Intern post number two

I have a (small) confession to make.

I don't know French.

I never learned French when I was younger, and now I'm wishing I had. It would make things a bit easier for me. I never really saw it as something I needed to know (though I wanted to learn after I took a trip to Montreal last summer) but something that I kept procrastinating (gasp!) on learning. Most of the time if someone speaks slowly to me in French I get an idea of what they're saying, but it's not perfect. Where does this fit in with 21inc? Everything is bilingual. Which I think is awesome. Except I keep making changes to the website and then am reminded that I have to go in and change the French version too. If it's text? Have to wait for someone to translate it.

So something I would like to gain out of working at 21inc is to at least have a grasp on French. My title does have the word 'communications' in it, and probably that should stretch to both languages. (This will be put on the backburner until after school is finished. My other summer goals are to paint more, get into traditional illustration, make comics and go to the beach.)

One thing that I'm already gaining in my (so far) short time here is experience working in an office environment. I've had a few jobs before this (I actually go to school full time and have another job) so I know what it's like to work somewhere, but usually there's a lot of managers telling you "you have to do this and that and so on and so forth..." but here.. I have a number of things that Tim and I decided I'd be working on, and I get to self-direct myself. I have a really short attention span, so it's nice because I have a number of very different things I can work on (layouts, video editing, web stuff) so once I need a break from one thing I can move on to something else. I find that that's how I work best when I'm doing homework, so it's nice to see that I can apply that to a workplace as well (though obviously things that have a deadline get priority.)

What I've been working on today is a webisode for our e-newsletter, with interview footage that I took at the event at Up a few weeks ago. It's actually really convenient because in my A/V production class we just recently went over documentary editing (which was basically putting interviews together) so it seems less daunting now. Putting all the footage together is almost like a puzzle though, but not in a bad way.

Being an intern is fun

It really is!

Some of you may or may not have heard of me (or even met me) but for about the past month I have been an intern for 21inc. I attend the New Brunswick College Of Craft And Design, taking the Integrated Media program. I hear you now asking yourself, "What is integrated media?"

If you are familiar with NBCCD at all, you may know that one of the studios (programs) they have is called "Communication Design" which is basically Graphic Design. They decided last year that there was so much in the realm of graphic design that they couldn't fit it all into one program any longer. So! They split it up into two programs, Graphic Design (Mostly print media based and basic web design) , and Integrated Media. What I take in school is less about the print side of things (Though those things are still a part of my program) and more about media - More dynamic web design, special effects (Motion graphics), film, animation and game design. I also graduated from the Foundation Visual Arts program last year (I miss the drawing/painting aspect of that, though I still get to draw and paint - I just don't always have a drawing class) and I'm almost at the end of year 1 of a 2 year program. The things that I'm most excited about next year are making video games (We're going to be using a program called unity which looks amazing), learning php/web programming, flash actionscript and I get to take another elective (I would like to take a drawing class or something in textiles/surface design.)

Tim brought me on to take care of more the communications side of 21inc - Newsletters, web, and video is mostly what I'll be doing. It's really great for me because I get a chance to work in my field and I haven't even graduated yet. (Sidenote: I get to blog and post things to Twitter/Facebook. For work. How awesome is that?)

Last week there was an event for 21inc alumni at Up wine bar with Nancy McKay, and I got to attend and take pictures/interviews. It was really interesting because I don't really read the news that often or keep up with politics (shame on me) so I definitely learned a lot. I didn't participate in the group discussion but hearing the differing opinions was very insightful. (And the decor was amazing)

That and photography is something that I really enjoy doing, so I was happy that I had a chance to borrow a sweet camera (Nikon D300s) from my studio and go out and take some pictures. I would say that I took at least 80, but narrowed it down to 12 to upload, which you can see at flickr (Click the image at the top of the post)