The OBEM production has finally ended. Production wise. After a week of working on the day shift, I wish I could have done more with the day crew as well as the night. I mostly did a lot of log consolidation this past week, and also got a chance to run a few errands that were very “intern-y” such as going to pick up Exec Producer Daniel Soiseth’s lunch, making copies, and going on random grocery and supply runs. I had a chance to work in an office with other people as opposed to by myself for 6-8 hours which for a people person such as myself is very hard to swallow.

Yesterday was a distinct break from the monotony of office work. I was asked to stand in as a pregnant mother in labor for some role play the producers needed for b-roll. I got into a maternity robe with a fake belly and a fake baby and everything. Although my face was never clear to the camera, I very possibly could make the final show in the opening or closing segment! I got to call upon some dormant acting skills, from getting an IV to going through contractions to being tended to by nurses and getting wheeled around in the delivery bed. It was from this that I became well-known(go figure, on the last day of shooting) to crew and staff as the Prego-Lady. Everyone said I did a very convincing job… should this concern me?

Tonight Reveille Studios sponsored a wrap party for the crew and nursing staff we worked with. It was an insane and very fun environment. I had the chance to connect on a personal level with a lot of the producers and get some advice plus some contact info from various people including the Director of Media Relations of Riverside Hospital. I also secured for myself an enviably fashionable pair of balloon art angel wings complete with halo.

Tomorrow I will be the last intern there to help pack up and ship our little OBEM world back to L.A. It’s very strange to have these PAs, loggers, producers, nurses, etc be my whole life for 5 weeks and then poof… everyone’s gone. I guess that is how it is in the television world.

Something that did peak my interest in talking with some people tonight is the idea of doing commercials? Hmmm….

We are heading into holiday season, and in the television world, nobody is batting an eye. That’s one thing that has been made very obvious during my time at Riverside. Television knows no sleep. I have been consolidating logs for the past three weeks, and I can definitely say that is not something I want to do with the rest of my life. I have also had a chance every once in a while to do releases and also to work with tapes. Out of all of these, the most excitement is in releases. I have definitely determined I could never be happy working in front of a computer all of my life. However, I did run into a situation where someone refused to give me there release and that quickly turned awkward, because I had to try to avoid making the anti-release-ee angry while still trying to get the signature. This did not end well. Despite some minor glitches, I definitely need people interaction. Something that is a little surprising to me is the attitude of the nurses at Riverside. I would expect a nurse to be inherently nurturing, caring, and optimistic. From what I have seen, many are sour, gossipy, and short with others. While many people see television people as being this way, the truth is any profession has these people, and television people run into it the most. Still searching for that perfect niche….

I have finished up a second week of interning with Lifetime Network and Reveille Studios, and I will definitely say I am learning a lot about what parts of this television business I like and what parts I do not like.

First of all, I have learned about some different terms on the job, such as OTF. “On the fly” is a term used for the informal interview scene in all reality television shows, but is quickly becoming the term used for all interviews in general. I also learned that “sticks” is a term used for doing remote shots on a tripod. I actually had the chance to do one of these during a show and got to shoot a family going through triage. It was really fun, and I definitely prefer a manual zoom as opposed to an automatic one now that I have used it.

I also got some of the production guys talking about cameras and the importance of iris and how much light a camera can take in. I was asking because I would love to get a video camera soon (maybe for Christmas) so I can start shooting some independent stuff. I am getting very inspired to just go out and take some shots of people living life. I was told that the best quality for the cheapest is a t2i

However, considering my very short college budget, I am not sure we will be going with that one right now, but it is something to consider in the future.

I have spent a lot of time recently doing a lot of log consolidation, which was definitely not fun, and at times completely frustrating. Thankfully I had some fun people in the room to work with which made it awesome. The people in TV are an absolute blast :)

I think for now I really like to do everything myself, from pre-prod to prod to post, but we will see as I get further into it. I learned I am called a PREDATOR in LA, which means I do everything from producing to writing, to editing to directing, etc. I like that!

Tonight was the night. I witnessed my first human birth. It was, in a word…. what word can sum it up? Miraculous? Awesome? Spectacular? Beautiful? I witnessed a new person come into the world, a little person who will be given a name and social security number all her own. Who will have first grade jitters, 7th grade pimples, and high school activities. She might be the one to find a breakthrough cure to cancer. She might be the one to discover an alternative source of energy. She might be the future first female President. She might have a beautiful family of her own and live in a little white house with a picket fence. And I was there. The moment she arrived. The moment she came out. I saw her first breath of life; I heard her first meek whimpers; I saw the joy she brought to a whole hospital staff.

Needless to say, my experience at Riverside thus far has been fantastic. I went in on Friday for about 15 minutes to meet everyone and get a little oriented with the area. Then on Monday morning I turned in all my paper work and got a flu shot and a TB test done. I need to go in tomorrow morning to get the TB test finished, and also to get my staff ID card (yes, I have a official Riverside staff card) checked because it won’t admit me into the parking lot, although it lets me in to all the restricted, staff-only areas.

Tuesday was my first official day of working. I went in at 6, and observed for an hour. Then I kind of hung out with Kendra while she was working “tapes” (really DVDs) and learned how to do them. There were 8 decks that can be recording all at once, and it was our job to make sure that the proper shots were on the proper decks, to monitor how much time was left on each of the decks, and to log what happen on each of the specific “tapes”. Though a little daunting at first, it was a task that was easily mastered once we established a system. I then stepped in to cover for a Producer who had to step out for a bit and monitored tapes to watch for and log good story content. That was definitely a chance for me to learn quickly and on the job, as I have never logged before in my life. It was fun, even though I didn’t exactly know what I was doing.

I also found out today there is a difference in what logging is and logging story lines is. There are two loggers whose specific job is to write out everything that is happening on the scene, from dialogue to movement to emotion, everything. I can see how being a perfectionist would not help you when it came to logging because you can’t possibly catch every word of movement. Producers look more for content that detail, and note down if anything interesting is happening.

Tuesday went extremely slowly, which is probably because i wasn’t too engaged, just observing. Today (Wednesday) I ran tapes the whole time, and filled in for a logger and a producer when they needed me. I also did not have to do the typical intern coffee run because I am not covered by insurance to leave the hospital on a OBEM related errand.

What made it the best ever though was experiencing a birth from the water break to cutting the umbilical cord. It was absolutely incredible. The coolest thing I have ever seen in my life. Ever.

Things: I have learned from my internship so far:

Riverside hospital is NOT right off of Polaris.

Traffic in Columbus gets heavy at 3:45 on Fridays.

It took us longer to get there than to be there.

I will probably cry a lot.

The reason for that last one is because I wanted to be an obstetrician when I was younger, and walking through the maternity ward of Riverside dug deep into the heart of who I am. I am much anticipating watching my first birth, and also what all i will do during this internship. Everyone seems very accommodating, which is great because I have no idea what I am doing! The schedule these first couple days seems to be pretty lax, which is good, but I’m sure things will intensify once we officially start.

At the Hershey Chocolate Factory Garden in Pennsylvania.

The establishment of this blog is one of many efforts I have recently made to update myself to modern technology. Apparently college age people don’t always automatically know whats new or hip with technology. I just thought it came with the territory? I have also recently started a Twitter account, although I am still completely inept at “tweeting” and have yet to spread my nuggets of wisdom to the world via that medium. I know, I know, welcome to the 21st century, Ruth; where have you been for 10 years….

It is nice to finally be able to write and use as many wonderful, spontaneous, random fluid, eruptive, congenial, lucrative, blissful adjectives as I want.  Writing is like running. When you get out of shape, it’s hard to throw yourself back into the flow of things. However, after the first few uncomfortable tries, muscle memory kicks in and voila!

So, Tublr, you suggested in my first post I write about something I did today. Well, you’re it.