The Misadventures of a LA Intern--Week 1

As a student at UTLA, I keep a weekly journal of my experiences at my internship. I figured they could be up here as well.

Intern Report: Week 1 (Sept. 1-4)

Reported to my first day at Goodspot. I felt a bit overdressed. I was wearing what I thought was average work attire—button down shirt with slacks—only to find the employees in t-shirts and shorts. Goodspot is a marketing boutique that specializes in producing movie trailers, promos, etc., with only five employees. There was Richard the CEO, Dave the editor, Kyle the design director, Mark the junior editor, and Romina the writer/producer. Everyone except for Richard is around my age. I had interviewed with Romina a couple of weeks back. Goodspot was a company in the UTLA directories and I sent them a resume and cover letter and a link to my demo reel last summer. Romina contacted back saying, “Like your style. Call me when you get the chance.” While I was in the midst of interviewing with companies in LA, Goodspot was the only company that specifically asked about my abilities as an editor/filmmaker, and was the only one that mentioned about the film work I had done and my demo reel. Every other place I had interviewed seemed more concerned with my organization skills and ability of work in the office. So, Goodspot it was.

So, I report to Romina and see what I can do. She lets me in on a little secret; the company is on the verge getting a gig from Hillary Clinton. The State Department is looking to Goodspot to write/produce a video to introduce a policy implementing solutions to world hunger. Interesting. They want something catchy, fast, possibly animated, with a lot of design work. Nothing melodramatic. So my first day I spend at the computer looking up videos on the web that could inspire the staff in coming up a look and feel for our own video. Not how I was expecting to spend my first day as an intern, but I was thankful for all that time I “wasted” in college surfing YouTube. Due to that, I was able to find a list of videos that I forwarded to the staff.

Second day. Everyone, including some outside help, gathers around the conference table to brainstorm. They invite me to sit as well. We talk. A lot of back and forth, but it was very good atmosphere. No idea was dismissed. Everything was considered and expounded on. I was able to pitch my own idea for the video, in which Richard was rather impressed, and it was one of the final three scenarios considered. I was sent to get lunch. More talking. Ideas are finalized. It is about gardens, or countries represented by gardens to show the interconnectivity of the earth. Some gardens flourish, while others are desolate. What happens in one garden in turn effects those neighboring. We all break to write our own scripts. I have writer’s block. I cannot think of what to write. An hour passes, and I don’t have anything to show, but that’s okay, because neither did the design director. We look over three scripts that were written. More talking. I stay about an hour and a half over when I’m supposed to, not because I have to, but because I want to. It was a good day. I was treated like any other employee, and my ideas and voice was heard.

The next day Richard comes up to me and says how impressed he is just from the first two days I’ve been here. That out of all the interns he’s had, I’ve had the best start.
Then he says, “So don’t f@#* it up.”
Duly noted.

Delilah Screen Cap

Working an all-nighter on Delilah, my new short film, and I came across this still. This is Copperfield (played by Tina) in action.

Flash Animation #6: Lip Sync

In this clip, I animated two characters' mouths and made them sing! Using an excerpt from my roommate's band, I created this little scene. I had drawn the lip shapes for each character beforehand; then scrubbed through the audio, matching each sound with each lip shape. Lip sync is a staple animation.

Flash Animation Exercise #5: Parallax Motion

This quick clip was an exercise in tweening multiple layers to create the illusion of a 3D parallax. The central character is simply a walk cycle symbol, the lamp posts, brick wall, city scape, and bus are all different layers that are tweened at different speeds. The lamp posts, being the most upfront, are tweened to move faster than the city scape, which is the farthest back. Through this method the illusion of parallax is created.

Flash Animation Exercise #4.5: Walk Cycle (Character)

A character is layered over the skeleton. In this case, its a corporate drone with a bad case of the Mondays!Once the character's body is drawn over the skeleton frame-by-frame, I made the character into a symbol and used motion tweening to move the character across the screen, so it appears as if he's traveling across instead of walking in place. His head is a single drawing that I attached to the body.

Flash Animation Exercise #4: Walk Cycle (Skeleton)

In this animation I established a skeleton for a walk cycle. The arms and legs are blue and red in order to distinguish them from front and back when layering over a character's arms and legs. Like the head turn, the walk cycle is a staple animation.

Flash Animation Exercise #3.5: Head Turn (Character)

And voila! A character is layered over the skeleton.In this case its a girl rockin' out. The green headphones make another appearance. The hair caused me a little trouble, as you can see its going everywhere. This character was still animated frame-by-frame, so it was just as tedious, however, the skeleton is vital as a guide so the facial features and shape don't morph out of place and/or proportion.