5/2/16
This is my last week in the cage for this rotation, today was pretty relaxed, just basically put some orders together for pick up and put away some others. I touched up some panning handles with paint and that was about it! Oh and today was the first time i answered the phones since both Nathan and John were across the street for a bit, i was kind of nervous to do so because my knowledge is limited still, but it all went smoothly!
4/29/16
Today was a pretty fun day, we had a bunch of equipment to put up on our Ebay page, so i basically took pictures all day of the products in between doing orders and running errands and all. I really enjoyed taking the pictures, they told me to just have fun with it and i did! I also painted some items to touch up some of the scratches they had. Next week ill be back in the cage!
4/23/16
Today im back in the cage and it was a pretty mellow day, had a bunch of pick up orders to build and also take back. Ran some errands for the stage and that was about it, pretty mellow monday!
4/22/16
Today is my last day on the stage for this rotation and things got started real quick today. Because the blazers made the play offs Pix This live events department ended up doing an event for it last minute, as in 4:30 in the morning last minute. So a bunch of people were out today and we had some clients from Italy doing a photoshoot who said they didnt want a PA or anything, but then asked for a breakfast, lunch and snack (gummy bears and perrier, yup) so i was bascially their PA for half the day, but the cool thing was i got paid for it! and it was super easy, so win win. They said that now that good weather is coming we will be busier now and there is a good chance things like that will happen more and my intern day will get turned into a paid work day. Thats cool with me!
4/18/16
Im back on the stage this weekend, pretty much just ran some errands and cleaned up the stage a bit and put back all the equipment from the pilot episode we did for "No Adults Allowed" The pilot went super well! I found out im getting 2nd AC credit for it which is awesome. Everyone was super nice and gave me helpful tips. I definitely can get use to doing this kind of stuff all the time! I also ran out the second half of the footage form the pilot to the editor and director, it ended up taking a little longer to transfer than we thought, but i was cool because i got to go grab lunch in a unfamiliar part of portland which its always fun to try new places. John, the director/producer of the pilot also said that if the show does get picked up he would want to find a spot for me on the show! Today is my birthday, so that was a great birthday present, even if the show doesn't get picked up, its nice to know he would want to hire me. We also got 4 new Arri Sky panels that are freakin awesome! The light they put out is insane and they have over 400 built in gels that they got form a software update. This light can literally throw out any color you want including one called "Pale bastard Amber" yea, its awesome and for only $5,600 dollars not including a $600 case, you can have one too.
4/15/16
My last day in live events for this rotation, once again pretty mellow today, did more organizing and cleaning and thats about it! I certainly don't mind having mellow days.
4/11/16
This week im back in the live events department. Today was pretty mellow, we had intel come pic up a bunch of stuff for the Pax East and after that basically just cleaned up the warehouse.
4/8/2016
So today was a pretty good last day in the cage for this rotation. We had a lot of orders to build which was fun, so many though that we actually ran out of some of our equipment. I had a quick meeting with John Binkley today. I just realized this is something I have yet to talk about on my blog. I am helping a producer named John Binkley with a pilot episode on April 16th. Perry and Ben told me about the pilot last month and gave me his information to try and get on board and I did! Its called "No Adults Allowed" and its a children's improve show. Its a show that he helped worked on for the BBC and he is trying to bring it to the states. I will be a PA as well as Slating the show and standing in for the actors and running them as well from the green room to the stage. It's unpaid since they don't have much of a budget, hence why they wanted to use interns, but if it gets picked up there is a good chance I could work on the show! Either way this is an experience I am so excited to have and be a part of. I had a meeting with John last Wednesday and our part got done early (we both arrived first) but he invited me to stay for the rest of the meeting and of course I said yes. It was so fun to just be in the room with everyone talking about lighting and how they want it to be shot and what not. So today he talked to me and Jayme (another intern) about some extra stuff he wanted done. The rest of the day was pretty mellow and I finally go around to asking Nathan about the Panasonic DVX 200. I regret to inform you the Nathan and others are less than thrilled with it. It puts out a great image, but they hate the menu screen, its a touch screen and doesn't work very well and some others really just hate the layout of the camera in general. Overall they find it very "meh".
4/4/2016
This is my last week in the cage for this rotation, today was a pretty fun and mellow day. We had couple returns and pick ups, but that was about it. Me and one of the other interns Dylan messed around with the portable jib they have and learned how to set it up and take it down. We also did some touch up work on it because it was scratched to all hell and we also spent like an hour trying to get this goo off that was on it from some velcro. It was also John from the live events department birthday today, so we all went over to the main office and celebrated that for a little bit. Over all it was a pretty fun day!
4/1/2016
Today was a pretty mellow day in the cage, we didn't have any pick ups or returns really, so we just cleaned up the shop and organized things and tested some of the live camera lenses. That was really it for that day, super slow and mellow which was nice for a sunny Friday!
3/28/2016
So today I was in the cage and we had a pretty busy day, lots of returns which is typical for a Monday. One return was from a shoot Discovery Channel was doing on poachers, they returned Arris which was cool, because PixThis has them, but they have been rented out ever since I started here. However these weren't PixThis they are sub-rented from a company in New York. So off they went as soon as they were here. I built a couple cameras today as well, a Sony F5 and a c300 Mki. After work though is where the real fun was, we all went out to sloburger and got some brews and burgers, then went back to the studio and brought Nathans car into it and we tried and did recreate the look from the movie "Drive". Ben came up with this idea called a "Kino-Copter" where we took 4 4X4 kinoflo's and attached them to the end of these polls that fed into a baby jr. so we could rotate it over the car and make it look like it was driving under street lights. It worked super well and it was so much fun building and testing out different light gels and positions. It was the biggest set i have ever been a part of. We set up an awesome c300Mkii with wireless follow focus, I played around with that for a little while, but Andrew actually did the focusing when we were actually shooting, he is pro with it. We used the cineped slider as well which created some amazing shots. It was a super fun night and was exactly what i have been wanting to do.This night has 100% solidified that I am going down the right career path, getting paid to be a part of this process in anyway, will be a dream come true.
3/25/2016
So today is my last day in the studio for this rotation. Today I cleaned up and reorganized studio B and fix some things here and there. Then i set up some bates and lunch boxes for a shoot that is happening on Monday. Well it turns out that the shoot is a fun lighting experiment Ben, Nathan, John and some others are doing. Ben asked if i wanted to join and of course i said yes. I am very excited for this, this will be the first time i'm actually involved with something going on in the studio. I cant wait for Monday!
3/21/2016
I back in the studio this week, they are remodeling the make up room, so today I basically spent all day building a drawer. I was fun and kind of relaxing, maybe I should build furniture for a living? Nah.
3/18/2016
So today me and Josh worked on the panels again, we finished them on Monday, but 62 of them went to an adidas show and for some reason had a bug with turning them off and on. So we went through all of them again to find all 62 of them and also make sure there were only 62, because if there was more or less that would mean its a different problem. Fortunately there was 62, thats really all we had to do today. Mission accomplished.
3/14/2016
Im back in the live events warehouse today and martin decided to move on from picture this, i believe he is still super part time though. A new guy named Josh took his place, i met him last week at the camera set up, but I didn't know he was taking that position then. he is a super cool guys and a lot of fun to work with. Today Gary, Josh and I re-flashed all and oiled all of the video panel boards and check if pixels were out or not and if so, depending where the dead pixel was, we would have to replace that part of the panel, fortunately only a couple boards had pixels out. That what we did all day and it made the day go by super fast which was awesome.
3/11/2016
Well, I made it to the cage today, however spent a significant amount of time in the studio again, but for a different reason this time. Perry wanted to set up the live camera set with the fiber optic cables and take pictures of them in the studio and he also wanted to teach everyone who didn't know how to use them. He mainly focused on how to use the cameras and set them up properly, but not to much about the board that controls it all except the bare bone basics. It was a ton of fun to learn it all and hang out with all the departments (live events came over as well). They put up really cool back ground likes called colorados, which were fun to play with. It was a very productive day and learned lots!
3/8/2016
Well, although I am in the cage this week, today I was in the studio because the intern that was suppose to be over there was sick and the studio was busier than the cage. So across the street I went. It ended up being the most informative day yet I think. I learned how to make sure studio A and B were prepared for a client and built and order for a client as well, which is where I have learned the most yet. I had a big list of things to grab and i only knew what probably 10% of that list even was, things like baby jrs., hi-lo's, hihi-los, big ben clamp, baby grid clamp ect. So i'm really glad I ended up in the studio today, but im excited to be back in the cage on Friday.
3/4/2016
So my second day in the cage was a lot of fun. I built and put away some orders, but it was actually a pretty slow day, lots of water cooler conversation which was nice to get to know everyone better. I learned how to replace the head of an sdi cable which was cool. Other than that i kind of just played around with some cameras and cleaned up a bit. Oh, and I found out I do the cage 2 weeks in a row for the rotation, so I will be back next week!
3/1/206
Alrighty, so today was my first day in the cage (equipment room) and it was a lot of fun. I worked with Nathan, John and another intern Andrew. Andrew has been there for about a year now off and on, he is very knowledgeable. They taught me how to prep a camera that was going out (sony Fs7) how to clean it and how to prep the bag. I learned how to shimmy today which was a lot of fun to learn, I also built 2 cameras with Andrew, he let me build them however i wanted and taught me how to add everything on the the camera and where things were in the cage. We did a F5 and a c300Mkii and decked them out with monitors, lights, matte box's and i must say they looked pretty bad ass. We also played around the cineped slider with the cameras. It was a really fun day and i'm excited for Friday.
2/26/2016
Today was the first day that I really felt like an intern as far as my duties go, I don't mean that in a negative way at all, i'm just surprised it didn't happen sooner. They had clients coming in to tour the studio so today I basically cleaned and organized the studio and office and took lunch orders. I get 10 dollars for my own lunch when i'm the order taker, which is nice. They said it was an unpaid internship, but I suppose you could say i'm making the big bucks now as far as interns are concerned. I put back some 2k lights that i set up on Monday, but ends up they still needed them for a shoot this upcoming weekend, so i set them back up which is simple and basic, but fun for me. I met Karine today who is the event coordinator, she is a pretty funny chick. Im trying to learn all the equipment names, but wow are there a lot, which is no surprise, but even the things i do know have different names that i'm not use to. A lot of funny sexual names for things, that are intended and not just my own perverted interpretation. Overall I really love working in the studio, like I said about Monday the environment is exactly as I had hoped for this kind of thing. Im excited for them to get busier so i can really get involved with the process of everything. Ben said he will let me know when there are shoots that they can use help on, he was going to give me one this weekend, but another intern that is leaving soon is already on it. Hopefully next time!