I'm Published!

It's my fourth week interning at FATV and I finally have something to show for it! All the shadowing, infested with my endless questions on videography, have paid off and Joe has let me take a stab at editing a weekly 5-a-side feature. This week's footballer: Theo Walcott. The editing was pretty cut and dry, piecing together Theo's soundbites, back to back, coloring them with photos of his chosen football stars he'd put in his ideal 5-a-side team. 

I love this continuing feature for The FA because it shows consistency in viewership and allows England's thousands of fans to get to know their players. If there's anything I've learned from this internship, it's that football is part of British culture. Ask anyone. Chances are, they know football. They probably have a favorite team. If they have a favorite team, they're probably die-hards. They've been to at least one game - or too many to count - and know all of the team-specific chants/songs. Football is the headline of Sky Sports everyday. 

More to come!

Just for Kicks

Earlier this week, I asked the head FATV videographer if I could try my hand at video editing - just for kicks. I had been working on a few administrative tasks that I’ve dubbed “Daisy Duties” – responsibilities normally handled by the FATV producer currently on holiday (I'll go into detail on this later). Joe had me go through some tunnel cam footage from the England v. Switzerland game last weekend and edit together a "short" 2-3:00 min piece. It was a simple task, just cutting together a chronological snippet of the people who went in and out of the Champion's Tunnel at Wembley. After about an hour, Joe clapped his hands in exaggerated excitement and asks, "So what do you have for me, Babs?" After watching maybe 30 seconds of my masterpiece, he said I'm ready to edit my own piece. Thank goodness! I had been waiting to hear those words since my first day as the intern. 

My big moment was supposed to happen on Thursday for the FA Cup sponsorship announcement with Budweiser. Needless to say, I was stoked. Joe said that I, as an American, would be perfect to produce this piece because I can pick up on the quotes that emphasize this significant three-year partnership. Everything was going well as Matt, one of the other videographers, manned the camera throughout the whole event. I followed him around the entire time, making mental notes on what shots he was getting, how many cut-aways he had and who was interviewed. Unfortunately, some of the big names we waited to interview had taken too much time and we needed to turn around this piece very quickly - so Matt ended up cutting it together as I sat and watched. It was an understandable change of assignment, because I probably would have taken a longer time editing as it would have been my very first piece for FATV. Here's the final product: "FA Cup Budweiser launch" It's quite an upbeat feature. I hope I can learn to pick up on those motion shots, like this.

Joe mentioned later, in an off-handed, light-hearted manner, "No worries, we'll have something for you to edit next week." Sigh of relief. My time is still coming...

On another note, my administrative duties as the interim "Daisy" has been going pretty well - but my first big task ended up being a three-day ordeal. Essentially, two of our guys are traveling to Germany at the end of next week to cover the Women's World Cup and requested me to have our travel agency ATP send them confirmation emails of their flights. Easy, smeezy, right? Well, after a string of emails for four hours one day, I discovered that those flights had not actually been booked. One of the guys wanted to switch to an earlier flight, so the tickets had been cancelled and he, unknowingly, was supposed to go ahead and book the preferred flights on his own. This information was not relayed on to Daisy or myself, so another string of emails with ATP for a few hours the following day clarified this situation. The flights were not officially booked and the confirmation emails had not been sent until the third day, after the final string of emails and a phone call with the company. It wasn't stressful, per say, but more tedious and complicated. I felt like I was handling the situation gracefully and by utilizing my resources: I never raised my voice or rolled my eyes, checked through Daisy's previous emails pertaining to these Germany tickets and contacted all the parties involved to figure out the missing details. By the end of the week, this Daisy Duty was checked off my list and ended up as a success. Producing doesn't seem so bad.

Intern Gets Administrative

This week toned down a bit after a busy, exciting game day weekend. Daisy, FATV's producer, left for an extended holiday this week, so I spent most of the week and nearly all 20 hours going over her typical duties and troubleshooting protocol for those "just-in-case" scenarios: If one of the boys (videographers) needs to book a flight somewhere, this is the company you contact and this is what you tell them... If a shipment comes in and they need to drop it off, this is what you tell them... etc. It was actually pretty enjoyable for me, figuring out the production schedule, organizing shoots, learning to be that go-to person.

By the end of the week, I tagged along to the World Cup team announcement for the England Seniors National Team at South Bank. We interviewed several players and the head coach specifically about the announcement, the anticipation, who they told first, how they reacted, etc. Overall, covering the Women's team and seeing how much coverage they were receiving, was uplifting to experience. They got a significant amount of media coverage for a female sport. All the people I spoke with made it clear that U.S. soccer has better opportunities for female athletes, but coming from the States, that doesn't resonate. It seems that women's soccer just has too many professional sports to compete against.

Week 3: Can't Get Any Better Than This

Honestly, this week was somewhat a blur. It seems like a mixture between a dream and being star struck with my brushes with the England athletes. Regardless, I've learned a lot and experienced my first game with the England seniors, national team.

The beginning of the week was more of a waiting game than anything. The FATV team and I ventured to the Arsenal training grounds and The Grove hotel to document the England seniors as they prepped and bonded before their Euro 2012 Cup qualifier against Switzerland on Saturday. As the boys practiced, played golf and table tennis, we were there to document as much as we could to show the behind-the-scene experience of England's greatest footballers. All this footage will later be edited and used to create a long-form DVD about the seniors' team road to the Euro Cup. Between practices, pressers and interviews, some FATV-ers would edit packages... or find something to do. This translated into playing their own games of table tennis, eating or roaming the absolutely beautiful grounds of The Grove estate.

As usual, my role during this entire process was pretty simple. I shadowed the videographers, asking them question after question about their journalistic techniques: How do you shoot beauty shots differently than you shoot game or training footage? What's your motivation behind pans, zooms and focus changes? How do you decide the types of shots - wide, medium, tight - to get during situations where there isn't a lot of movement? I was a lot more assertive this week, asking to try my hand at filming in their style, making suggestions when editing and such.

Gameday was really when I felt useful, although I was doing a bunch of the typical intern duties. Three cups of coffee - one with milk and sugar, one just milk and one black - six bottles of water, four orange juices, and three Diet Cokes... I fetched them all Saturday morning before the game. I ran up and down eight flights of stairs at Wembley Stadium multiple times to fetch guests from the front office and help them through security. I carried cables and tripods, kept track of paperwork and even found and returned the hair gel of one of the guests. It sounds bleak, but it was all worth it.

New Indy band, Brother, takes Wembley Stadium, performing for the first time at the historic venue on Saturday, June 4.

Saturday morning, I helped set up equipment for the FATV recording of an up and coming UK indy band called Brother. I helped them through security, gave them directions and felt like I got ample time to chat and get to know them. During their live, acoustic performance, I took pictures of my own and assisted a videographer. The rest of the morning I was instructed to "babysit" the band, which basically allowed me to hang out with them for an hour before escorting them to their next appointment at Wembley.

The Switzerland national team leaves the tunnel to enter the field and warm up before kick-off.

The rest of the day, I was stationed in the tunnel where all the players pass to and from the locker rooms and the pitch. Words can't describe how incredible that atmosphere was. I assisted the videographers here by keeping an eye out for specific players and happenings within the tunnel. This seems mundane, but it actually required that I have knowledge of the players and key personnel of the England squad, things I've been able to pick up on in the past couple weeks. My time to shine came when FATV's producer asked me to conduct interviews with the child mascots for the day's game, getting them to show their excitement about meeting the team and walking onto the field for the national anthem. This was used for a very simple segment on the FATV YouTube site, but it was the first sign to show that they know I'm capable of more than just observing.

Check back for more blogs about the gameday atmosphere at Wembley Stadium!

As the England seniors warm up behind me as I cheese on the sidelines.

All 22 children are interviewed after taking the field for the national anthems of Switzerland and England, holding hands with the teams' starters. These lucky kids with such duties are called "mascots," and many of them won this opportunity by entering a McDonald's drawing.