1 – My First Week
For my first week at CUNY TV, I was able to have a tour of the building and I was also able to meet the staff as well. With this being my first time in the building, I’m going to have to get used to where everything is at. They also showed me where my desk would be at and where my supervisor’s office is at, thankfully they’re both on the same floor. I’m confident that this will go well for me.
2 – My Role
In my second week in my internship, I was able to speak with my supervisor, Diana Vargas, who produces her show called, “Nueva York” shown on the CUNY TV network. I was able to see a few episodes and get the sense of what the show is all about. The show follows stories told by hispanic people who live in New York and how their experience in the city contributed to their dreams.
My main role in this internship is to be a video editor for the show, which I’m really excited for since that’s what I like doing. Along with that I also have to assist in video shoots and manage their social media pages.
3 – The Workplace
One thing I really like about this internship is that I get to go to the CUNY graduate center in Manhattan. One of the coordinators already assigned me a desk during orientation, now everytime I come in, I know where to go. The place itself is very clean and everyone in the building is very kind, there’s no dress code which means there’s no specific attire you’re supposed to wear. The other interns also got their assigned desks, depending on what you’re working on with your supervisor, you’re put in a specific office room.
I was surprised when they told me that we have one hour lunch break, mainly because I assumed this type of workplace would only offer half an hour or less. We also get to choose when we want to take our lunch.
4 – What I’m Learning
My supervisor invited me to help her film for the next episode. In this episode, we focused on Women’s Day since the date is coming up. We interviewed women of different ages and asked them their opinion on how they few certain things in our society. It was interesting for me to see the whole camera and lighting setup because I’ve never been behind the scenes, this allowed me to learn something new about filming.
I was also able to learn how to choose good angles for camera setups, these are very important to know because you don’t want to end up with something you’re not satisfied with.
I’ve also been handed the task of taking care of the program’s social media pages. I feel like this is a great opportunity for me to show my design and marketing skills.
5 – Collaborative Projects
After learning how to set up a single shot for a documentary style video, my supervisor thought it was a good idea for me to go to the camera room and work with a camera specialist that can guide me and mentor me a bit more on how some professional 8k and 16k cameras work. This fascinated me because it expanded my interest in video production, I realized that this is something I really like doing.
With the footage we got last week of the women we interviewed, we needed to edit them in order to start promoting the episode on social media and of course, start editing the whole episode itself. I had to work with other video editors and talk about how we should edit the video. We looked over at the footage and then talked about what works and what doesn’t. Since the episode is split into 3 interviews, and we were exactly 3 video editors, we decided that each of us will work on one segment.
By the next week, we looked over at each other’s work and started critiquing. Finished them up and then sent them over to the supervisor of the show. I felt like this process worked out perfectly because we all understood the message that the show is trying to portray and on top of that, we talked beforehand on how we want this episode to look like.
6 – Fashion Week 2023
With more to film, my supervisor took me and another videographer to a fashion show by the piers by Manhattan. The reason was because the fashion show was put together by a lot of Hispanic designers and this was some of their first times being here in New York City. This was great for us because the overall message of Nueva York is to show the audience that this city brings dreams to reality, and many fashion designers mentioned that which was amazing.
Although I didn’t have a professional camera, my supervisor said that I can just use the camera from my phone. She handed me a tripod and I started filming. When I film, I always go in thinking already how I’m going to edit the video because you get a clearer sense of what type of shots you need.
We ended up interviewing 3 designers and 2 staff members, but because there was so much background noise on some of them, we might cut some off. We’ll see when we start editing.
7 – Video Editor Tasks
I got assigned to work on one of the interviews we filmed and that was for Mexican fashion designer, Lalo Estrada. I enjoy editing videos as much as I like filming them, I feel like if you understand how to do both, you have an advantage in understanding your own work and other people’s work.
For the video I’m editing, I was told a few things should be edited. First of all it should be at least 6-7 minutes long, then I have to make sure any unwanted audio is cut off, and also make sure the video itself makes sense since the person we interviewed was a little nervous. I might have to move a few clips around and cut some clips off. I have two weeks to have a finished and polished video, it sounds like a lot of time but I know it’ll pass quick.
8 – Mentors
While also being assigned the video edit for the show, I also have to look after the social media pages. Ever since I started posting videos and stories, I’ve seen an increase in the follower count. Which means what I’m doing is working, my supervisor I also noticed and she was really pleased. The key to be honest is to just be consistent with posts, no one will pay attention to your social media page if there’s nothing on it or if it’s been inactive for awhile.
I made a few edits already to the video, I talked to one of the main editors so he can see if what I’m doing is fine. He was impressed with my work and said I did really good. We were discussing what can be changed and we both agreed that it needed more background content, as in pictures or videos that describe what the person we’re interviewing is saying. Now I will focus on finishing it up and adding those final elements.
9 – Learning Along the Way
Finalized the video and sent it to my supervisor and the main video editor so they can approve it. It was tougher than I thought and stressful as well. I say that because I did all of my work on my laptop and during one of my editing sessions, my laptop just started acting so slow and everything was freezing. Although, I basically brought that upon myself, now I know to never work with 4k videos on my small MacBook Air laptop.
We filmed another interview with award winning author, Maria Hinojosa, where she talks about her newly released book, “Once I Was You”. The book is about her own personal experience on her growing up in the United States. We were meant to film for about 15-20 minutes, but we ended up filming around 30 minutes. Which is fine because my supervisor then decided that this interview can be used as a special.
10 – My Work Is On Television
It was so satisfying to tune into live television and seeing the piece I edited being shown. I felt really proud of myself because it was something I was very excited for and it went really well for me. To see my name three times in the end credits too. It motivates me to do more work like this because I was able to handle such a task that is going to live television so confidently.
Handling social media this week was a bit tricky since the videos that we normally post were not working. We always have two formats for every video, one is for reels so a rectangular shape, and the other is a square shape for posts. For some reason the square videos were only working. I could’ve posted it as a normal post, but reels get more engagement. I decided to then bring the video to Premiere Pro, and format it correctly and added a background so it’ll seem like a reel. Thankfully it worked and our posts are still doing great.
