So, I've finished up the summer program at CCTV (nicknamed SMITE) and have some great things to say about it. I now continue volunteering at CCTV into the beginning of the school year, but I wrapped up my work with other interns over the summer in early August.

I have to emphasize that the interns, although few, were really wonderful to work with. They were highly educated and helpful. One of them had already graduated and was ready to head off to Harvard to begin College and the another I found out recently went to look at MIT as a prospect. But thankfully, some of them were still in the same boat as I in terms of movie production skills, so I wasn't left behind in the dust. We all worked together on projects, shared worked, and passed ideas openly. In the end, we produced two CCTV promotional advertisements from scratch, edited a series of Cambridge interviews, and archived many intern projects from previous years. I also started to edit footage from a concert held a local church with one of the interns, which I completed later in September.

I am now quite familiar with the basic functions of both Final Cut Pro and the cameras from CCTV that we used. It was a lot of fun to experiment with various filming and editing techniques deciding what looked better and enjoying what looked cool. It's really a field where one can be quite creative and produce something very unique. It was also quite an amazing learning experience to use the camera and realize all the lighting and coloring changes that occur throughout our lives. Every time we move to a different room, our eyes instantly adjust without perception of a change. This is not so with a camera, which must always be adjusted for the right appearance.

And of course, I can't forget that the staff have as usual have been very welcoming, eager to answer any questions and solve any problem, even going out of their way to educate me on various topics. I've not only learned about how to film, I've also learned how CCTV works and a lot of what happens behind-the-scenes that I never experience. Soon, I will be entering in the school year production program (SYPP) later this month and am very much looking forward to it.