Summer's halfway over! Ahhh!!

So, right now I'm continuing work on the ShelterBox promo piece and I've been given the opportunity to write the story/treatment for it! It's been very exciting. I'm actually able to apply some of the things learned from broadcasting!! Who knew? Hahaha...

As for my independent study: I made contact with Southeastern Guide Dogs and I will hopefully have an interview with them in the near future. I'd be interviewing one of the dog trainers and *hopefully* one of the "graduates," aka a blind person who's been matched with their dog. I'm still waiting to hear back from the K9 units in Miami, and hopefully I'll get to go back for a day and spend some time with them again. Now, even though I show dogs myself, I want to get a perspective from someone who shows their dogs more regularly. Hm.

Not too much to say. Enjoying life!

Q

Information Overload

So, my ears have stopped ringing and I'm back to researching, cataloging, and capturing footage. We are beginning to focus a bit on a project about ShelterBox. It is a non-profit organization that essentially stuffs all of the necessities for a family into a large green box! I can't share pictures yet because they are copyrighted, but you can see some images from the website here. They've done incredible things for so many countries including Haiti and Brazil, where their people were forced out of their home because of a natural disaster.

I say overload because ShelterBox has given us so much footage and plenty of pictures to sift through. I'm attempting to download them all (from a remote server) and, no joke, my computer estimates that it will take 10 DAYS+ to download it all. It's only 5 gigs too...my laptop could download 5 gigs in 3-4 hours. Man.

It's a rainy and hot day, which is a bit odd! But I plan on taking advantage of it and catching up on sleep!

Q

Brief Update

So, in case anybody cares, I'm keeping up with this blog mostly for my benefit. I have a project to do once I go back to school and I need to present the experience I had during this internship (a pretty great one so far!).

Also, just when I thought there were no more sounds to listen to, I was asked to switch to music and listen through the entire music library (30-40 volumes) and pick songs that would associate well with the FHP. They actually trust me with that! I was told it's nice to have me around since I'm a musician. So, I still have my ear buds jammed and am doing the same process! Listening to the music is much easier and manageable than the sounds, but there is some bad music out there. Maybe I just notice because I'm obsessed with music...

Q

"Hi everyone, you can call me the manatee!" - Jim Gaffigan, comedian

It's been awhile. Sorry about that! I've been busy with work, church, and family. In fact, my parents were just here. That was nice- not having to pay for anything! Mom and I spent some time on Lido Beach and I got to pet a wild manatee! Check it out!

Okay, so I don't have pictures of it. But it was a bit of a short notice, and I wasn't about to run out of the water to grab my camera! You'll just have to trust me. But he looked something like this one, who we saw at the Mote aquarium.
The best part was that he acted just like one of my dogs. He swam straight up to us, bumped into me, and rolled over so I could rub his belly. Such a sweet creature.

The next few pictures are from the Ringling Circus Museum.

And last week, Courtney Crutcher and her family were vacationing on Anna Maria Island, so I got to hang out with them too! It was fun to see some familiar faces!

I suppose I could do a brief update on what I'm doing at work; for the past week and likely most of this week, I've been responsible for collecting and sorting sound effects and music pieces for the Florida Highway Patrol piece. Salt & Light has a few libraries that they already own to sort through, and they add up to about 38-40,000 individual sounds. It's a lot of listening, but it's been an interesting experience to learn and think about how many sounds do go into professional video media. Many sounds are subtle and hardly noticed unless listened for.

That's all I have time for now but hopefully I'll have some more time to share more soon!

Q

Post Number 50!

Yay!!

Whoohoo!

Not that 50 posts is all that significant. Particularly because it doesn't seem like that many! Anyway, nothing horribly exciting is happening right now but the 4th of July was fun and I had some time to see the beach and explore a bit. Also, a friend is visiting this weekend and my parents are coming down next weekend! Now if I could only get my dogs down here... :-)

As for the internship, well, I've been working on a dozen different projects! Still doing some research on the homeless and the hungry but today I discovered some of the gangs that exist in our area in addition to the rest of the nation. Interesting stuff! There are over 1,000 different gangs in Florida alone! And not only are they in big cities (Miami, Jacksonville, Tallahassee), they are expanding to more suburban and rural areas now. Plus, the internet opens up world wide interaction. Scary, but true.

The Florida Highway Patrol project is moving rapidly through production and so far so good! The last of the footage needed has been gathered. Salt & Light (S&L) still wanted two more events; a traffic homicide and the Tactical Response Team (TRT) making a warranted arrest. So we attached a couple of mini-cameras to the vests of some troopers making the arrest and our senior producer, Don, dragged himself out of bed a 3:30am to shoot some footage of a traffic homicide he was called about. These things may not be pretty, but they are real and deserve some attention.

Ending on a happier note, I've discovered a fantastic church in the area that I just love. And I've finally made some friends that are around my age! Not that I don't adore my supervisors and various Hanover alumni! I've rediscovered my faith and haven't been happier in a long time.

Q

Sick and busy!

Sorry it's been sometime between entries. I've been sick for the past week and when I am working, I bounce between 3 or 4 projects on any given day! I've been doing a lot of research about the homeless in Florida, since that is one of our upcoming projects. So I've been locating shelters and other organizations that specialize in assisting the homeless. I've also been discovering what the real definition of homeless is. It doesn't just apply to a person who lives on the streets with a mental illness. It also applies to people who had a home but recently lost it because of financial or other reasons. Our peers could be classified as homeless if they have not had a stable place to sleep each night for a period of 3 or more months. This includes people who "double-up" and live with family or friends because they don't have a place of their own. Homeless also refers to people who ran away from their home to escape an abusive relationship and have nowhere else to go but to a shelter.

A second project that I have been working on is regarding the issue of hunger in America. I haven't dug too far into the topic yet, but I've been hunting down food banks and soup kitchens and other organizations of the like that may be helpful in our project.

The Payton's Song project is at a standstill right now as we are attempting to schedule interviews with family and friends.

Two different groups have come to us with piles of their own footage and the request that we turn their footage into promotional videos. The first group is called ShelterBox, which is actually a pretty interesting program. It's a natural disaster relief group that provides a large green container that has supplies enough to take care of a family of 10. Recent example of their use is the Haiti earth quake. The day after the quake, ShelterBox had already loaded hundreds of these boxes into their cargo planes and flew them down there and helped set up camp sites. Very cool stuff. The second group is called Faith and Action, and to the best of my understanding, it is a group of people in D.C. that bring Christianity to the Federal offices in the area. I'm still learning more about exactly what they do.

Finally, the Florida Highway Patrol project is entering its editing stage and I've been blessed with the lovely challenge of finding royalty free music that can be used. It's been quite a task! More details soon!

On a completely unrelated note, I've finally had the chance to see some of the area and have visited Lido beach a few times. Tomorrow I plan on taking an easy day just lounging on the beach, weather depending. Pictures to come!

Q