The Holiday Season has begun!

One of the greatest thing I experience in New York City is the influx of holiday vibes!! Between holiday markets, office parties, Christmas music, winter weather, and mainly, there is an endless supply of freelance production opportunities for holiday network specials.

Early in November, I had some production coordinator friends reach out to me inquiring if I was available to work a long-term freelance job for some of the big networks' holiday shows. Since my full-time production job is still at the United Nations in their broadcast department, I was unwilling to even interview with this network because they were requiring full day shifts, both daytime, nights, and weekends! Thankfully for my freelance friends, the New York City Council recently unanimously passed a new bill protecting freelance workers and their wage payments. Many of my freelance colleagues are very excited that their livelihoods' income is now more protected by law; plus many of them told me they are now, much more likely to continue working in the freelance world.

Back into my production world, things are running smoothly and according to plan. UNTV is continuing to cover high-level meetings, committee panel discussion, press conferences, studio interviews, and more! Down in Brooklyn at the Barclays Center, our Event Presentation team is constantly working to produce and distribute new videos and graphics content for all venue events!!

Wintertime in NYC... and the United Nations!

Since the last post, surprisingly not too much as happened... Thanksgiving and Channukah overlapped this year, Christmas trees and lights have taken over NYC, and few really exciting days at work!

November went by real quick, I moved into my first NYC apartment and quickly settled in - figuring out my new commute, finding good pubs/restaurants, and all the fun moving-in stuff. That's really all that happened last month, well and Thanksgivukkah! Plus NYC got its first "snow" of the winter, just a few morning snow flurries which turned into rain by mid-morning.

December quickly came upon us and started off with a bang! Nelson Mandela passed away on 5-Dec and the UN quickly took action on broadcasting a message of thoughts, condolences, and prayers to his family, South Africa, and the world. As soon as the news broke, the UN Secretary General and Security Council President quickly took action and went on-air with a message to pay tribute to the life and legacy of Mandela. Since the news broke very late in the day and much of the crew left, the remaining quickly jumped into action and got everything back up and running, ready for the broadcasts. We later saw that we broadcast our first statement 20 minutes before Obama!

Most UN committees, Security Council meetings, Mission programs, and other events happen generally wrap up as December comes to a close and come Jan/Feb, days will be much slower and less hectic. For now, I'm still tasked to monitor, then cut and distribute the the important recordings of UN events!

The Last Week

Last weekend on Dec 1, the program Director hosted a holiday party for ICLA and all IC alum. It was a bit overwhelming with so many people, but nice to see everybody dressed up and looking nice!

The remainder of the weekend was set for paper writing and completing final course assignments. For the two papers, I was able to write about youth culture in media influences its viewers (Senior Seminar) and how technology has improved sports' broadcasting on American television (Electronic Media Criticism). Both of which research papers were quite interesting and I actually learned a lot about each of those topics.

At my last week of Authentic, I continue transcribing and logging footage for the two sets of shows I am working on -- My First Home (on TLC) and the two IGN shows (Geek Love and Next Game Boss). Friday was my last day at Authentic; I got a delicious free lunch out of my producers and I just didn't want to leave, at all. I was sad.

I was able to take off one day of internship and work as a talent escort for the CBS holidays' show -- A Home For the Holidays. It was a lot smaller and more intimate, compared to the Mexican Billboard Awards in October; I did have a similar task though, to guide my assigned talent (Jillian Michaels) through the backstage and press areas for the show. Other stars who were featured on the special were Wayne Brady, Kevin Frazier, Phillip Phillips, Rascal Flatts and a few others -- all of which, at one point, I was within arms length from. The one-hour holiday special will air Dec 19th at 8pm, on CBS.

Thursday at CONAN would have been my last day here, but luckily I am able to stay a few extra days and continue the internship. Unfortunately, it was the last day for many of my classmates/coworkers; it was bittersweet! Besides the bittersweetness of the day, nothing too crazy happened behind the scenes, on stage, or in the office.

Getting Ready to Leave

It is crazy to think that the semester is almost over... just two papers (well one, since I already finished one -- yea, go me!) to go and that's it. Besides the "emotional" reaction to the end of the semester and leaving LA, everything has been normal the past few days -- continuing to discuss relevant topics in class, familiar routines at my internships, and still dealing with the worst public transit system in the nation.

As stated, I am still doing familiar tasks at Authentic (transcribing interviews, logging chyron sheets, creating VO scripts, researching various this for the Development department, etc) and CONAN (sorting and distributing mail, writing late night and research summaries, running on equipment errands for crew, answering phones, etc).

Friday evening/night (it gets so dark, so early!) was Authentic's annual Christmas party; complete with festive music, yule log on the monitors, egg nog, Christmas tree (sorry for the bad picture quality), and just overall fun times!!