I've recently returned to Lubbock after spending the majority of the summer in Los Angeles (California). I was there as part of a school program, taking a couple of classes and doing an internship. I applied for this program over a year ago, in the hopes that I might demonstrate my value to some television tycoon and thereby find employment and fame in the city that never sleeps.
This was a misguided notion.
In the months before I was to depart, I had been interning for a local radio conglomerate in Austin. I was writing blogs, shooting video, going to concerts and generally just having a gay old time. This company even helped me find an internship in LA. Los Angeles magazine was part of the corporate family, and they were willing to take me on as an intern, sight-unseen.
I should have realized that Bob Evans was never going to discover me building websites in a cubicle, but so it goes.
What follows is a harrowing account of my internship experience that I was required to write in order to get credit for the program. It's written as a weekly journal, but in reality, I wrote it all the weekend before it was due (rebellious).
Week one: June 4 - June 7
I honestly didn't know what to expect from my internship
at LA mag. I had been interning for a radio company in Austin, and their parent
company happens to own LA mag. Our HR lady in Austin referred me, and I got the
internship without even having to do an interview. The first day was a little
intimidating. There was an editorial meeting first thing in the morning. The
topic of the meeting was the website, and since I am a web intern, I was
invited to tag along. I got the sense that most of the magazine people have a
somewhat tenuous grasp of the web, but they all seemed to like the site.
My bosses are Shayna and Israel. Shayna handles more of
the content side of things, while Israel does backend work to make sure the
site looks nice and runs properly. I assume we have an actual webmaster
somewhere, but it's possible we farm that out to the corporate office.
My first day wasn't super exciting. I have a cubicle near
Shayna and Israel, but I can't see them unless I lean around. It's a minor
annoyance, but I suppose it's an efficient way to minimize small talk. At our
office in Austin, we all just worked in a single room (basement, technically)
and traded jokes via instant messenger. The magazine environment is a bit more
professional.
My first day was also somewhat awkward in that, one of
the big features in the magazine this month was about a local shop that
manufactures sex toys. As a web extra, I was charged with watching youtube
videos of homely women reviewing their favorite adult products and picking out
the funniest ones to post on the site. The women were so clinical that humor
was harder to come by than one might think. Shayna and I narrowed down my
choices and I wrote a little blurb about each one.
On Wednesday, I worked on our restaurant finder page.
It's basically just a database of all of the food reviews the magazine has ever
done, with contact information and a map. We're working on making an app for
the magazine, and the restaurant finder is going to be an important part.
Thursday, I got to do a little more writing. I did a blog
post and also wrote some entries for our calendar page. Because it's a large
magazine with a professional staff, I'll probably never be able to write
anything remarkably long, but the calendar page is a fun place to just sneak in
jokes.
Overall, I enjoyed my first week. I'm kind of intimidated
by the structure of the organization, but I think I'm just intimidated by LA
overall, so that's nothing new.
Week two: June 11 - 14
I've opted to abandon the daily rundown in this week's
journal and will instead just speak broadly about the events of the week,
unless a certain day was particularly noteworthy. This week, I worked mostly
for Israel, building pages for the website, particularly slideshows. I think
I'm given these tasks because I'm the only intern with a working knowledge of
web programming, so I'm able to do them much more quickly, even though it's
fairly easy, as there's already a template built for you.
There are two other interns in the web department, Marielle
and Sean. Marielle is older than me, she has a master's from Columbia College
in Chicago - I don't know what her degree is in. Sean is younger than me; he's
studying English at USC. Sean and I do most of the tedious work; I think Shayna
trusts Marielle with writing more than either of us because of her age and
advanced degree.
The most interesting thing that I did this week was edit
together a video for the site. We did a feature on the Hollywood Sign this
month, and the Hollywood Sign Trust sent over an educational video for us to
put up on the site. The video was a bit long, and kept cutting to an awkward
talking head, who explained the history of the sign. Since I am the only one
who knows FCP, I was charged with making this video more web friendly. I
chopped out the awkward talking head, left all of the cool historical footage,
and ran a VO over the interesting bits. I chopped out all of the boring bits. I
then had to find free music to use, which is harder than it sounds, as we don't
have any kind of audio bank. I just had to scour the Creative Commons for
applicable stuff.
Shayna was impressed, and now she wants me to shoot a talk
that the magazine is hosting next week, so that's pretty cool.
I'll be shooting a conversation about religion in the
media with Mike White and two professors from Pepperdine and USC. I'm also a
religious studies major, so I think it will be pretty fun. My only concern is
that the camera we have is an older gen Sony Handycam. It shoots in HD, but
sound is going to be a real issue. Israel doesn't keep a tripod at the office,
but he said he'd bring one from home before the event next week.
Week three: June 19 - 21
What a frustrating week. I showed up early to the event
on Tuesday. It was at some fairly nice, but not too nice, restaurant in West
Hollywood. I had the Handy Cam, and Shayna was supposed to meet me there with
the tripod. As I said last week, I was concerned about having only the Sony, so
I asked Ty if I could borrow his camera. He wants to be a DP, so I assumed he'd
have something a little more high-end. He ended up having a Canon 7D, which is
a wonderful camera, but he only had a 35 mm lens and I figured it would have
the same sound concerns as the Sony. I took it anyway.
Things start off pretty well. I'm there before Shayna,
and I'm getting some beautiful b-roll with Ty's camera. I'm feeling good. I
figure that I'll set up the Sony on the tripod right in front of the speakers
and I can get close ups with the 7D. It wouldn't be great, but it'll look nice
and fairly professional.
Then Shayna arrives, tripodless. I'm concerned, but not
overly so. The room is fairly small, and I can sit on a stool near the back and
film by hand. I won't get all those pretty close ups, but it'll look the same
as most of the videos they have on the site.
I get caught off guard by the start of the talk, getting
on my stool and flipping on the camera right as the introductions begin. I then
realize that I've made a terrible mistake. The stool is not bolted to the
floor, as I originally assumed. Rather, it was a swivel chair, which meant that
I had to maintain my equilibrium, while simultaneously filming three different
people. Needless to say, there was some camera shake, but I honestly felt that
I did a pretty good job.
The sound, on the other hand, had me very concerned. I
could barely hear it from where I was sitting, and I was directly across from
the speakers. I knew that it would be hell trying to get useable audio from
this, but one soldiers on.
I spent the afternoon Tuesday and all of Wednesday
working on the video. The audio was terrible, which I had anticipated, but I
thought the camera work was pretty good for a tripodless non-cameraman sitting
on a swiveling stool.
I wasn't given explicit instructions about how to cut the
video, but my first draft was around 20 minutes long and a pretty accurate
facsimile of the event. I feel like I captured the overall tone of the talk and
provided a sense of what each panelist was like. Then Shayna emailed me and
told me to make it around 8 minutes, so I cut out most of the stuff, but
allowed the speakers to linger on certain questions and flesh out at least one
solid idea. I showed Shayna and Israel, and let me tell you, things did not
look good.
I started the video with 45 seconds of gorgeous b-roll,
with a clever VO from the magazine's editor, who moderated the panel. My
Malickian camera work was not appreciated by Israel, who suggested that I cut
out some of the intro. Then, we got to the talk itself, and I & S were
apparently revolted by the camera work. It was a little shaky, but I had cut
around the most egregious bits, and it honestly looked like your run of the
mill one-camera video.
I took my supervisors notes and went to work. Honestly, I
was pretty annoyed with Israel. He was being overly critical, despite the fact
that it was his negligence that forced me to rely on the uncertain power of my
forearm, as opposed to a steady tripod. He compromised my entire vision for the
project.
I kept my cool though, and cut the video down to the
suggest three minutes, allowing only the most pristine shots to be used. At
this point, the video had basically devolved into a series of one response -
but so it goes. I did my best to salvage the audio, but it was clippy and
horrible. I still stayed an hour and a half late to try to make it better, but
eventually I had to just let it be. Our editor deemed it acceptable, and it
went online. I think Israel saw how disappointed I was by the video, and he was
very kind to me before I left.
The worst part of the entire ordeal was as I was driving
home, stuck on Highland staring at a billboard with a rainbow condom, I
realized that all I had to do was go see Neil at the UTLA center and I could
have checked out a tripod, an HMC150, and probably an audio recorder with an
XLR port.
It was my lowest moment in Hollywood.
Week four: June 26 - 28
Despite
my seeming incompetence, it appears that my dedication to the botched video
project did not go unnoticed by Israel and Shayna. They both treated me as more
of a peer this week than as an intern. I've also started talking more to Sean.
He's a friendly guy, but we don't have a ton in common. He's into classical
music and art, and it doesn't come across as an affectation, which is uncommon
in someone so young. He and I are still plugging away at the site, specifically
the restaurant finder. I have been placed in charge of the project (a dubious
mantle), and I'm doing my best to make it fun. We need to find and crop over
500 photos of restaurants. This is complicated by the fact that these photos
cannot be copyrighted, and many of the restaurants are tiny ethnic joints
without websites. Still, we soldier on. I'm doing my best to endear myself to
Shayna through witticisms in my emails to her. She seems to be warming up to
me.
The president of Emmis visited one afternoon. He was very
personable and answered any questions that were thrown his way. He's on the BoT
at USC and used to own an MLB team, so he talked about sports, which was
gratifying for me, as most magazine people are magazine people precisely
because they've run from sports their entire lives.
He also said that Emmis is looking good financially,
which was also gratifying for me, as I'm trying to get a job at our Austin
offices this spring.
All of the interns have also been invited to go to a
meeting next Tuesday to discuss ways that we can get more involved on the
content side. It seems a bit late in the semester for this, but it could be
profitable.
Week five: July 3 - 5
I had another wretched Tuesday. My front bumper has been
secured to my car through high-strength epoxy since the beginning of the
summer. It finally gave way as I was leaving for work Tuesday morning. With the
bumper half severed, and with no sensible way to reattach it, my only recourse
was to tear it all the way off and go bumperless. This necessitated a 4-mile
round-trip walk to the dollar store for some basic tools. I managed to get
there and back and remove the bumper by noon. I had to boogie to work in my
newly modified car in order to make it to the 1 p.m. internship meeting.
I arrived just in time to find Shayna, a friendly looking
woman (Elina), and a severe looking woman (Nancy) all sitting across from the
troupe of interns. There were pastries and pie. I had a slice of icebox pie,
and it rivaled the much-heralded Czechspertise of Grandma Sheblak, my
roommate's industrious grandmother/baker.
Even deeply satisfying pie couldn't rid me of the sense
of intimidation that I've felt my entire time here. I had no way of knowing for
sure, but looking across the table, I had the immediate sense that neither of
these two new women would appreciate my literary sensibilities. To make matters
worse, the Hollywood Sign was visible directly behind them, silently giving the
finger to a small-town kid yearning for the comforting confines of Austin.
The meeting was brief and awkward. The two editors told
us to pitch stories to them and they'd see if they sounded publishable. Sean
asked if there were any specific gaps in coverage that they wanted filled; this
was met with one of the least-committal responses I've ever seen.
We all filed out, confused and wanting more pie.
We were closed on the
fourth, and on the fifth I attacked my restaurant finder duties with gusto.
Week six: July 10 - 12
Elina has taken to sending out the occasional email
asking us to blog about something. I'm trying to get over my fear of Hollywood,
so I've been submitting responses. I'm not used to being heavily edited, so
it's a new experience for me. I think it's profitable though, I can't imagine
that I'll work in an office as laissez-faire as Emmis Austin my entire life.
I'm at my most comfortable point so far. Maybe it was the
confusing pie meeting, or maybe it's the realization that I only have a few
weeks left, but I feel like the master of my domain. I've started wearing jeans
to work. I bought all manner of adult clothing before coming out here, because
I assumed that professional journalists all dressed like Aaron Sorkin
characters. I was disabused of this almost immediately, but for some reason
stubbornly continued to do my best fat Ryan Gosling impression. I fear it made
me look overly earnest and therefore unapproachable.
Whatever the reason, I'm starting to warm up to the
office and the people around me. Although, this came too late for Shayna.
As I was leaving on Wednesday, Shayna came up to me and
told me that it was great working with me over the summer and she was thankful
for all my help. I was perplexed, as it was far from my last day. She then told
me that she wouldn't be back from her trip before I returned to Austin. I then
realized that this trip was her honeymoon. I knew she was getting married; she
always had little pre-wedding tchotchkes around her desk. I just didn't realize
that it coincided with the tail end of my internship.
I was sad to see her go. I felt like we had started to
develop a rapport. It had been somewhat awkward around Shayna and I, although I
don't know why. If I had to single out a specific moment, I think it was on my
first day. I wrote some blog about horse racing and used the phrase "day
at the races." Shayna thought the expression was "day at the
track." I deadpanned, "I don't know, I'm not a degenerate. I'm not
DeNiro." This was an attempt to reference the television series Luck, and
I meant to say Dustin Hoffman, not DeNiro, but I was on the spot and flubbed
it. So rather than a hilarious topical reference to a David Milch television
program (that had been cancelled six months earlier), it appeared as if I
was just some douche who hated gambling and mistakenly believed that Robert
DeNiro was one of its emissaries. Or it could have been that she made me watch
30 videos of middle-aged women reviewing buttplugs on my first day at the
office. Who can say?
The first post-Shayna day was pretty good. I reported to
Israel, who has always been very kind and encouraging since the video incident.
He gives me a task, I complete it, he says, "Woooooow, that was
fast," (he has a very distinctive "wow"), and then he gives me
another task. I feel productive and validated.
Week seven: July 17 - 19
It's just Israel and I against the world these days, and,
so far, it's worked out well. Shayne left us a list of tasks for each day, and
we're usually finishing them with an hour or two to spare in the day. I've
started factoring this in, and it's making me more productive. I don't stress
over every task. I do it at a leisurely pace, and I do it right the first time.
It's a much more relaxed environment.
We hired a new intern, Matt, solely to take over the
restaurant finder project, so I've sadly been relieved of duty as captain. I
hope they offer that poor kid a job, because that is some thankless work.
On Wednesday, I conquered one of my fears. Nancy - the
severe woman from the meeting. Israel tasked me with writing up some tweets for
the weekend related to one of our August features. I took great pains to write
the most concise, elegant, and informative tweets that left no extraneous
characters. I even felt that I had captured the magazine's voice, which has,
honestly, kind of alluded me. Israel told me to show them to Nancy, so,
trembling, I did so.
"How long are
these?"
"Oh, they're all
around 140 characters or less. I plugged them in, and stuff."
"Can you make them
shorter? I want people to be able to retweet them."
"Oh, uh. Yeah.
Ok."
Internally, I thought of about six reasons why my tweets
were flawless and of how Nancy clearly misunderstood Twitter, but I returned to
my desk. I painstakingly edited my tweets until they were able to communicate
all the necessary information in as little space as possible. It was a good
editing exercise and it only took about five minutes. I then spent the next 10
minutes debating whether or not I had the courage to print and deliver these
new tweets to Nancy and face a second rejection. Then I thought about how she
would react to some sweaty intern cowardly emailing her over something as
insignificant as some tweets.
I summoned my courage, booted Matt off the computer with
a connection to the printer, and printed my tweets in order to hand-deliver
them to Nancy.
"Yes?"
"I have the new
tweets."
"Oh? Let me take a
look."
She read them and flashed me a smile.
"Good work. I just
wanted them to be a little shorter. You know how (I think she may have inserted a curse word
here as a display of camaraderie, but I was flying so high on approval that
It's possible that I just inserted it into my memory) lazy people are."
"Uh, yeah. They can
be. Thanks," I stammered.
I returned to my desk a new man. I had accomplished an
incredibly minor task, and in the process potentially endeared myself to
someone that I found intimidating. Triumphantly, I handed Israel the tweets.
"Here are the tweets.
Nancy approved them."
"Oh, ok cool! See you
tomorrow!" Israel said.
I could tell he was proud of me.
