Kathleen's first blog post

My name is Kathleen Ryan. I am a media studies major interning at Chron NY Inc. It is an independent film production. This is my first internship for my major.

1.      What have you learned about working in the media that you did not know before your internship? Include here processes and procedures, job titles, you never knew of, how companies interact with other companies, and so on.

In filmmaking I did not know there were so many assistant directors. On this film production there are 3. I’m still a little confused as to what the 3 of them do. I also learned how they hired one person who was in charge of arranging and finding all the locations where scenes for the movie would be shot, also known as the location manager. It seems like a pretty interesting job to me, as you get to go into a lot of building in NYC that you would otherwise probably have no reason to go in, or might get kicked out of them if you tried.

A procedure I found out about through the internship was that the script has to be taken to lawyers. The lawyers then search through the script for anything that may get the film into copyright trouble or another sort of lawsuit. I got to read it and it was really extensive. Character names were checked to see if there were other people who had those names who might sue the film.

When it comes to interacting with other companies it is mostly the secretary or the production coordinator who handles that. Though I do handle research projects related to the other companies or have to pick up things that are bought from other companies. One project involved me doing research on truck parking. I would have to find out how much space they had in their lot, how much it would cost to hold the trucks etc, but they the rest had to be handled by the production coordinator or secretary who then handed the options to the line producer.

2.      Is the internship what you expected? Why, or why not?

This internship was and was not what I expected. A part of me expected to be able to see more of what was happening on set, maybe do some Production Assistant work on set. Something else I didn’t expect was that I would get to meet and talk to the director and one of the producers. Those were positions that in my mind seemed very high up that they would only talk to you through someone else who would then tell you to do the task. I guess I underestimated how much of a collective work film is.

In a lot of ways the internship is just as hands on as I expected. I do a lot of what a Production Assistant for the office would. I do research projects, run errands, do paperwork, log incoming and outgoing shipments. It is a behind-the-scenes, day to day less glamorous work that people might not think about when thinking about the making of a film. When I was interviewed for the internship that is what I was told it was going to be mostly doing and I appreciate learning the aspects of it.

3.      Is there any way you could improve your internship experience? Explain how.

I could be able to improve my internship experience by talking to more people I interact with. As a Production Office intern I tend to have to run tasks all around the city involving the film. So sometimes I could be picking up sound equipment and other times I could be dropping off something at the set. So I have spoken to some on set Production Assistants, who working in the freezing cold, told me about their experiences. I think getting different people’s perspective on filmmaking is really useful and I think a lot of it is up to me to ask the questions. Still I think there is something to be said about using judgment as to when to ask people because when they are busy they are really busy, which could be said for working in an industry.