#fwt2016

[tgroupfwt]

Reflecting on my seventh week at T Group Productions

Wrapping up my time at T Group this week, I got the opportunity to stand in front of the whole development team during the Thursday meeting and pitch my show idea I have been developing. I have been working on a deck for a few weeks for a show idea of mine and this week I got feedback on it, made corrections and presented it in the meeting. I felt confident doing the pitching and the overall reaction from the development team was good. They were excited about my idea and gave me some guiding questions for further development. I’ve greatly enjoyed working with the team, they are fantastic people who do their job with passion and my experience of working with them motivated me to become a hard worker. I feel that my pitch showed that and I am excited to keep on developing it and keep in contact with T Group.

On my last day at the office I had a chat with my supervisor and we reflected on the seven weeks I interned with T Group Productions. Overall, I realized that office jobs might not be suitable for me. I often found that sitting at a desk for 7 hours a day in front of a computer drained my energy and I was very tired by the end of the day. It was a real life experience and even though I did not always enjoy making countless copies of appearance release forms, I did really find excitement in the creative tasks I got, such as creating decks and developing video ideas (writing scripts) for T Group’s digital content.

[petrichorlungs-blog]

THINGS I DID THIS PAST WEEK:

1. Ran around The Mission and Dolores Park taking pictures for the McSweeney’s instagram (@mcswys). The thing I love about working at small non-profit publishing companies is they take their work very seriously, but they also don’t take themselves too seriously. Which means this photo I took of one of our books next to a random dog outside a cafe is totally legit and social-media worthy! Ever since I mentioned to Ruby, the point person for publicity, that I love Instagram and VSCO Cam filters, she and I have been bouncing fun ideas off of each other about how to promote upcoming events and deals and how to capitalize on the buzz that’s already out there about our books. (Stay tuned for the Valentine’s Day pics!) A surprising amount of thought goes into those photos and captions that you scroll through when you’re lying in bed avoiding getting up to go to work in the morning...

2. Read McSweeney’s Issue 46 (a special themed issue: thirteen crime stories from Latin America) and pulled interesting phrases from the stories that could potentially be used as titles for the story collection. (Since this issue did so well, McSweeney’s is going to re-print it as its own book, instead of re-printing it as a random issue of McSweeney’s.) Admittedly, crime fiction is not something I would ordinarily pick up on my own, but on a stormy day here in San Francisco, I really enjoyed pouring through these pages. (Classic Field Work Term—exposing students to new things.) 

3. Fact-checking. A lot of fact-checking. The Believer is the McSweeney’s publication that’s full of interviews and essays. This means that everything that goes into this magazine has to be fact-checked. While in my personal writing, I tend to stay in the realm of fiction, having to go through a piece and validate almost every sentence really makes you think about the weight each and every statement has. 

4. Proofing One Hundred Apocalypses and Other Apocalypses by Lucy Corin. It’s going to be re-printed soon (because it is amazing!), so I’m going through the text with a fine-tooth comb to make sure there are no typos, widows, or orphans. This has probably been my favorite assignment so far because the stories themselves are amazing; it’s the kind of book that makes you want to write.

5. Talked to Dave Eggers about reading submissions. He was in the office today for some meetings, but he made sure to stop by the intern corner to ask us how we were doing. He said something along the lines of, “Reading submissions is kind of like getting an MFA.” In a weird way, he’s right; you learn an incredible amount by reading through the stories people have submitted. What’s even more inspiring is that Dave was talking about how exciting it is to “discover” a truly great writer and to watch them go on to do even greater things. He was talking about someone McSweeney’s published first a few years ago. He was talking about how incredible it felt to be able to offer someone that bit of encouragement. Several books later, he and Dave still have some kind of writer-editor relationship and are getting lunch next week. It amazes me how down to earth Dave is. He ducks in and out of the office in an unassuming baseball cap, and if you didn’t know it was him, you’d never suspect this was the man responsible for several great novels and a whole publishing company. But here we are.

[dfootefwt2016-blog]

W E E K F O U R

Another week, cool!

I have officially finished archiving La Femme Nikita! Exciting.

I have now moved on to commercials.  So far I’ve been working on Timex watches and tobacco PSA’s.  This includes the music and the foley sounds.  Foley is all of the sounds that don’t include dialogue.  In Timex’s case, this is a lot of ticking, winding, and beeping sounds.  The tobacco PSA’s tend to have a lot of wheezing and ominous soundscapes with the sounds of lighters being flicked.

I’m getting down to the last dregs of DAT tapes and feeling nostalgic already. 

Some general tourist updates:

I visited LACMA last week (with a Bennington pal!).  I only had about an hour there, which in my opinion is not enough time for a museum experience but what I saw of the collection was wonderful.

I also rented bikes to ride along Manhattan Beach, which was gorgeous.  And I saw American Psycho in an independent theatre! (very L.A.)

I  also went bowling (with more Bennington pals!) and perused some record stores.  

So strange that I only have 18 days left! It still feels like I just got here.  Time flies!