Not many people would willingly wake up at 6 a.m. on a day without school to do unpaid work. When I was given the opportunity to spend a day interning at Georgia Public Broadcasting, however, I jumped at the chance. What better way for a young journalism student to learn more about the field?
I arrived at GPB at 7:30 a.m. with my hair straightened, my shirt tucked in, and my stomach full of butterflies. Jack English, the producer, met me at the front desk and gave me a small tour of where I would be working. We ended the tour at his office, where I then helped Shannon Phillips (the network’s makeup artist) bring drinks and food down to the break room. It was the most intern-y thing I did all day, and I probably looked as awkward as I felt trying to maneuver a wagon (with no front-wheel steering) full of cold cuts and pastries around the sharp corners in the filming studios.
After I got my name tag and made ones for the other crew members, I went back up to the lobby to wait for guests from the Atlanta Regional Commission. There were about seven guests total, so when two or three had arrived at one time, I guided them downstairs to the break room for coffee and to go to makeup. Once everyone had arrived at a bit before 10 a.m., I went back down to the studio to observe the taping.
Two 45-minute long panels with the guests from the ARC were to be taped in Studio A that day, and snippets of their conversations would be edited and aired at various times. The discussed everything from the BeltLine to Atlanta sports teams to local businesses. I was given a headset so I could listen to the director from the control room. While all three cameras were recording, there would be one main camera (indicated by a little red light) recording, depending on who was talking and which way they were facing. About every five seconds, I would hear the director say something along the lines of “Standby camera two … take two,” and see the red lights on the cameras switch on and off. When you are just observing the panels, much of their conversation can seem redundant and boring, but being an active patron of theater in Atlanta, I found it interesting to hear professionals’ opinions on the subject.
I spent the second taping session sitting in the control room observing the director. There were two monitors with multiple screens inside each one. It was interesting to see what the cameras saw during the taping, as opposed to being in the studio. Additionally, there was a giant light board with many, many colored buttons; it was a toddler’s dream come true.
The ARC tapings finished at about noon, and I proceeded to escort the guests back up to the lobby, returning just in time for lunch. It consisted of sandwiches, chips, brownies, and leftover pastries from the morning. I had not eaten since 6:30 a.m., and I struggled to balance professional politeness and courtesy with the urge to devour my lunch. I sat and spoke with the next guests, Eric Fors and Eric Paulson, who were filming a segment about the Southeast Dairy Association. Part of Paulson’s job is to encourage kids and teenagers to drink more milk, and I, a teenager myself, was happy to be a primary source, though my knowledge on the subject was somewhat limited.
After lunch, the crew began to set up the studio for the dairy taping. I was not needed for any particular jobs, so I followed lighting director Jim Sichinolfi to Studio C, which was being prepped for the upcoming senatorial and gubernatorial debates. He was very nice and took a few pictures of me at a podium. Once we had finished spiking the table and the podiums, we went back to the Studio A control room, where I again watched the director work.
A few minutes into recording, however, he called me over and had me TD (act as the technical director), which involved pressing buttons on the previously mentioned lightboard to switch between cameras. I pressed a button too soon once, and the director turned to me, face stern, and said, “You’re fired.” I had a brief moment of panic before I realized he was kidding.
The last filming session of the day was for Norfolk Southern, a train company. They were filming a fake news segment about a deadly train crash to be used in their training videos. Although the story was fake, the reporter was not; it was former CNN Headline News anchor and teleprompter-reader extraordinaire Bob Losure. After he filmed that segment, Losure had one more interview to do, which I again observed from the studio. I left at about 4:30 that afternoon, stopping off at Publix to get a little gift for my brother’s birthday.
While I ended the day much more informed on what television news is like, I found that my background in journalism didn’t necessarily help me as an intern. I bet that a day in the life of an actual intern sadly includes much less headset wearing and much more food-wagon pulling. Because I participated in a “one day only” program, much of the day was about learning rather than doing a lot of work, too. Although only the best of the best get to be the producers and anchors and directors, the field of broadcast journalism isn’t just for those with experience. I would urge anyone who is given the chance to go behind-the-scenes of any sort of television or film studio, news or otherwise, to take it. You never know what you may learn, who you may meet, what you may do or what colorful buttons you may get to push.
