Filming, Editing, & Publishing in a Day at NBC

Alicia takes a selfie in front of NBC4

By Dean’s Intern Alicia Burgess at NBC4 Washington

Every day, AU students pass NBC studios on their way up and down Nebraska Avenue, travelling to and from Tenleytown and the rest of the city.

I don’t know how many of those students are like me, but in the hundreds of times I’ve passed NBC, I’ve thought about how awesome it would be to have an internship there.  Every time I’ve passed it, I’ve wondered what was at the end of the elusive driveway.

Now, my dreams have somehow become a reality, and I’m an intern in the advertising and promotions department at NBC-4 Washington, WRC.  I am literally in the place where Meet the Press is filmed, where the Muppets were born, and black and white TV turned to color for the first time.

In essence, my day-to-day role is to create media that encourages people to watch NBC-4 Washington for their news.  That media usually consists of making the daily “popical” spot, “snipes”, and Facebook “teasers.” (Don’t worry, it was all gibberish to me at first too, one of the hardest parts of the job is learning all of the news lingo).

To explain, I make a commercial everyday promoting News 4 Today, the morning news broadcast, to try and get people to tune in.  This involves grabbing footage from that mornings broadcast, filming the anchors, editing it all together, and ingesting it properly, so that it will actually air on TV.

Meanwhile, I work on “snipes”, which is text that pops up on the bottom third of your screen during daily TV shows, like Ellen, that highlight certain stories that air at 4pm.

After I make those deadlines, I use the rest of my afternoons working with the digital team, making a promo for the NBC Facebook page.  This part of my day is usually the most creative, but sometimes the most difficult, because there really aren’t any rules. If I have any extra time, I go through the promotions b-roll archive, sorting and labeling everything so that it can be found and used more efficiently.

One day, I even got to be a production assistant on a shoot on an off campus set for a commercial.

There’s a lot I love about this internship, mainly how much I’m learning, but also how I’m treated in the newsroom isn’t like I’m an intern, but someone who does good work and something to contribute, and I have a lot to thank NBC for already.

Every day, I look forward to walking up that driveway, and seeing what the rest of my summer brings for me at NBC.