Starting out as an Intern

June 30, 2011

I started my internship on Monday, June 27th at Bunim/Murray Productions. It was a very long day. I met so many people, and took in so much information. My brain was about to explode. I was so exhausted that night I went to bed at 10:00pm. Tuesday and Wednesday I learned how to be a logger for The Real World: San Diego Season 26. Honestly, I had never even heard of a logger or knew what they do. I thought the room full of kids around my age were others interns. My mentor, Mark Raudonis told me they were loggers and are paid employees.

My definition: log·ger [law-ger, log-er] - noun 1. a person who sits at a computer for long periods of time watching thousands of hours of raw footage while typing what happens in 1 minute increments.
Mark wanted me to understand and learn everything that goes into post production for a show from the bottom up. Loggers are at the very bottom of the ladder, but are EXTREMELY important. They are the only people that watch all the raw footage that no one else every sees. (There is about 5,500 hours of footage shot for one season of The Real World). They have to identify, organize, and keep track of each and every new person/character the Roommates interact with in the show. They also much keep track of every single location the Roommates go to. This makes it very difficult to log a tape of the Roommates at a bar or club. They interact with so many people who never give their names and many of them do not sign releases.  This makes it tricky for the loggers to keep track of the hundreds of extra persons in the show. After 2 days of logging tapes from The Real World: San Diego I have a great respect for loggers. They are such an important step in the process of editing reality television. From there, the Dailies editor takes the loggers notes, producer and director's notes to roughly cut the footage of important scenes that happened in ONE day of shooting, hence the word "dailies." Next, the story coordinator, director, producers, and editor can find the story from the footage that is gathered. Eventually the show goes into Offline Editing where all the creative and story lines are edited together. Once all the final cuts are made to the story, the show goes into Online Editing. This is where all the footage goes through all the technical changes. It is changed back to high resolution that it was shot in, color corrected, audio sweetening, the graphics are created, etc. In only 3 days I have realized how much time, steps, and people are involved into making one season of The Real World. It blows my mind. Next week I should be hanging out with the Editors from my favorite show of all time, PROJECT RUNWAY!!!! I'm so excited, I will keep you all posted about it.Remember to leave me comments if you want to! =)