is not rare for the road crew to drive across the nation to fishing tournaments. This year alone, three tournaments were located in California and later this year another outdoor show will be broadcasted from Salem, Oregon. These guys love being on the road but they also responsible for the footage of the shows. Most of these men are very experienced cameramen and have been in the business for years. Although I wasn’t allowed to go on angler’s boat with them and film the shows, I spent a lot of hours listening to their stories of the road as well as tricks from the trade over many years of experience.  For the College Bass Championship, I did get to go to all of the fishing sites at 5 A.M. and see what it takes for the cameramen to get ready.  Also, from going through a lot of footage from various shows, I can see a lot of what the cameramen look for in good shots that can go well together in a package for a show. These men also can be like a reporter when they are with the anglers. Competitive Fishermen may not have the most out-going personalities, so a cameraman is responsible for making sure they have plenty of SOT. Without it, there is no insight into what they are doing or what they are thinking and therefore the show will suffer.  After the tournament ended, and we struck down the set and headed back to JM, I spent an entire weekend mass digitizing atleast 125 tapes. Due to a jam packed schedule, the editors only had one week to put together all three of the College Bass Championship shows. Anthony and Jake, who were the closest to my age were also there to help me out. They were really cool guys and I had a blast. They also told me multiple times how crucial my time spent that weekend was to all of the editors. Without that help, who knows if they could have gotten the show done in time.  Ultimately, the shows were great and were finished without a hitch. I laid the shows from the computer to the tapes and sent them off to ESPN. It is crazy to see your work on such a popular network. But to be honest, by the time it aired of ESPNU that Saturday, I had watched every show atleast four times. !

Studio production was another cool and fun aspect of JM. Not only did it mean a free lunch (they usually catered on Studio days) It was also another great learning experience for me.  JM has it’s own multipurpose studio just like KOMU. In the studio, I learned many different things such as audio production as well as my first experience using a Cammate camera, which is a camera on top of a revolving crane. On most of their shows, JM brings in hired professionals to host and narrate their fishing and other various outdoor shows. Tommy Sanders is the veteran around JM. He was a Theater major in college, but now he considers himself to be a journalist. Tommy would constantly be asking anglers questions off camera and taking notes on his notepad at events. He was always well prepared and because he paid so much attention during the events, when he got in the studio he could do most of the segments in just one take! That is amazing considering the studio is not scripted.  It truly was incredible to watch Tommy and the other guys talk about fisheries so fluidly. They definitely were passionate about what they were doing and it showed on camera.

Aside from watching and learning from the anchors, I also kept track of time of each take for the segments for the editors. Although it may seem like not a big deal, most producers no that a newscast or a show can not go a single second over the allotted time slot. By keeping track of time,  I allowed the producers to not stress out about not having enough or too much for a show. Documenting the time is also a very organized way for editors or even myself to know exactly what take the producer wants as well as where to find it on the tape. Being organized definitely saves a lot of time.

I  spent a few days in the studio also helping out Howard. Howard is the studio production manager and he spends most of his time striking down sets and putting together new ones. This is an area often overlooked in television production. Lighting and staging are two huge aspects that go into making a television program look good to viewers at home. I helped Howard put together sets for the weekly online show Saltwater TV. A lot of the set pieces were very heavy and took a great deal of time. But what I liked most about working with Howard was setting up the lights for the shows. I always helped out with lights at my high school for the school plays. It is single handedly the most important aspect in the studio since there is no such thing as natural light. I also brought over some aspects that I learned in broadcast 2.  Terms like “too much backlight” and “the talent looks hot, can you iris down” are the same terms I use when reporting.  One of the biggest sets I helped Howard put together ended up being the funnest thing I did all summer at JM. It also leads to a completely new aspect JM has begun to do over the last few years.

Commercials can take on multiple meanings.  They can be used to sell a product or inform the public. They can be sarcastic, funny, scary, stupid, informative, entertaining and much more. They also can have celebrities, normal people, cavemen, talking geckos etc… That is the beauty of them because they can be really useful especially in the advertising for a company. I worked on three commercials for JM this summer. The first one was for an outdoor clothing company called Real Tree Outfitters. Although I was not at the set for the commercial, I logged all of the tapes and pretty much edited it together. The commercial featured Nascar driver Dale Earnhardt Jr. It was also pretty cool that I was one of the first set of eyes to see all of the footage and when I see it on TV, I can say “Hey, I did that!” The next commercial was a very big deal for the company. Coca Cola wanted to do a Coke Zero online advertisement series for the upcoming college football season. The CEO of Group CSE (the company that owns JM) as well as Coca Cola media representatives were all in town for the commercial shoot. I helped set up the green screen with Howard since the commercials was going to edited using JM’s graphic’s computer. There were several takes for each commercial and once again I had to keep an accurate account of which one the Coke Zero people liked so I would not give the editors the wrong takes later on. It was really exciting to be in a room with very important people but at the same time they were very intrigued with who I was as well. I talked to the actor for awhile and later on my boss told me how I did a great job entertaining the guest during down time (TRUST ME THERE WAS A LOT OF DOWN TIME).  I guess my social and communicative skills came in handy that day and throughout the summer.

However, the coolest commercial we did was an Antique Road Show themed commercial for the Arkansas Scholarship Lottery. The greatest thing about it is that I was actually in it! I played an extra in the background. In fact, everyone at JM was an extra.  It was a really fun experience all day and it is funny to be watching the news and getting to see my commercial during the break. Also, I got to play a vital role in the pitch to the lottery people for the commercial. I was in the conference room with all of the editors at JM as we tried and storyboard through ideas. I missed the first meeting where all editors threw out their own ideas but I got to sit in during the final decision and even had a say in some of the aspects of the commercial.  During the commercial shoot, I sat down with Billy Chapman after my part as he went through multiple takes. For the commercial we had several different variations we wanted to try and when I sat near Billy he would ask me repetitively which version I liked best. I felt pretty special even though I just agreed with a lot of what he thought was best. In the end,  the three different versions Billy and I liked best were the three that the lottery representatives ended up choosing.

Other activities I got involved with at the station included dubbing tapes or dvds, getting old footage from JM’s old television shows, and making music sheets for the shows.  Dubbing tapes is when they take the shows from one source and record them or dub them to either a tape or DVD. This is necessary for many reasons. For instance, JM may send out multiple copies of DVDs to ESPN or any other Network the show is on. They also want to keep clean versions of the tapes. This means that the version does not have any graphics on them. JM will use these tapes for old highlights on new shows, or perhaps a re-run on another network. (Like when the Outdoor Channel uses re-runs of a show that is on ESPN. Therefore, the Outdoor Channel has a different template of lower thirds and fonts, so a clean version is necessary). A lot of the time editors like to use old footage from past shows JM has produced. They have a huge library of tapes and I would go and find which one the editors needed and digitize the exact part they want. It is important to get the right version of the tape and sometimes I would grab the wrong one and have to re-do it.  Lastly, music sheets are another vital part of putting together a show. All the songs used in a show has to be properly documented on what they call a music sheet so whatever network the show is aired on can pay the copyright to the owners. This was not very hard but very time consuming and not my favorite part. However, it is another important step in putting together a television show.

The hardest part of this internship was definitely having to jump around and evolve to all the different tasks I had to do. It was like right when I got the routine for one thing I had to switch over to studio for a couple of days or had to dub all these shows to tape with different settings. It took time to learn everything and I made my share of mistakes, but the people I worked with understood that it was going to happen. By the end of the summer, I became a vital asset to Anthony and the other editors and very rarely was I asking questions about what to do. In fact, one of the gratifying moments of the summer is when somebody was having an issue getting a tape from the cold room and logging it onto his computer. The problem was one that had happen to me early in the summer and quickly I recognized the issue and told him what to do.

The overall experience was incredible. I learned so much.  At my going away party, Billy asked me what the number one thing I learned was from this summer. I told him that I learned how important every step was in the television business. From the field production, to the studio, to the editing station, it takes everyone working together and doing their part to make a show work. Being able to experience every one of those steps was definitely beneficial as I believe more and more I want to work for a company like JM in the future. Although there were areas of JM where I didn’t get to learn in, like graphics and  dotcom, what I did learn I will never forget.

This is the set for the commercial I got to be an extra in. Right now I am chilling while we waited for the actors. Little did they know, I was already there!

Another shot with the Cammate camera. I got to try and use that thing….pretty solid

In front of the green screen before it started. I didn’t get to show my talents in this one.

My glass marlin….it is worth a lot of money

There is a video of the place I worked at a couple of blogs ago.

Also I will post my ASL What it’s Worth Commercial as soon as I get it uploaded to YouTube.