TV Commercial

Another posting of an assignment from my Mass Communications class. It's a commercial for a fictional product, D-Matter.

Radio/TV

Radio
Zach Brandham set out on a journey to find his girlfriend after the disasters in Japan. He walked 4 miles to the village and had to sneak in by pretending to be with emergency responders. After 20 hours of walking and with some help from luck, Brandham and his girlfriend were both safe and reunited.

TV
As always after tragedies, there are stories of luck and survival. Zach Brandham not only survived the earthquake and tsunami that hit Japan, but set out on a 20 hour walk to make sure his girlfriend was safe. Once he walked the 4 miles to her village, he had to pull his hat over his face to try and blend in with a group of emergency responders in order to be allowed in. Once he was able to get in the village, he still needed to find exactly where she would be. After walking for 20 hours, he ran into people who knew where she was. He found her cutting up cloth to cover the bodies around her. Both stayed behind to help the people they taught English to.

CNN had a great interview with Zach Brandham in which he got to tell his story for himself

Print Story

This post will be another dedicated to an assignment given out for this week. I was required to find a story about the recent events in Japan and write a print, radio broadcast, TV broadcast, and an online story to be posted to my blog. I thought it may be easier to follow if they were posted in separate enteries.

Print Story
According to theindychannel.com, parents John and Terri Whitcomb will most likely look back on March 11, 2011 as one of the worst days of their lives. As Japan was being hit with a devastating earthquake followed by a tsunami, all they could do was watch the news and pray from their home in Nashville that their son Zach, would contact them soon to let them know he was okay. The tsunami destroyed all communication to and from the areas, so although the Whitcomb's sent message upon message to their son through text as well as Facebook, they were unable to reach him.

While his parents were home in Kentucky worrying, Zach had survived both the earthquake and the tsunami and was about to go on a journey that can only be described as incredible. He later told his story to CNN. After seeing that the earthquake and tsunami were over, Branham's attention focused to one thing-finding his girlfriend, Georgia. She was living in a small village about 4 miles away from Kuji teaching English in the schools. Zach was worried because the village is located right on a beach front. With all other forms of transportation not possible, he began to walk.

After finally reaching the village, he found the first of many roadblocks. The one road through the village had become impassable due to homes that had been washed away and blocked the street. After being turned away multiple times by the police working, Branham could have stopped his search but he decided that he would just have to find another way in. The next morning, he got into the village by pulling down his hat to blend in with a group of emergency responders going in to help.

After actually entering the village, Zach still had the task of finding his girlfriend in the mess that the disaster left behind. He searched multiple places including her apartment, kindergarten school, elementary schools and so on. By another stroke of luck, after 4 hours of walking that morning, Zach ran into members of the Board of Education. Although they did not speak English and Zach's Japanese was limited, they were able to somehow communicate. They also knew where is girlfriend was and took him to her. When he finally reached the building she was in, he arrived to find her cutting up pieces of cloth to cover the bodies around her with.

Finally, John and Terri were able to exhale when they received contact from their son, who decided to stay in Japan to help with the relief effort. Although they must have expected that he had been through a lot, they had no idea the story of dedication they were about to hear.

Suites

Unfortunately there hasn't been another home game since last week so I don't have any new stories to tell. The next game will be Thursday night against Atlanta so thing should be back to normal for at least a little while after that. It's weird to think that in 3 weeks the season will be over.

Last week I started talking about what working in the different areas of the Coliseum was like. I covered the High Five area. Tonight I'll be talking about the suites. Just like at any other arena, the suites at Nassau Coliseum are a place for companies or other groups, like families, to come to all watch the game together. The people in the suites are given their own private area with both a lounge kind of area as well as seats to watch the game. Food and drinks are brought up and constantly being refilled. Personally I've never actually watched a game in the suites at the Coliseum, but I have gone to one game in a suite at CitiField and it was a really fun experience.

There are also different style suites for different amounts of people (and budgets). There are a couple pretty good sized ones, some double suites, and then others that are on the smaller size. Each suite belongs to a different organization or company, like Newsday or Rexcorp for example. During the game, the Ice Girls come up to the suites and offer raffle tickets, and the Fan Photo crew (aka me) go around asking if the people would want pictures for the website. As far as my job is concerned, I have to make sure I look at which suite I'm at before I go in.

The suites in the Coliseum are organized by numbers (1-14) and letters (A-Z). There are certain suites that we aren't allowed to go in because there is either someone (usually famous) inside that we aren't supposed to bother, people within the Islander organization (like the GM or owner), or the families of the players. The general rule is if the suite has the 'New York Islanders' label next to the door, then you don't go in there. Unfortuantely for me, the last time I was assigned suites I didn't check the doors ahead of time. I walked into a suite just like I would for any other and asked the two people inside for a picture. They said no, so I walked out. As I was walking out, I realized that I had just walked into the Islanders' suite and asked injured defensemen Mark Streit and his girlfriend for a picture. That was embarassing. I haven't been back since then since I was sick last Friday, so hopefully that isn't something I'll get in trouble for.

I'm still having some issues uploading my pictures to the blog for some reason. Hopefully this week I'll have that sorted out and I will be able to post the pictures I wanted for last week as well as show you some from the suites for this week.

Past 4 Games

There have been 4 home games since my last entry on my internship. The team has gone 3-1 in that stretch of time and the only loss was in a shootout. (For those of you who aren't hockey savvy, if the game is tied after regulation time runs out, the game goes to a 5 minute overtime period. If after that there is still no score, the teams go to a shootout.)

Last time, I spoke about how frustrating dealing with some of the other interns can be sometimes. As much as I feel bad about getting aggravated, it does help that I'm not the only one in the office that sees it. It also helps to know that the behavior that gets me so angry isn't directed only at me. The last few games, that particular intern was away on vacation. If I'm going to be truthful here, those games went much better than my games usually go. I guess it's mainly because I finished all 4 of my card packs 3 games in a row. (Let's have a short moment of celebration.)

My plan for this week's blog was to blog about different things that have happened over the past 3 games, but mainly focusing on Friday's game against Boston (3/11) since it would be the most recent. My plan was interrupted once I woke up sick on Friday and ended up not being able to go to the game. I've been given High Fives much more lately for some reason. So I figured that now is as good of a time as any to talk about and post pictures of what the High Five area is like.

Obviously each game is different because you get a different set of fans at each game. I'd like to think though, that after 2 months of this internship I've gained a general idea of what happens during what days. I've mentioned earlier that weekend games are much more energetic and much more crowded (well, for the Islanders) than weeknight ones. This goes for High Fives also. Another thing that I've noticed in doing High Fives is that how many people you get depends on what point in the game it is. There tend to be more people in between periods than there are for the pre-game. Generally, this area is younger kids with their parents, out of town-ers, or birthday parties. In case I haven't mentioned it, the High Five area is right outside the Islander locker room. The kids get a chance to line up against a barrier and high five the players on their way onto and off of the ice at various points in the game. The ones we're responsible for taking pictures of are as they go out for warm-ups, as they come in from warm-ups, the start of the 2nd period, and the start of the 3rd period.

These are the pictures from the High Five area from the Devil game last week. Next week, I'll be showing pictures from some of the other places we get assigned to take pictures.

More Mass Communication

We had another assignment for my class. We were assigned to take 5 different specific pictures, post them here, and explain them.

1. An action shot

The weekend of the assignment, I spent a good part of one day at the Islander game. I decided that this would be the perfect place to get my action shot. I took a break from taking pictures around the concourse to snap a shot during warmups. We won't tell anyone else that though.

2. A building from far away

This is Carnesecca Arena. It's where the basketball team plays. As a commuter student, this is one of the first things I see as I come on campus and one of the last things I see before I leave.

3. The same building close up

I decided that the best idea for this shot would be to get the actual name "Carnesecca Arena" as the shot. Especially since in the far away picture, you can't actually see the name of the building clearly.

4. A group shot(posed)

This way by far the easiest picture for me to get. Every Islander game I take about 200 posed group pictures. This is a picture of my friends at the game. Left to right it's: Steve Gordon, Jon, Mr. Gordon, Chris, and Steve Carlin. I picked this one because every single game I go to their seats and take a picture of them. They're all good sports for putting up with me.

5. A self-shot in front of the building

I'll start out by saying that I am not a very good self-shot photographer. Whenever I go somewhere new or exciting with my friends, I'm the person that really wants to take pictures because I know I'll appreciate them later. Since no one else seems to value sentiment as much as I do, I end up either not being in any of the pictures or not taking any. Because I always manage to cut out the heads of the people in it or something dumb like that.

For this picture, I again wanted to be somewhere you could tell was the arena. I decided that the best way to do that would be to stand in front of the student entrance and get that in the background. Or at least I tried. I told you, I always cut something out.

Capture the Storm

This week will be a little different than the usual again. St. John's had a contest to see who could make the best 30-60 second video about what St. John's meant to them. My Mass Communication teacher thought that it would be a good project for our class.
My video talks about what St. John's allows me to do that I wouldn't be able to if I was at the school I originally chose. As much as I still love Bryant very much and wish that it worked out there, St. John's has proven to be a good fit with me. It offers Public Relations as a separate major instead of a concentration, and I'm available for internships year round.

Weeknight games

I'm going to apologize for the rant that is about to come. I just got back from tonight's Islander game against the Minnesota Wild and I had a little bit of a hard time. Espeically since this blog is about my internship, I figured it would be an acceptable place to talk about it.

It's become very clear that weeknight games are just not fun. At least not for someone trying to get pictures of the crowd. An outsider may ask why. Well, frankly anyone who knows the Islanders knows that they aren't a very popular team. Their recent success has brought some fans out of the woodwork, but the games have also mainly been on Friday or Saturday nights. People don't come out on weeknights. Unfortunately, that makes my job harder. Despite the smaller amount of fans at the game, I still need to take the same amount of pictures. Very frustrating.

I think that having to deal with difficult people at work is something that everyone can understand and relate to. The Fan Photo program has 4 interns, Amelia, Jeff, James and myself. Everyone gets along pretty well. Except for Jeff. To be honest, I don't know what grade he's in or how old he is. As far as I know, I'm the youngest of the bunch. But as James explains it to us, our problems with Jeff are from his lack of maturity. He just doesn't know what not to say or how to approach something.

During the President's Day game, I was walking the concourse going through my sections. I saw Jeff coming out of one of the sections I was assigned. I found it a little strange because I had seen Jeff earlier, and he asked where he was supposed to go and I told him. There was a good amount of people there that day because of the holiday, so I shook it off and didn't care much.

The next game against the Capitals, James and I were paired off because we didn't have enough cameras for all of us. While we were walking the concourse, Jeff stopped us multiple times asking why we were in his section. And did the same thing to James tonight. Apparently though, it's quite alright for him to go into my sections since he finished his. This caused a real problem for me tonight. I've said earlier how we are supposed to take at least 120 pictures. I had 87 at the time I found out that Jeff had already done my sections. So I decided the best thing to do would be to tell Sharon,my supervisor. She told me to just keep walking around.

Eventually after wandering around the Coliseum, I finally got an acceptable number of pictures and was done for the night. Hopefully Saturday and Sunday are better games.