Wanna Race?

Hey everyone,

This blog is going to be a short one and inform everyone on something that I just became aware of. While doing some work searching the Port Authority web site I noticed that another one of my videos has been posted. This time I was approached to edit down a video for Coogan’s Annual Race. I had to make a story out of a story from the movie, here is the catch, show only Port Authority owned property and Chris Ward. For those who do not know who Chris Ward is…he is the executive director of The Port Authority and is in charge of the World Trade Center rebuilding. So check out the video and let me know what you think.

Catch you next time…

http://www.panynj.gov/about/programs.html

Inside The Belly of The Beast!

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Today for the first time I was asked to go to the World Trade Center and gather some shots of the construction process. It was insane! First the hustle and bustle of New York down by the Towers is totally nuts…and I thought the area I am in was crazy. We sat at a stop light for what felt like 10 minutes. The people just kept pouring out of the subway entrance. Once we arrive about a block away from Ground Zero, I needed to get my day pass so security would let me onto the site. The man who gave me the pass has the greatest view out an office window ever…overlooking the WTC!!! It was breathtaking. After gathering the pass John and myself walked past movie trailers outside Brooks Brothers, down the road a little bit to the entrance of the PATH station.

This is the entrance for The PATH Station

Then the moment of the day happened…The security guards eye-balled my special pass and my drivers license to gain entrance. Once inside I lost all my words and my mind became blank. I could not believe that I was standing on the soil in which close to 3 thousand lost their lives. The feeling was honestly indescribable. While I was gazing around at the buildings and how tall they were already, my supervisor John is giving me the details of the job. Needless to say, I did not hear a word he said. I was trying to soak everything in, moving the dirt around with my boots, starring without blinking at the buildings and just thinking about the buildings that used to occupy that space. It was honestly surreal. I came back to reality when John said to me “so you think your comfortable enough to go by yourself?” I just answered “Uh…yea…sure”, but he noticed the hesitation in my voice and gave me a brief tour.

My job was to capture any work in progress. Sounds easy right? Well, it was tough. I was able to get some footage of some of the guys lifting rebar to what seemed to be the 7th or 8th floor. After gather footage of the rebar, I walked around and got some sweet pan shots (pan=moving the camera to the left of right). One in particular was a shot which showed outside traffic then panned to the left and captured an awesome view of the new World Trade Center tower. I also gathered some shots of men welding, bending the rebar, and lifting what seemed to be a walk way to connect to another building or extension without coming all the way back down to ground level.

The experience overall was absolutely incredible. I never have been to the World Trade Center before the attack and even after. So this was the very first time I was looking at the World Trade Center, never mind stepping on the soil. And when I mean soil, I mean soil, dirt that was under the grass, under the buildings before the towers sadly fell. Just having the dirt under my boots, I felt so inspired and proud to be an American. With all that work going on it was inspiring. I also felt saddened and and speechless. I know people who are reading this are going to say “how can you never have been there and you live in New Jersey?”. Truthfully, I just have never had the opportunity to make it there. There is no other way to express my feelings today. I was excited, joyous, intrigued, saddened, proud, and many other countless emotions. Today, I was proud to be an American!!!

Below are a couple photos and a video I was able to take down at The New World Trade Center today.

A shot of The New World Trade Center from the street.

Preparing for a crane lift shot

This is the World Trade Center Memorial from the street.

Shot along Church Str

Follow me to JFK AirTrain and the New World Trade Center!

Hey everyone,

I have been busy this past week. Everything I have been working on has been approved and was used in many different ways. Here is what I have been promising everyone: What I actually work on at my internship at The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. I have been working on three different projects lately and will bring more to the blog later. The following projects are ones that got special attention.

1. The first project that I was working on was a tutorial on how to get to the JFK AirTrain from the Long Island Railroad, specifically from the Jamaica station. I was approached with this project to give it an up-beat amateur first hand look at the trip. I was given free will at editing this project. As an editor, this was extremely rewarding. The department came up to me with an idea, a story, and the information they wanted to get across. It was my job to blend all that together. Click the link below to check it out!

Have a look

2. For my second project, I became the director using a remote production room to record the public board meetings.  There are nine meetings in one day from 9 am till almost 3 pm. It is a very long day, but I was able to take the information I learned at Wilkes World (being the director) and use it to “cut” or switch camera shots inside the meetings that were taking place in a totally different room in the building. These meetings are public knowledge and are streamed live over the Port Authorities website.

You can check out my work here:

3. My third video is one that I will not get done while I am an intern. It is an on-going project of the reconstruction of the World Trade Center. I started working on this project on my first day at my internship. My job is to take all the footage of the reconstruction and condense all the footage into a time lapse version. A time lapse is a video shot at a subject continuously over time and the World Trade Center is the subject. Upon editing,  you can notice the building’s support being build, cement being poured, steel moved into place and construction progressing. At the final board meeting of the day, my video was highlighted to show progress of the WTC.

You can find this short little snip of my time lapse as well as other major developments of the new WTC in the video entitled : Board Meeting 2/25/10 1:00pm. While watching the meeting my video gets a mini introduction before being introduced at 12 minutes and 30 seconds.

Check it out

It has been a pretty crazy week here, but this is a complete inside look at the work I am doing. Some of the projects I’m working on are VERY interesting and I hope to bring you more as my internship progresses.

The Sites of New York…Fire, Lions and Titans?

Hey everyone. I have been busy the past couple days working at my internship and traveling back and forth between New York, New Jersey, and taking my final class at Wilkes. Its rough but it is also enjoyable. But recently I caught a break. While stuck up at Wilkes in a snow storm, I escaped what could have been trouble. Thursday February 11th just a little up from where I walk every morning and afternoon there was an explosion in a building. The building was a Radio Shack on 19th and 6th Avenue. The explosion was said to be caused by transformer that blew and sent a fireball up several stories of the building. So not only do I have to worry about crazy taxi drivers and maniac pedestrians running you over in the subway tunnels, but now sidewalks exploding! But, honestly this does not happen every day and I am not worried about it. It is pretty nuts though that I could have been walking past there if I were not stuck in a snow storm at Wilkes. NYC is a safe city and even though this incident happened, no one was hurt and that is incredible. I walk by this building everyday and see the burn marks all the way up the building. It is really interesting to see.

Photo From Stephanie Derouge for The New York Times

Speaking of safe, I want to let you know about the building I work in. Once walking in there is a circular door and two normal doors and then the lobby. In the lobby you notice two security desks and tons of elevators. Each elevator is decorated with gold interiors too. The interiors look as if they are giant slabs of gold from the ceiling to floor of each side of the elevator. But each set of elevators only go to certain floors. For example in the way back of the building are my elevators that only go to floors twelve to nineteen. Other elevators go for two to six and seven to ten. so you have to know which elevator is yours or your going to look foolish and be embarrassed. As in the lobby is some really cool architecture. In the corners of the building by the elevators there are these two ram heads on each side. These enormous rams have huge horns wrapped around their heads in which it seems like they are ready to charge. When I walk in every morning I look at these rams for inspiration, I guess that is why they are there.

A little small because they are all the way up on the ceiling my cell phone camera is not that great

Who knows but they pump me up  in the morning and I feel powered and full of energy. Working at my internship I need to have an ID badge on me at all times. This ID works as a key fob and grants access to rooms that others can not based on your area of work. My ID can get me on any floor and into the camera rooms and equipment rooms as well. But in the lobby there are two security desks. This is cool because by now they know who I am and just wave me through. When I first started they had to keep calling up to the 18th floor and now I feel as if I am part of the company. Although my ID is yellow and everyone else has a white ID card. The yellow is for supplemental staff while the white is for permanent staff. Both card do exactly the same thing and they both have a sweet design on them. There are so many visuals that can stop you and make you stop and stare at them.

Speaking of stopping and staring, I work on the 18th floor of the building and I have the ultimate view of New York looking uptown from Park Avenue. If you were to look out my 18th floor window the things you see will amaze you. For instance, there is a building in which promotion companies paint their movies along the wall. A couple weeks ago, the red brick wall was painted completely midnight black with a giant pink heart outline. Inside the outline was the faces of every actor and actress in the movie Valentine’s Day. Along with that, their names were in pink and white along the bottom of the heart in alphabetical order.

A long shot with a cell phone camera you can see the pink-ness of the heart and the actor/actress faces

This is an astonishing feat because there are only two men with about 50 to 75 paint buckets from gallons to pints of different color paint, on a little scaffold that rides up and down the wall like an external elevator. The painting was unbelievably straight and perfect and could be seen for miles. Now that painting has been removed since Valentine’s Day has been released. The wall was covered in white and the painters have returned to start their new venture of art. This time there is a dizzy blend of colors to form a monster of some sort and an eagle flying around it. Although it is still in the early stages of the painting, my hunch is that it is for the release of The Clash of The Titans movie that has been remade and is scheduled to be launched April 2nd.

Same building as the Valentine's Day painting but still a long shot with a cell phone

Also while looking out the window you see plenty of window washers cleaning windows that are scratching the clouds. I would never be able to do this job. You are so high up in the air and you are being held up by like 4 to 8 different cables. The marks they are cleaning are monstrous too. It looks as if a pigeon or something ran right into the building an exploded on impact with white feathers all over the place. They clean up a white blob that takes up at least 3 windows. You can also see many New Yorkers running round and cars flying up and down the blocks. I hope this gives you another insight to my internship. Now that your senses are up to speed hopefully I can clear some confidentiality restrictions and start describing what it is I actually do at my internship. I mean I edit videos and look at interesting photos but I am eager to share what they are. So I hope I can start sharing that info with you shortly but until then I will catch you next time. Also just want to say…GO TEAM USA!!!

Now You’re In New York!

Hey everyone! Man, what can I say about the Empire State that has not been said yet. It’s big, it’s amazing, it’s full of adventure, it is NEW YORK! I started my first day at my internship at The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey on January 4th so in the next couple of posts I will update on my progress at the work place. For this post, however,  I want to give you an inside look at my commute and how I arrive in Manhattan.

I live in New Jersey alongside the beginning of the Jersey Shore in the town of Middletown. Middletown is a beautiful town and is even featured in Weird New Jersey books. People say there are hauntings in the town. Besides the hauntings and attractions (I.E. Keansburg Amusement Park and Runaway Rapid Water Park) the town is home to many famous stars, as well as the largest volunteer first aid department squad in the world. Yep the world. Many people who work in the great city of New York reside there.

So how do you get from Middletown to New York City? There are many ways to reach the city from Middletown. One would be the train. The Middletown Train Station picks you up and drops you off right inside Penn Station in the middle of the city. You can also hop on a bus and arrive at the Port Authority Train Station just a couple blocks off of Times Square. In warmer weather many commuters decide to hop on the ferry and boat across the Hudson River which can drop you off at multiple stops in Manhattan. Of course, you can always drive into the city. I decided to use the bus since the bus can pick me up only 4 blocks from my house.

My alarm clock goes off around 5:10 and 5:15 am ( 5 minutes for the snooze). Once I shower and get all my items for the day together,  I make my walk to the bus stop around ten to six and six o’clock in the morning. The bus I wait for picks me and other commuters up at or around 6:16 am. In the winter the brutal cold stings at your nose and the wind can really make you feel as if your going to get frost bite and never feel your ears again. Bundling up is the key and walking around the stop to keep the blood flowing. The bus ride takes about an hour and fifteen minutes and I arrive at 40th and 8th Street at the Port Authority Bus Terminal at or around 7:20 and 7:30 am. From here it is all about the hike. I make my way to my subway train along with thousands of other New Yorkers. Here is where you feel like you live in New York as you are briskly walking down the subway tunnels trying to avoid people who are walking slow and staying out of the path of the marathon runners who seem that they were late for work a half hour ago. In reality, they probably do not have to be in work till 9 am.

My subway train is the 1 train and I board right underneath Times Square at 42nd Street. The train takes about ten to fifteen minutes and my stop is on 18th and 7th. Now I have a couple blocks to walk to Park Avenue South. This is my favorite part of the commute because the true spirit of New York is in full effect. You hear taxis whipping by as you wait to cross the street, car horns going off to tell other drivers they are behind them or other vulgar phrases are muttered in which you can read their lips through the windows of the car. People chatting on their phones about either shopping or business that needs to happen today, and the smell of street cart vendors that makes you feel as if your nose had a wallet or bank account they would be broke in seconds. There are days I walk by and the smell is so intriguing that give in and get some food to satisfy my growling stomach.

I arrive at work at or around a quarter to eight in the morning. In future post I will go into detail about my work experience, but I wanted to show everyone how long a Manhattan work day is if one does not live in NY. My day comes to an end at 4 pm. This is where my journey home begins. Take everything I stated before and reverse it. I usually board the 1 train around twenty after four and board my bus home at twenty to five. I arrive at my bus stop around ten to six. It is an extremely long day, just a little over 12 hours. No one said it would be easy and I am determinded to make this work. I love this internship and over the next couple of posts I hope to show you why. So until next time, Get Outta Here but do not Fuggitbout my blog (I had to do it).