I'm nearing the end of my first week interning at Scripps, and I'm so excited to write about it that I'm doing it during my lunch break. Scripps Networks is the television company that produces the Travel Channel, Food Network, Cooking Channel, Great American Country, DIY and HGTV. I'm interning in the Home Category Research Department every Monday, Tuesday and Friday in this lovely, glass-covered building you see on the left. On my first day we took a tour of the entire compound (or at least it feels like a compound to me!) I got to see so many interesting sides of television production that I'd never even thought about! I got to meet animation designers (ex. the people who create the computer-animated versions of house plans on HGTV shows), the sound designers (ex. they're given a promo and they write the background music in the studio. Yes, just like the guy on Forgetting Sarah Marshall.) We also visited a studio where they were filming a commercial using this tiny fake attic that looked SO real on camera-- they were even creating a fake sun by bouncing the light off of this mirror into the constructed window on set! I couldn't help but be awe-struck by the creativity behind it all. It amazes me how people's minds can work in such different ways. I would never have the musicality to create background music scores, the creativity to construct a realistic-looking attic in a studio, or the computer skills to construct an entire house animation from scratch. I guess that's what different departments are for!
d StarTrak. I upload information on ratings, viewership, ages, etc. that Nielsen Research has collected, compound/organize it in a methodical, easy-to-follow manner, and email it out to the entire company! It's exciting to think that people as high up as the president of the company are reading emails with my name on them. Today, I sat in a meetings with the scheduling department which was interesting because I got to see the numbers that I've worked with all week come to life: they take the ratings from the week and figure out how they can manipulate the order of the shows to maintain the most viewers at any given moment. It's amazing how much of this wouldn't be possible without research (and a little old intern pushing buttons in excel!)Jimmy Buffett’s “Welcome to Fin Land” Tour
The Wizard of Oz’s Dorothy had it all wrong: there is a place like home, and it’s called Margaritaville. Named after one of Jimmy Buffett’s famous songs, the Margaritaville ideal has erupted into restaurants, hotels, a clothing brand, and a state of mind. It is also a place where all die hard Buffett fans (aptly named parrot heads) can enter that state of mind, unite at his concerts, and feel right at home. Like the comforting nature of a home, his concerts are a safe haven for fans from all walks of life to gather and share their mutual love for each other, good music, and great tailgating. The parrot heads join to form an eccentric (and often inebriated) group of individuals, which pays close resemblance to many traditional families these days. Most American families have diverse members and may disagree, but at its core they unite and accept each other as unique parts of a greater whole—and that’s exactly what the parrot head family does.
I knew I belonged to this family the second my six-year-old body slid on the parrot-covered dress my mom had sewn for my first Jimmy Buffett concert. I’d never seen so many colors, decorations and joyful people in one place. I remember thinking it must have been a birthday party.
After attending yet another Jimmy Buffett concert in Raleigh on April 19th, I’ve realized that my kindergarten counterpart was right: Buffett concerts are a birthday party. They’re a chance for people to celebrate the side of themselves that is ordinarily suppressed by strenuous jobs and stuffed schedules. Their free spirited side is born again the second they step onto the lawn and hear the thumping of “We are the People Our Parents Warned Us About.” Each time I am reunited with the sounds of his music and the company of the parrot heads I’m reminded to let loose, enjoy life and stop trying to march to the beat of the colorless task-driven drum.
Although they are scattered and primarily alcohol driven, Jimmy Buffett concerts have surprisingly offered a lot of insight into my improvement as a writer. Jimmy Buffett is one of my favorite poet/song writers of all time. Even though some songs like “Why Don’t We get Drunk and Screw” may not seem to hold much literary merit, there’s no denying that others like “A Pirate Looks at Forty” and “Come Monday” are beautiful and inspiring. I also believe that Jimmy Buffett is the only artist that cannot be pigeonholed into a specific genre, which takes a lot of creative initiative on his part. A lot of times I feel that my creative prose is too similar in topic or style, and I want to work hard to be as distinguished and versatile as artists like Buffett. One of the critiques on my last story was that my characters need more development. I took that to mean that I need to be more observant of the world around me so that all of my characters can come to life. This means that I need to do a lot more people watching, and Jimmy Buffett concerts are perfect for that. I’m hoping one of the great people I met can serve as inspiration for my next piece!
Regardless of the chaos or seemingly shallow exterior, Jimmy Buffett’s music, lyrics and concerts always inspire me, and they affect me deeply as a person and a writer. I hope that I can take all the lessons that I learn each time—observing people more closely, branching out stylistically, or continuing to celebrate my free-spirited-life birthday—and apply them to my life and work as an author.
"It is acknowledged, once again, that some of these ads are manipulative and some annoying and some less than completely honest. (The Marlboro man, for instance, the most successful ad symbol of all time, the supposed symbol of rugged independence, is really a symbol of enslavement to an addictive drug, isn't he?)
But these advertisements, most of them, are something else, too. They are treasures. For one, they are important artifacts in our culture. Woe betide future anthropologists and historians who try to trace the American experience without pondering what, exactly, it is that her hairdresser knows for sure.
And that's because the greatest advertising isn't great for moving merchandise any more than the greatest literature is great for compelling plots. Somehow -- in the service of carmakers and brassiere manufacturers and car rental agencies -- these campaigns have discovered our humanity. They have touched us, understood us, reflected our lives and often enough enriched them" -Bob Garfield.
...But I'm not talking about the allure that Garfield describes. I have a different problem. My Principles of Public Relations and Advertising class has switched to the advertising portion, and I'm finding myself just as intrigued by the advertising world as I was by public relations. It's sucking me in the same way a commercial can draw a viewer to purchase a certain brand. I've always been interested in communications as a whole but how to channel that interest specifically is where my future becomes unclear. Like Garfield describes, the anthropology aspect of communications-- how humans interact with each other and the world around them-- has always interested me (probably why most of my electives are sociology classes). It fascinates me even more to know that there's a billions-of-dollars industry dedicated to manipulating these beliefs and interactions. Christina Malik, a PhD student at UNC, came and spoke to our class about the different divisions of advertising, and I learned that there's an entire division (account planning) dedicated to this concept. Account planners research consumers, brands and what makes them tick. I never knew that there was a medium through which I could channel this interest until now. Of course her talk fell on the same week that I need to choose my concentration for the School of Journalism and Mass Communication so now I have to choose: Advertising or Public Relations?
