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.
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