Today was my last day working with Trailblazer Studios, and the last day of the Work Experience Program. I have super happy with my experience and am so glad I was able to do it. At first I was really worried about whether I would enjoy the experience or not, but I am super happy about how it turned out. Now. On to the more important stuff.

I spent the day with a few different people in the Audio/Sound Design department. It wouldn’t be a day at Trailblazer without a Review session. Today’s wasn’t as long as the one yesterday, mostly due to the fact that yesterday we were reviewing a two-hour episode compared to today’s half hour episode. The room was full of people, not that it was a large room, but there were about six of us in a room made to hold like three. This review was also a lot different from the other two I have done. This is because we were looking at it from an audio standpoint and not a visual or content standpoint. It’s not something I’ve done much of before. I wasn’t even able to pick up on a lot of things that these people mentioned, even after I heard it a bunch of times. 

After the review, I got a more in depth tour of the Audio Department’s studios. They have one review room, one smaller composing/editing room, one composing/ recording booth suite, and one room that had complete surround sound (Pictured on the right). The guy who usually works in there was sick, but he does the mixing for the bigger projects. Thus the surround sound studio.

After the tour I sat with David, a sound designer and avid guitar player. He does everything from mixing the audio on shows to writing/recording his own music. He was working on a song and he went through his process while creating these songs. He even whipped out his guitar and started playing the song he was showing me.

Once we had all eaten some lunch I sat in with Aaron, director of music and sound operations as well as a composer, and an intern who is working with the sound department for the summer. He showed us the programs he uses to compose and a couple of demos he has worked on over the years. The first thing he showed us was a current project of his, a SAS promotional video. He wasn’t too happy with the music and ended up making a lot of changes to it later in the afternoon. He also showed us some animated shorts that he composed the music for, one of which as a collaboration with another Trailblazer employee. Lastly he showed us the same video clip but with about four different audio tracks/composers. It really showcased how much music affect how one views a commercial and how the tone or beat of the music draws your eye to different parts of the shot. It was an aspect of movies and other kinds of media that I hadn’t really delved into much.

I have really enjoyed my time at Trailblazer Studios and met so many awesome people. I hope that I can work with them again in the future.

Today was my second day with Trailblazer Studios, and today I worked with the post-production department. I spent the day reviewing an episode of Sister Wives with a group of editors and producers who have been working on the show for a while. There were four of us in the room and one gentleman who called in from L.A. There was the editor/finisher, Alan, who does most of the final touches on the show such as stabilization, color correction, and brightness adjustments. There was also a coordinator from Figure 8 who is a producer of the show, as well as a woman from Trailblazer Studios. The specific episode of sister wives we were reviewing was a two hour special. The whole review itself took about three and a  half hours total. However, after the review the editor still had a lot of work left to do making sure the show was ready to send to TLC. Despite a few connectivity errors with the guy calling in from L.A. the review went very well, or not very well depending on the point of view. From what I was told there were more fixes than normal which would mean more work for Alan, but good that they were able to fix all of the them, so long as Alan had time. Alan talked to me a little bit about the things he was  trying to fix, and I learned a lot by listening to the kinds of things that were noted both during the review session and while Alan was editing. I will definitely keep those things in mind the next time I go out for a shoot, or sit in the editing booth. Ha! That rhymes. 

Today was the first of three days I will spend with Trailblazer Studios. Today I spoke to people in their production department. When I first arrived I met with Tom Waring, the CEO of the company. He game me a tour of the facility. They have one large sound stage that they can rent out to companies that want to use it. It is one of the largest stages in the Triangle area, rivaling that of a stage in SAS. They have another smaller one which they have converted into office space for some of their production people. They also have many edit bays, both online and offline, as well as two sound studios. One for surround sound and one for music. They also have a few rooms called “Finishing Rooms” where people do color corrections and other final edits as well as show the final product to the clients. The building had a much different feel than the news studios I went to last week. It felt much more relaxed and casual. Even so, the Trailblazer office felt much more closed compared to the open concept that most of the news rooms had.

After the tour, I spoke with the executive producer of the show Salvage Dawgs. She went through the process of planning out shoots and episodes. She showed me an episode and explained to me what sorts of notes she takes to send back to editors who make the final cuts of the episodes. She also explained how the channels order shows and how long they have to be. After I met with her, I spoke to the producer of Kate + 8. She went over budgeting and scheduling with me. She and most of the other people in production are in a “dry spot” currently because they are all between shoots. Either that, or they are out shooting on location.

After a nice lunch with some of the other employees/interns, I spoke with the producer for Salvage Dawgs. We sat in their main studio for a while talking about the film industry. college, job opportunities, as well as what he has been doing at Trailblazer. I then sat with the show-runner of Kate + 8. He went over how they handle shoots, how they plan them , and what his role is between the companies and the talent. Then, I spoke with a production assistant who works on promos and write ups for new shows. He was saying how he enjoys his job despite being on the bottom of the totem pole in this case because he can work with all the departments.

Overall, I really enjoyed the day. I look forward to working with their post-production team tomorrow.

Day 5 was an early one. I was scheduled to arrive at SEVEN in the  morning! It was a little rough at first, but totally worth it. When I arrived I met John Lindsey, a news director at WNCN. He gave me a quick tour of the building before we started doing anything else. After the tour I sat with John in the control room as he explained how they do the cut ins. Cut ins are, well, when the station cuts into the national programming to do local new and/or news. These happen at specific times in the program which are broadcasted to the local stations. The director of the cut ins will code the program they use before they begin. The director, the sound editor, and the camera operator all work together to produce the cut ins. I sat with John during the first cut in. Funny enough as he was trying to code the show he coded the wrong one so he pretty much winged it. It was a bit sloppy but it seemed to turn out okay. For the next cut in I sat with the sound editor. He control the levels of all the different sound inputs, such as microphones, any music, and sound from videos. He makes sure that nothing is too loud or too soft and that all the needed pieces can or cannot be heard at a given time. While they weren’t doing cut ins myself and an intern got to mess around with the sound board and coding the show a little bit. For the next cut it I sat with the camera operator in the studio. She controls where the cameras are facing and makes sure that they are in the right places at the right times. Earlier in the morning she also sets up all the camera angles for most of the day. She is the one who cues the reporters or meteorologists as well. She makes sure they know how much time is left in the spot which is fed to her by the director in the control room. She was a very funny woman who was almost always singing into the coms. For the last cut in I sat with the director in the control room again, only this time it was the intern who was doing the directing. She did a very good job, everything went according to plan.

Once I had spent about two hours in the control room/studio, I sat in on a news meeting. The reporters that were there along with the producers of the news shows that day were discussing what stories they had or expected to get that day. After the meeting was over I sat with the producer of the 12 o’clock show. He was setting out what was going to go when and picking out clips from footage for the editor to edit together for the packages he needed. I asked him a lot of random questions about things I saw int he room. I asked him about things such as the analytics system they use, it’s the same as the N&O, in what circumstances do they like using live shots vs. pre-recorded shots, what he does on a standard day,  and others.

After that I sat with an editor for a while. He was the one who was working with the producer of the 12 o’clock to edit all the packages he needed together. The editor had a tv in his edit bay that I ended up watching a bit, then suddenly the feed went down. For some reason, I never found out why, the channel began to experience technical difficulties. When the station first sort of came back online I was told that it was showing their old logos and color schemes. They were recently partnered with CBS locally and so they changed their look. The editor told me that the corporates probably wouldn’t be fans of the fact that 1)  The station went down, and 2) That they were showing older logos. After about 15-20 minutes the station came back on.

Then just before 12 I went back to the control room to observe the 12 o’clock news from behind the scenes. Coolest part was I got a mini job. I was tasked with pressing play on a live streamed view of the beach just before it was supposed to be shown live, so that we wouldn’t run into ad problems after the original feed broke down. The show itself was pretty standard, but really cool getting the back stage look at what goes down.