Some Memorable Internship Experiences

This Internship has been a real roller coaster ride, that’s for sure. I’ve made several posts chronicling just how difficult and taxing a job that Wedding Film making can be, so I figured to conclude this Blog, I’d recount some of my more notable experiences throughout this Internship.

For better or worse, my first time helping Matt with a shoot was easily the most memorable for me. The wedding itself was incredibly in-depth. The couple had purchased Matt’s deluxe package, which involved shooting the couples entire day and creating a trailer for them by the next day. Our shoot began at 8:00 AM, where I met Matt at the Bride’s house and we spent the better part of 3 hours filming and chatting with the bridal party as the got ready. While this was by far the most relaxing part of the day, it was still very fast paced. As Matt and I were pulling in to the Church for the ceremony, we were suddenly approached by one of the guests, who had claimed that Matt had hit her bumper when pulling in. Both of us were quite puzzled, as we felt basically nothing. After talking it out with her, she quickly realized it was a speed bump and not us, but it certainly was a setback in our plan. This meant we had to really scramble to get back up to speed, which meant we were setting up our shots and getting an audio source only moments before the ceremony began. Things didn’t let up once we reached the venue, as the shortcut we decided to take was blocked due to a downed power line, which meant that we were forced to double back and take the backroads in order to reach Aria. This was a massive set back, as we arrived at the venue about 20 minutes behind schedule and nearly missed the opening ceremonies by the MC. However, fortunately (or unfortunately depending on how you look at it), Aria itself also ended up losing power, which allowed us to catch up. The night itself was full of enormous setbacks, but it truly prepared me for how hectic the job was and how important it was to adapt.

Another of the most memorable experiences for me was the first couples meeting that Matt had me sit in on.  One of the biggest takeaways I took from this meeting was how Matt interacted with the couple in question. The bride seemed to be very engrossed in the whole process, often throwing out her ideas for the wedding and workshopping with Matt and his suggestions. On the other hand, the groom seemed to be very disengaged in the entire conversation, almost as if he was forced to come along. In order to attempt and engage him more in the conversation, Matt decided to change the subject and talk about the types of shots that he would include in the film. In particular, Matt brought attention to the types of shots that he planned to implement, particularly drone shots. This immediately caught the grooms interest and he became much more involved in the conversation and the rest of the meeting went by incredibly smoothly. This experience in particular showcased how truly important the human element is in this profession.

Finally, the last truly memorable experience for me was one of my recent studio sessions where Matt had me work on two projects for him on my own. This was honestly one of my proudest moments throughout the course of the internship, as it allowed me to showcase what I had learned directly to Matt. The projects themselves weren’t anything terribly special, just a concert and a speech at a banquet. However, I was very happy with how quickly I was able to complete them. In fact, Matt was even impressed that I was able to finish them several hours before he had assumed I would. This was so vindicating for me, as it made me feel as if all of the work I had into the Internship was worth it.

Where I’m going from here

As I’m sure you’ve realized by now (god I hope so), this blog has been focused primarily on chronicling my time at my internship at MV Films. It’s been an… interesting time, to say the least. While I certainly can’t say that I was intending on covering my Internship in this level of detail, it certainly isn’t something that I regret. I plan on writing more of a reflection on this entire process in a separate post, so be on the lookout for that in the next week or so. However, in this post, I want to talk about where I feel I need to do in order to truly further my career.

My time at this internship has taught me a lot, particularly in how much I need to up my game when it comes to technology. In a previous course, I was instructed to create a website that would allow me to market myself as a freelance videographer. While this process did actually get me some work (in the form of creating a short trailer for a local shop), it really illustrated just how behind the times I was in terms of tech. My camera was about 5 years out of date, I didn’t have any Parallax Sliders, my computer could really not handle the editing process ect. It was a very enlightening experience for me, as it felt like I was in so far over my head, I was not able to present myself in a professional matter. This was one of my main inspirations for taking on the Internship with MV Films; I wanted to truly see how a professional handled himself and what types of technology he utilizes on a daily basis.

Thankfully, Matt was very helpful when it came to talking shop and recommended a lot of investments to help me establish myself. One of the biggest recommendations he had was to purchase a Mac Laptop. This is due to Mac’s inherently being superior to PC’s in terms of video editing, which is something I am going to be doing on a daily basis as a freelance videographer. Granted, it is certainly a financial investment (costing about $1200. ooooff), but it at least gives me a goal to work towards. Matt was also very knowledgeable in terms of a good budget camera for me to start with, recommending a slightly older Canon as a good point for me to start. This was a huge boon for me, as camera details have always been something that I’ve always had trouble with. Matt also acted as something of a mentor to me, especially when it came to interacting with his clients. He was energetic, kind and always willing to put aside any of his expertise and listen to what his clients are looking for in a given shoot. All of this has given me a fairly clear view of my future as a videographer. Now all I need is the money. Hoo boy, money sure is a thing…

Thanks for reading!

Links to some of my work with MV Films

My Internship Supervisor Matt was kind enough to allow me to share some footage of a variety of shoots that I have been on with him. Feel free to check them out by following the various links down below.

What is Wedding Film making and why should you care? Revamped

I know, the term “Wedding Filmmaking” might illicit images of your father or uncle taking video of a wedding to save them for your home movie archive. Can there really be an entire industry dedicated to filming and creating some form of narrative around weddings of all things? Well, yeah, there is. I was in the exact same boat of disbelief until very recently, simply believing that you would either hire the company providing the entertainment to film the Wedding, or you would just film it yourself. I couldn’t have been more wrong. After securing an internships at “MV Films” a couple of months ago, I was thrown right into the chaotic, fast paced and stressful world of Wedding Filmmaking.

To start, I think it is important to define what exactly “Wedding Filmmaking” is. In essence, it is a feature film length documentary that covers all aspects of a couples wedding day. Starting with the process of the bride and groom getting dressed, to the ceremony, to the reception, they are expected to capture all of these elements on the fly. It doesn’t stop there, however, as Wedding Filmmakers are also expected to edit their product as well. In addition, they are responsible for creating the films in a limited amount of time (usually 2-3 weeks) and personally ensuring the product is up to the couples standards before finally securing payment.

It would not be a stretch to compare them to a hollywood film crew, as they fulfil similar roles to the director, editor and producer. All on their own. In less time. For far less money. This job requires an immense amount of skill and endurance to truly excel, so it only makes sense for me; an unpaid student with no experience in the field, to do an Internship with a local Wedding Filmmaker.

Does that sound dumb and nonsensical? That’s because it is.  I was recommended to a production company called “MV Films” for an internship by a family friend and innocently assumed that I would become something akin to a Production Assistant. I was over the moon with excitement and assumed that I would primarily be doing video editing, with only light filming on the side. I cannot begin to overstate just how off base this assumption was. My very first day on the job, after meeting with my coordinator (Matt) consisted of a 14 hour video shoot. We began at the house of the bride, spent 3 hours filming the makeup process, 2 hours at the church, 1 hour filming in a park and the last 6 hours at the venue. Mixed in with all of this mess was an additional 2 hours of driving.

To say that this was one of the most chaotic, exhausting days of my life would be an absolute understatement. I am an insomniac, have been since I was about 8 and rarely get more than 6 hours of sleep on a good day. After this day of shooting, however, I immediately collapsed on my bed at midnight and did not wake up until 1:00 P.M.. A full 13 of hours of sleep is what my body needed to recover to a state that it saw fit to actually begin moving again. This is by far the easiest shoot I’ve had as an assistant Wedding Film maker.

Contrary to what you might might be thinking, this post is not a giant salt fest, venting session. Instead, I want to truly get across just how, despite its relative obscurity, difficult and time intensive a profession Wedding Filmmaking is. My perspective on this subject is fairly unique, as I am learning all of it’s many requirements on the job and in the field. As such, I feel confident in saying that Wedding Filmmaking is an amazing “Trial by Fire” type exercise for anyone who has aspirations of going into a career that involves shooting any form of video. It combines the meticulous shot composition seen in hollywood films, with the split second timing seen in more hard news stories. It’s not hard to see why I had never heard of Wedding Filmmaking before, there are just a very small number of people who are not only willing to actually put in all the effort, but do it well.

As I am nearing the end of my internship, I can firmly say that this is not a career I am terribly interested in pursuing. There are simply too many skills required for far too little pay off in my opinion, both from a monetary perspective, as well as one of personal satisfaction. It is for these reasons, however, that I find Wedding Filmmakers all the more admirable and believe they deserve to be more well known. They are truly jacks-of-all-trades and are able to execute every aspect of their profession on an incredibly high level. Despite that, they are virtually unknown and even when describing them, their job description does nothing to convey how truly difficult and occupation it is. I hope that this post has at least shed a bit of light on how impressive they truly are at their careers and why they truly deserve acknowledgement. Or who knows, maybe you laughed at me being a big dumb and getting in over my head. Either works. Thanks for reading. Again.

Shitty First Drafts

I really appreciated this article, because it really laid bare a lot of frustrations I have with the writing process as a whole. While I enjoy writing, I think it can be incredibly difficult for me to find any sort of flow if I am writing in a purely academic format. When I constantly feel the need to edit my wordage and phrasing, I always end up losing the wind in my sails and can have a difficult time trying to truly finish assignments. However, when using the concept of a first draft being, admittedly, pretty shitty, it allows me to write in essentially the same fashion in which I speak. This much more off the cuff approach is far more appealing to me, as it allows me to really blaze through the topic at hand without the worry of needing to fit any specific qualifications. Through the revision process, I can be more meticulous and make any changes I need, but can still be assured that the bulk of my assignment has been completed. I am simply tweaking it to make it even better.

In the 6th Chapter of the article, Lamott said something that really resonated with me “So I’d start writing without reigning myself in. It was almost just typing, just making my fingers move. And the writing would be terrible. I’d write a lead paragraph that was a whole page, even though the entire review could only be three pages long”. Lamott really put into words something that I had been feeling for nearly my entire life. I tend to just write an assignment through in one shot, regardless of the context. Often times, my initial style is completely different than the approach I need to take for the final assignment. It is very comforting to know that this type of writing/revision process is not unique to me and that a successful individual adopts it as well.  

Wikipedia Editing

For this assignment, I decided to write a mock write up for a “Wikia” site dedicated to one of my favorite content producers; Mike Stoklasa. While Wikia’s are more specialized variants of Wikipedia (focusing entirely on one subject), you need to go through the same approval process, so I feel that it fits the assignment well.

This is a link to the article on Stoklasa on the “RedLetter Media Wiki, followed by my proposed edit and sources.

https://rlm.fandom.com/wiki/Mike_Stoklasa

New

Mike Stoklasa (born November 14th, 1978) is a director and actor from Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He is most well known for being the founder of RedLetterMedia, as well as being featured in many of its programs.

Stoklasa became well known in 2009 with the publication of his now famous review of “Star Wars Episode 1: The Phantom Menace”. Released across 7, 11 minutes videos on the company’s YouTube channel, Stoklasa was incredibly critical of the film and, due to the success, would go on to make review’s of similar caliber for several other films. One of the most notable features of the review series was Stoklasa’s decision to present the reviews from the perspective of the fictional character “Harry S. Plinkett”, an angry, delusional old man who would become a mainstay in many the company’s following productions.

Prior to the release of the first Plinkett Review, Stoklasa’s company primarily worked in the world of wedding filmmaking, which they occasionally dabble in to this day. In addition, the group also does annual work with the University of Milwaukee for their video marketing.

Upon cultivating an audience with the initial Plinkett reviews, Stoklasa would go on to introduce a number of additional programs, such as “Half in the Bag” and “Best of the Worst”. The former sees Stoklasa, along with co-str Jay Bauman, talking about recently released films and informing the audience of their opinions and recommendations. The later sees many members of the RedLetterMedia teams watching a series of terrible films, discussing them in a roundtable format and finally crowning one of the films as the “Best of the Worst”.

In addition to creating series for the internet, Stoklasa company has also produced full length films. In 2003, Stoklasa would direct and star in the film “Gorilla Interrupted”, which also featured RedLetterMedia regulars Jay Bauman and Rich Evans. Stoklasa and Bauman teamed up once again in 2008 in order to direct “The Departed”, the groups first attempt at a horror film. Recently, Stoklasa (along with many of the groups members and collaborators) directed and starred in the 2015 film “Space Cop”

Sources

Wikipedia Reflection

I find this weeks topic particularly fascinating, specifically because I am an avid user of Wikipedia. Whether I’m bored  and looking for a way to spend the afternoon or attempting to look into an assignment, I find myself using Wikipedia on a very regular (if not daily) basis. However, I had never actually thought of editing a page myself before, mostly down to not being a particular expert in many areas that lacking Wikipedia pages necessitate. For example, looking at this page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Most-wanted_articles which lists many of the most wanted Wikipedia articles, I can’t say I have the knowledge necessary to write about people like “Andreas Leuthe” or services like “MOS:DISCOG”. Regardless, I still find the process of creating a new page fairly fascinating. One thing I appreciate about both sources is that they encourage potential users to do their research extensively before attempting to create a new page. This is comforting, as many people treat Wikipedia’s information as fact, despite the site actively encouraging them to take the information with a grain of salt.

The second article encourages potential users to start off with making small edits to existing articles, which is something I wholeheartedly agree with. Often times, while the information on a Wikipedia article can in fact be correct, the way it is worded can be quite bizarre. Be it a difference in language or a simple lack of experience, a poor choice of words can turn people off from valuable information. For this reason, simply editing the phrasing of poorly phrased Wikipedia articles can be a great method of preparing to create your own article, as it familiarizes the user with the overall interface of the Wikipedia editing system. Another point that both articles stress is ensuring that you check your sources before you create a Wikipedia page, which is essential for all of the same reasons. As mentioned earlier, while I have never attempted to edit a Wikipedia article before, I feel as if I am much more prepared for the coming assignment now.

The Strange Case of the “IHob” Campaign

Back in 2018, IHop’s bizarre “IHob” social marketing campaign took the internet by storm. I would know, I was right there in the middle of it and, if I can be completely honest, it kind of baffled me. On one hand, I thought it was a bit of a weird move for IHop to be completely changing their name, but due to the tongue and cheek nature of their Social Media posts, I assumed it was done mostly as a joke. However, what shocked me even more was how big a response the campaign elicited from the online community at the changes. Joke posts celebrating it, serious posts from fans legitimately concerned and, of course, internet memes all came out of the woodwork in this weird 1-2 month period of time. I think that I first became aware of IHob when, in a group chat that I was in, my friend Mike changed any B in someone’s name to a bold, red uppercase B. After one of us asked what happened, he linked us to an article and the rest was history. While the name went back, I was still left curious as to what even happened and what motivated them to attempt this. This is what I hope to analyze and answer today; just what was the idea behind the IHob Social Media Campaign?

At its most basic level, the IHob campaign was designed to promote the various burgers  that IHop had on it’s menu. Due to the restaurants association with Pancakes (what with being the International House of Pancakes and all), the restaurant was most well known for serving breakfast. The idea of placing burgers on their menus was IHop’s attempt to branch out and become well known for offering meals at Lunch and Dinner as well. Realizing (rightly so), the difficulties that would come with this type of diversifying, IHob decided to be very cheeky about the change and vigorously market it on their social media. They released a video on their Twitter account where the P in their logo flipped upside down and became a B, followed with 10 seconds of close up footage of burgers on a grill. While many fans reacted positively to this video, they assumed that it was a joke. However, things changed when a Florida resident posted a photo of an IHop local to them where it could be clearly seen that the P on the building was being flipped. IHop was serious and this is where the floodgates opened.

Once it was known that this was real, a metric ton of clickbait videos, memes, outraged posts and genuine confusion flooded the Internet. Facebook in particular was almost taken over by posts of the chang, with many people taking the change at face value and as confirmation of a total rebranding of the company, in contrast to the brief marketing stint the company had planned. Realizing that they had certainly captured the public’s attention, IHop continued to ride the Social Media wave, creating tongue and cheek Social Media posts that continued to promote their new push towards burgers.

I can’t help but think that IHop got a tad lucky with the next phase of their push, because almost immediately after temporarily rebranding to IHob, other companies Twitter accounts began to respond to them. From Chiquita making a joke post about IHob being the “International House of Banana’s”, to Wendy’s insulting the quality of their burgers, IHob was now in the position where some of their competition was actively giving them exposure, free of charge.

This level of viral marketing basically ensured that the Ihop’s temporary relaunch was going to be a success. Due to the sheer amount of exposure IHob recieved on the internet, even those who would’ve had no intention of ever eating at IHop in general would have a reason to go, simply to see what all of the fuss is about. Needless to say, this campaign was successful, with IHop’s burgers selling 4 times more than the company had anticipated. IHop’s Chief Marketing Officer, Brad  Haley, said of the IHob campaign “The IHOb campaign greatly exceeded all of our expectations. The creative strategy behind it was to convince the public that we take our burgers as seriously as we take our pancakes so, to convey that, we had to make a big statement in a disruptive way. And it worked,”

I really do admire how gutsy IHop was in this Social Media Campaign. While it might have seemed to be a disaster waiting to happen on paper, the approach they took with it was absolutely perfect. They were willing to aggressively market it aggressively, but they always had a great attitude towards anyone wanting to interact with them. It was honestly a brilliant idea on their part to simply not interfere with the other companies poking fun at the change, as it made them seem very chill and relaxed, while also essentially giving them free advertising. For as easy as it is to make fun of, The IHob campaign is an excellent example of how a Social Media Campaign can be pulled off in a succesful, efficient manner.  


Response to Social Media Campaigns in 2018

I found several aspects of the “6 Best Social Media Campaigns of 2018” article intriguing, specifically in how a variety of companies were attempting to “Generation Z”. This was probably most evident in Diet Coke’s attempts at changing their brand in order to appeal to a new audience. On the simple, most basic level, I honestly kind of love the new design they gave to the products. The design is super sleek, almost reminding me of an IPA beer can, which makes it incredibly appealing to any audience who many not be interested in them. I also feel like they made a very interesting choice with the new flavors they decided to create. While I’m not entirely sure if a standard member of “Gen Z” would be likely to buy “Ginger Lime” or “Blood Orange” Diet Coke, I do think it is cool that they are attempting to step out of their comfort zone. I feel like the expected out come on their Twitter account (about an 50/50 split in terms of the positive and negative reactions), but the fact that they were willing to take a risk like that at all simply for promotional purposes was commendable.

I also believe that “GoPro”s approach is very interesting, taking what could’ve simply been an interesting video taken utilizing one of their products and turning it into a massive marketing opportunity. The video involved a swimmer being slapped in the face with an octopus by a seal. While I have no idea how an event like that couldn’t have been staged, the video was shared by the official GoPro Facebook page. This lead to an absolutely amazing jump in views, going 16.1 K to an astronomical 587k in the span of a few days. This was a very inventive form of marketing and fits in very well with Gen Z’s natural inclination to utilize Social Media on a daily basis.