One of the biggest things I’m beginning to understand within my internship is the importance of spending time to research. I do intensive research for projects all of the time. I base a lot of my outcomes on things depending on the amount of research I can gather for a subject. But when it comes to timing the work you do for a company, research is something I didn’t expect to fill the hours as quickly as I thought.
Most of the time, I’m given a project scope and need to handle most of the research and presentation on my own. In KWM, I’ve been assigned one project but it’s lead me to research and present information as many times as I need to. This type of information isn’t only about figuring out how a program works. It includes making sure that for the type of video we’re going to put out will be successful through editing and shooting standards, being able to understand OpenReel and the upcoming changes, and it even includes learning more about the things I already know.
The biggest and most important research that I’ve been doing so far is in relation to OpenReel. When joining the company, I expected OpenReel to be a software that I can learn once and remember it for a lifetime. This wasn’t the case. Although the material that OpenReel starts off with doesn’t change much, what does is something that I’d need to understand by doing research and going to webinars to get a better idea. After doing my best to understand the software and being confident at a point, they then decide to drop an entirely new UI update that switches many of the things around. This isn’t bad if you had the option to choose and it you’re more than willing to undertake this change. But in my case, I had to make sure that the version of OpenReel is the most up-to-date and relay any of the changes to Trish to make sure that she’ll know exactly what to do if we were to be forced into this change. I’d do this by going to 2 webinars that highlight the differences and quality of life updates that, although are for the better, meant that it would be a new system me, Trish, and any new intern (who may be stuck in this update limbo like us) needs to comprehend to make future shoots as smooth as possible.
Another thing I’ve been doing for KWM research wise is finding out information on services to make managing the video production division a bit better. I’d find websites, report them to Trish, and then follow up the reports with extensive research that highlighted the pros and cons of using a specific service. Although it’s not my money being used, I’m still considering the price it costs to get things running as smooth as possible. I wanted to go through this process in the most professional direction possible: by acting as if it WERE my own money. Why spend money on 5 different websites when you can spend money on 2 and get all of the features of 10?
I’ve shown this chart before in my presentation but this is one of the research projects I’ve done. When I do research for things like this, I do it out of my own expense. I want to make sure that the work I give is the same work I do on my own time: including presenting information. This specific image highlights the research I went through to find a good stock footage site that would give us music, photos, and video to use for this future video and any ongoing videos. I did something similar with researching about possible file hosting websites (Google Drive, Dropbox, etc.) that would allow the video producers (interns) to offload and download projects while also letting Trish preview rough cuts and other footage.
Remember that research is important not only to you and the company, but also for the time dedicated at the company. I came in the internship wondering how I’d manage to fill up as many hours as I needed to with the varied work I’d be given. Little did I know that this method I was already using would equal to so much down the road.
