Whatta week at Lifestyle Network

Day 1.

Orientation at Lifestyle Network was fun. As a subsidiary of ABS-CBN, it’s located at the 8^th floor of ELJ Building. Entering their office, only one thing popped inside my mind: Production. I also learned that besides from Lifestyle Network, other subsidiaries of ABS are also located there such as Hero, Cinema One, and Myx.We were then introduced to the heads of Lifestyle after which we were toured by our coordinator to the floors where we will be most likely to work besides the main office. After the tour, we were then assigned to our first task ever at Lifestyle Network. Since they were at the post production stage of some of their shows such as Runway for Real and Out of the Closet, we were tasked to make a shotlist and transcription of the following videos.So we copied the digital files from their terabyte named Tara to our flash drives. :)

Day 2.

I ran through some errands such as finding the DV tapes of certain episodes of Lifestyle. Ms. Cheska, our production assistant, also asked me to go with her down to the 3rd floor to give the raw materials to our editors. WHOOAAAHHH. That was what I felt when I entered the area full of rooms with computers and bin bags and all other equipments necessary for editing. According to Ms. Cheska, every show of ABS-CBN has a one or two editing rooms. It just really amazed me seeing all those editors working and tying all those shots to make a story. Awesome. J Ms. Nicai, our coordinator, also taught me how to ingest a DV tape to convert the material into a digital file. I also transfered files of different episodes from one terabyte to another. This was really the one that took up a lot of our time. It took us hours and hours converting mov files to mp4 and copying it to another terabyte and organizing them. From this, I learned the importance of organization. Though the work seemed menial, I really think that organization saves the network a lot of time and money for if those files would get lost, I’m sure that it would cost them seriously. :P

Day 3.

Sunday was shooting day. Today I really felt I was a part of a production team. We had a shooting with Empress Schuck for a segment of FASH.We started setting up at around 12:00 noon. I and Ms. Cheska and went down to the main building and pulled out equipments and crew for the shoot. We only had one cameraman, one light director and one audio director. We then went to the 11^th floor, the previous set of Betty La Fea. We went to one of the rooms of the office and we set up the “dressing room” of Empress. I was amazed on how we were able to turn the bare room into a "dressing room." We just set up a table in front of a mirror, put plenty of cosmetics, set up a clothing rack and took all the clothes we had at the office including those of the staffs there. Oh how resourceful our production manager and executive producer were! :)) When Empress arrived, she was briefed with the script and the shooting started. It was fun because I got to help out in the production proper. I clipped the lapel mike on Empress and helped Ms. Cheska on holding the prompter that served as a guide for the actress. Even though the work was kind of small, I was very happy and contented because I was able to have a hands-on experience. After we shot Empress, we also had a number of product shots. The staff just looked for a white background and a white table and put the products one by one. Sometimes, I was also asked to position the products in a way that they would look more appealing. We finished shooting at around 8:30 in the evening, 30 minutes over than the original schedule. Nevertheless, everyone went home happy and fulfilled. :))

So yeah, my first week at Lifestyle Network was a blast! Tiring but fulfilling. :))