Internship

INTERNSHIP

WEEKLY BLOGS

Week 1

• Collaborated with Graphics Team to discuss and storyboard animated segments of two videos currently in post-production (Career Explorations)
• Edited down (from the full assembly) a Content Cut of a recently-shot interview with a Paleobiologist
• Edited the next pass of that video, adding in B-roll, music, and temporary/placeholder transition graphics for timing; began coloring the video (all in Premiere)
• Created and proofed caption files for five other completed interviews

Week 2

• Colored the rest of the Paleobiologist interview; color was later checked and approved
• Made new lower-third graphics for the two videos that are currently in post-production (After Effects)
• Exported Final V1's of the five career videos that I've completed
• Traveled to Madison, Wisconsin to film an interview with a Nuclear Engineer at the University of Wisconsin - Madison
• From Madison, then drove to Milwaukee to film an interview with an Architect at the EUA Architecture Firm

Week 3

• Took new photo headshots of company management
• Assembled and began cutting down the interview with the Nuclear Engineer (shot in Madison, WI) [Premiere]
• Completed a first pass of the content cut of that interview, got notes back
• Talked with graphics team about upcoming animated segments and the individual pieces that will be necessary for each
• Created all Title and Transition Graphics (Title Card, 3 Segment Cards) for the Paleobiologist interview (After Effects)
• Made new Lower-Third nameplate graphics for the newest videos currently in post-production (AE)
• Edited and sent out a second pass of Nuclear Engineer content cut for review

Week 4

• Created animation for mathematics segment of Paleontologist interview
• Completed sound design/mixing for that animation
• Compiled all graphics pieces and finished edit/audio treatment of Paleo. interview
• Made/edited caption file for said video

Week 5

• Created animation for mathematics segment of Nuclear Engineer interview, visualzing the difference between fission and fusion (After Effects)
• Addressed color notes, got approval; finished/exported next full video edit of Nuclear Engineer (Premiere)
• Addressed color notes, got approval; finished/exported next full video edit of Paleobiologist
• Made/edited caption file for Nuclear Engineer
• Made post-production cue sheet file (charting sources of any external footage/resources) for Paleobiologist
• Created/edited down a transcript file for the Graphics Team to create our "Newspaper Style" segment transition cards for recently-shot Farmer interview (Nebraska)
• Began working on Farmer Interview V0b (layering B-roll clips over the "content cut" of the interview)

Week 6

• Worked on animation for mathematics segment of Mechanical Engineer interview, visualzing the differences of grain sizes of materials and correlating strengths (After Effects)
• Finished V0b of Farmer interview (Premiere)
• Made post-production cue sheet file (charting sources of any external footage/resources) for three completed videos
• Created/edited/exported caption files for several other completed videos (Premiere)
• Overall team completion of career project!

Week 7

• Worked on Presentation Slides for an upcoming company meeting in which our team will be discussing our work, different creative pipelines we use, and some specific audio/video techniques we regularly incorporate (all built out in Figma; more to follow)
• Recorded Voiceover lines for a Creative Department Halloween Short Film project in which I voice the protagonist rabbit

Week 8

• Worked more on creating/organizing presentation slides (and the presentation itself was given by the rest of the team later in the week)
• For a Halloween Short - worked on an After Effects composition that is supposed to function as a vibrant, colorful, trippy background graphic visual for a particular scene (about 20 seconds, featuring a wide range of different effects)

Week 9

• For a video compiling photos from someone's life - I created and edited "2.5D Parallax" versions of dozens of those photos (through After Effects), where the photos/subjects move/slide/scale up and away from the background they're actually situated in ("Ken Burns" effect is often cited as well for this type of thing); required a lot of Rotoscoping, creating fill layers for missing backgrounds, and then applying any necessary motion to the photo/subject of the photo

Week 10

• Continuing from last week's video project (compiling a photo sequence of someone's life; adding Parallax effects, etc.) - sorted through hundreds of photos and put them into different chronological "chunks" representing different eras of the subject's life; made more After Effects compositions that turn those still photos into "Ken Burns-y", 2.5D moving pieces; started applying different video templates to the sequences to get a feel for different transitions, effects, etc.; compiled and edited down the five musical tracks that will accompany the video; further team development of visual style for the project

Week 11

• Continuing from last week's video project (compiling a photo sequence of someone's life) - applied video templates to photos to give them motion (which then required a lot of manual tweaking per photo, as each one had a different resolution and original dimensions); the final look for the segment I completed has the photos reveal themselves one-by-one in an elegant, scaling, spiraling pattern (with sunny particle effects occasionally splashing across the images)
• Had a big meeting with the Graphics Team discussing the recently-concluded Career Exploration video series project, where we all talked about the whole project in detail for the first time since it's been done and basically how we all feel it went (good, bad, improvements, success of current workflows, etc.)

Week 12

• Continuing from photo sequence project - coordinated with the other editors/animators, where we split up the 5 segments of the video (each pertaining to a specific requested song), myself being responsible for 2 of them, which both got completed first passes this week
• All five segments were finished by each responsible editor/animator, and compiled together, into a ~15 minute megavideo with all necessary effects/transitions/leveled audio/post-tweaks, etc.
• Filmed a segment for an upcoming video celebrating teachers/educators where I was asked about a favorite teacher from my life/any pertaining story
• Company meeting

Week 13

• Began animating a Title Card (created in Illustrator by the graphics team; animated in After Effects) that will be used for an internal series of videos regarding awareness of difference work/different departments throughout the company
• Shot a new segment for the Teacher Appreciation video from last week
• Completed the last few edits on that teacher video in the absence of another editor, and sent it out for approval, which it received
• In collaboration with other Creative teams, began a series of photo edits for stuff that will be put in different kinds of educational resources; met with the different teams to discuss workflows and proper technical procedures for all edits (which are all to be accomplished through Photoshop)

Final Reflection

Over the course of my internship, I got to work on a wide range of projects that connected directly to a lot of the skills and concepts I’ve learned through DIGIT coursework, especially in video editing, motion graphics, creative design, and media production. Most of my time was spent working as part of a creative production team on a large “Career Explorations” video series, where I contributed to editing, graphics, animation, audio work, filming, and post-production organization.

A major part of my internship involved editing interviews in Adobe Premiere Pro. I worked on multiple videos from initial content cuts all the way through near-final or final exports, which included adding B-roll, music, transitions, captions, sound mixing, and color correction. Through this process, I learned more about efficient editing workflows and how important pacing, organization, and revision cycles are in real production environments. Receiving notes from other editors and team members also taught me how collaborative post-production really is, and how much refinement happens between each version of a project.

I also spent a significant amount of time in Adobe After Effects creating motion graphics and animations. Some of these included lower-third graphics, title sequence cards, video transition graphics, and animated mathematics/science-y segments for interviews with professionals like a Nuclear Engineer, Paleobiologist, and Mechanical Engineer. These projects connected closely to concepts from DIGIT courses involving animation, visual communication, and design principles (as well as technical abilities). I had to think carefully about how to present very specific ideas visually in a way that was both understandable and engaging. Working on these animations also improved my understanding of timing, composition, and integrating graphics naturally into edited videos.

Another important experience was traveling with the video team to film interviews in Wisconsin. This gave me more hands-on exposure to professional video production outside of editing and reminded me how much planning and coordination go into location shoots. Later in the internship, I also contributed to other creative projects, including a Halloween short film, team presentation design work in Figma, photography/headshots, Photoshop-based image editing, and a large photo montage project involving “2.5D” parallax animation effects. That particular project required a lot of detailed rotoscoping and compositing work, which strengthened both my technical After Effects skills and my patience with more detail-oriented creative tasks.

Overall, this internship gave me a more clear understanding of how creative teams operate in a professional environment. Beyond just improving my technical abilities with programs like Premiere, After Effects, Photoshop, Audition, Illustrator, and Figma, I saw and got to be a part of how important communication, feedback, deadlines, and adaptability are in collaborative media production (and wider, collaborative, project-oriented workflows in general). It also showed me how the creative and technical sides of digital media constantly overlap, which is something I experience often throughout my DIGIT coursework and was able to apply directly during the internship.