WEEEEEEN

Hello, this is Wind here.

It's been two weeks here since arrival in San Francisco! Well, as you can see from the posts below posted by Kenneth and Shawn, you would already know the places of attractions we've been. But still... I'm gonna talk about it! A little...

Okay lets begin with the first day of arrival at San Franc. When the 4 of us stepped out of the airport, we were surprised that the weather outside is colder than inside of the airport! SOOOOO COOOOOOOL~
Then we realized that the sky is very clear as there are very little clouds compared to Singapore. And.... I think I should just skip to the interesting parts.

Okay! Lets talk about work!

Basically this is where I spent my first week.

On the second night upon arrival, we are to helped out with a short film production titled " Lost and Found". It's for the Harvestfest 2013. We began out shoot at around 7 pm and the weather is COLD~~~  I guess it's around 9 degree celsius on the first night and 7 on the second night. It's so cold that I wore 5 layers, because I'm used to the hot weather.

Look at the foggy night~~

  

We also did some set design

And cleaning.....

After the two nights shoot, I was assigned to edit the film. During this process I learn a lot of tips and tricks on editing from my boss, Harry. (although he's uncomfortable with us calling him that). I also learned how to do foley and audio editing during the post production. I manage to deliver the video after 1 week of work. The video will be screened during Harvestfest on 31 October 2013... which is today.

We are currently working on out second project titled "Thankfullness". Which is for the Thanksgiving Day. We are gonna have a busy weekend this week.

On every Sunday, we'll do broadcast of the church service. For the pass two weeks I was assigned to be the sound engineer and remote camera operator. It's very complicating when I'm doing sound as there are so many terms, graphs and waveform that I don't understand. But yeah, I manage to understand a few after Phil explained to me. 

Too stressed... JUST KIDDING! I just love the rooftop.

Okay that's it for this post.

Oh wait! The four of us went for a Harry Tour Package 2 around San Francisco!

Palace of the Arts.

Sausalito!

The Golden Gat Bridge~

Twin Peaks!

The Pacific Ocean~ (Just a view, we didn't tour there)

There are also times where we went out on our own. 

The Union Square



And of course... FIFA! HEH HEH HEH HEH~

Alright, that's all for this post. Goodnight!

So far...

Hi guys, it's Shawn again.

It's been a little more than a week since we got here, and things have been great so far. Here's what's been going on over the past week.

1) As mentioned on Kenneth's Vlog in the last post, I ran into some trouble at immigration because of some missing documents. Quite a memorable start. Still trying to forget that experience, though I think it's one of a kind. Haha. Not everyone gets sent to detention at customs. Fortunately I was released without incident.

2) Filming for HarvestFest. As mentioned on my first post too, we were involved in production the night after we arrived. It was a new experience for me because it was my first time ever seeing a 4K HMI and learning how to power it up with a portable generator. Both nights on set were windy as well, with temperatures dropping to 6 degrees Celsius, also a new experience, since I had to wear many more layers as usual. I personally prefer to shoot in tropical weather now. Less clothes in the way to worry about.

3) So, after those two days filming out in the dark and cold, we spent the better part of the week in the studio editing. While Wind as working on editing the film, I was tasked with another project; the instructional video for HarvestFest. It was interesting, bringing a normal, everyday-like instructional voice-over to life with motion graphics. Personally I think it helps to catch a lot of attention. I had Debbie and Kenneth with me to work on the graphics while I put them all together and animated them. It took three days to complete, with all the renders and re-renders, but I must say it was one of the most enjoyable projects I've ever done, which marks a great start to internship here :)

Our cosy little TV studio, where we work on video projects during the weekdays and multicam productions on weekends. 

A little sidetrack, with the internet curfew in place on weekdays and the ridiculously tough firewall, I must say that I'm a little surprised at how much more efficient and fast we can be with many distractions out of reach. Heheheh. Gotta do something about my own internet when I return to Singapore.

4) Places of attraction we've been to so far - Twin Peaks, Union Square, Palace of the Fine Arts, Golden Gate Bridge, Muir Woods. Let's not count the shopping malls and every restaurant that we've been to. That'd be... too much.

Up on twinpeaks, strong sunlight on a clear day coupled with strong cool winds gave me an unglam face LOL

Palace of the Fine Arts - HDR

As the story goes, the locals love the building so much, they made a cast of the original building and reconstructed it. I'm glad they did, and I'm envious of the people who live around it. It's sort of like a park to them, and it's beautiful. I took countless photographs here.

Union Square - Downtown San Francisco's version of Orchard Road. 

It is only when I got there that I realised why many people call Orchard road one of the best shopping districts in the world. Although prices here are cheap (because Singapore imports everything and makes prices shoot up), traffic's kind of a problem,with only one lane going in each direction, tight spaces, so on and so forth. BUT again, weather makes up for it :) 

The famed Golden Gate Bridge - First landmark Hollywood destroys whenever San Francisco comes under some sort of attack. 

The Muir Woods - Hiking here is a nice change compared to Singapore's nature reserves

The forests here may not be as diverse as in the ones back in Singapore, but their sheer size sure makes up for it. Temperatures here makes it cooling and the hike much more pleasant. If it was back home, I'd be sweating like crazy the moment I step out of the house...

5) Like my other friends here with me on internship, we're still adjusting to life here, like eating portions (though i think we're getting used to it...). When we first got here we couldn't even finish a meal without boxing it up and bringing it home to finish. Well... now we can... slowly.

The first days of having meals here were incredibly funny though, like Debbie not seeing the (XL) in the fine print of the menu, and ended up with a MASSIVE bowl of pho noodles. Everyone had a good laugh at that. The expression of surprise was priceless.

Debbie's huge bowl of noodles

That said, the food here is great so far, but for some chinese food, I feel that the food back home tastes better :D

6) The Boss trained us in taking public transport as well, so that we can be more independent on our own and run around to wherever we want to go on our days off.. The system here has its similarities and differences. But the part I like the most is that the BART (their version of the MRT) has much fewer people on the trains compared to sardine-can-Singapore. In fact, aside from the crowded streets in the shopping district, other areas are very devoid of people. We get the kind of quiet we want but could never get in Singapore.

Now if only it is as safe here as it is in Singapore...

I guess that's it for this post. The coming week is going to be a busy one, with preparations for shooting for a new short film going on. Stay tuned.

Signing off.

Week 1

Hi guys!How's it going!



It's been a week since my 3 classmates and I have been in San Francisco for our 3 months Internship!YAY us =D!We've been having such a great time here so far and been doing quite a bit of stuff! I've been doing vlogs for the days that we've been here to record all the stuff that we've done and the places we've been too.

Anyways i'll start from the beginning on day 1 when we set of from Singapore to San Francisco.We had to do a transit flight which meant we had to fly to hong kong from singapore first before getting on another plane there to san francisco. For the first flight it was alright as it was only 4 hours.However the second which about 12 hours long was a killer.It was pretty difficult trying to get some sleep on the plane and it was long bothersome flight.And after we touched down we were also terribly jet lagged. After some trouble getting through customs,we finally made it out and met Harry our boss who came to pick us up from the airport.He then drove us to IHOP for lunch as it was around 1pm that time and we were kind of hungry. I was totally excited because its the first time being the states and eating at good old IHOP does wonders to make my first few hours wonderful =D

So we spent the next two days already getting down to work and shooting a short film at night for Harvestfest which is the Church's corresponding event to Halloween. Unfortunately the weather couldn't have been anymore against us as we were still acclimatizing to the chilly weather and we had to shoot in 8 degrees cold weather plus wind chill factor for both nights,which left us freezing in the cold.

Once we were done shooting the short film,wind and debbie were asked to edit the film.Whilst me and shawn were asked to do Mograph introduction video for HarvestFest 2013.

Of course even in all this business there's still time for the tourist in us =D During our days,Harry took us out to eat at Fisherman's Wharf and we tried AWESOME clam chowder and fish and chips there =) and on another day we were brought up to Twin peaks to see the magnificent view of the City of San Francisco which was totally awesome =D

All in all it was a pretty awesome First week and i look forward for more to come =D


 Flying Off!!

IHOP!

 Shooting for HarvestFest!!

 Going to Fisherman's Wharf!

 Shooting for Sunday Service!

Twin Peaks!!

- Kenneth

ARRIVAL! First contact

Hello everyone! Welcome to SP DMIT San Francisco!

This page documents the journey of four individuals from Singapore, currently on their 3-month internship programme in San Francisco. My name is Shawn, and I am the writer for this particular post.

First, allow me to introduce the four of us.

Taken on Twin Peaks. From left to right: Kenneth Yoong - Loke Zheng Hao (Wind) - Debbie Lin - Shawn Ang

For most of us, it is our first time visiting America, and upon arriving we know straightaway that this is a country way different than any other we have ever visited. It's Day 4 now, and we're still adjusting to life here.

We intern at 1Light Media, a production company at the Cornerstone Academy. The people we've met here so far have been great hosts, eager to show us around the city, and showing us how things are run here.

When it comes to work, we really hit the ground running. On the night of the second day we were already involved in a shoot with 1Light Media. Following that was another day of night shoot outdoors in the cold with even colder winds. 

On set, 6 Degrees Celsius 

It was 6 degrees celsius on the second night of shoot, and being Singaporeans used to the ungodly scorching weather back home, we wore the most layers of clothing to protect ourselves, and STILL couldn't take the cold. Wind and Kenneth wore five layers. It was a new experience. Even though I've been up in Norway shooting the Northern Lights in temperatures far below zero degrees Celsius, working on set is so much more different. There's so much more equipment and many things to move around, I arrived at the conclusion that I prefer being on shoots in tropical climates, or wherever the temperature's comfortable. Lesser clothes, easier to move around and get things done :)

So far, we've been involved in a multicam production as well. Again, also a different experience, compared to past multicam productions we've been on in the past. Here, we get to learn how to operate remote cameras, adjusting camera settings remotely, mixing audio as well as vision mixing. All of us are rotating through the roles at the moment, we hope that all of us will be proficient in handling it on our own eventually. 

On the fun side of things, we've been to a few places of attraction as well. Nope, not the Golden Gate Bridge, we haven't had the chance to go that far. The places we have been to though, are just as nice. 

The well-known Pier 39!

Like the well-known Pier 39 down at Fisherman's Wharf. It's what many people call a 'tourist trap', and it has good reason to be. The clam chowder here is DELICIOUS. And there's much more other than food to keep your money rolling to them. 

Oh! Sea Lions!

We also made a trip up to the Twin Peaks, where we saw a view of the city and fog, so majestic that I think I would hesitate going back to the Marina Bay Sands Skypark for the view. We spent a couple of hours here braving cold winds while taking photos. 

On the Edge

Kenneth brought along a newly-purchased GoPro Hero3, which he uses to capture video blogs. I'll end off with his first video blog entry, which shows a very-excited Kenneth recording our long journey over from Singapore. You can watch it here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MR15GtpV5tQ

And that's that, this is Shawn Ang, signing off.