So this is the last day in New York city for the Lindenwood University chapter of NBS… Definitely met a lot of cool people while we were here. It’s honestly been the best trip I’ve been on in a long time.
NBS Convention
The convention was… alright. A lot of the professionals that came to talk didn’t really say anything I don’t already know, but it was reassuring to hear from people that have made it in the business. There were definitely a few professionals that I could take knowledge from…
The first big day of the convention held an event called “Career Focus”. It was basically a big meet & greet with various broadcast professionals. There were quite a few folks from MTV, WWE, and sports networks, but I was mostly interested in the pros that did camera work… obviously since I’m a movie guy.
I had a chance to speak with Jon Carr, an expert on everything technical when it comes to shooting a movie. He owns his own Red camera and quite a bit of other camera equipment. I asked him about shooting SKIRMISH with a T2i and a Red, and he thought it was a good idea… so that makes me feel better about the project.
Stephen Lucas, the director of the NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams, took us on a tour through a couple of NBC’s studios. We got to see the sets of NBC Nightly News and the Today Show. We also saw the central control room for NBC, which was definitely overwhelming. Their audio room was bigger than LUTV’s whole control room!
Exploring New York
Okay, so I don’t have many pictures just yet. My phone is a complete piece-o-shit that likes to randomly format the microSD card that’s in it. On about half way through Friday, it pulled a dick move and deleted all of over 120 pictures I took over the trip until that point. I have more pictures on there, but I decided it would be best if I just wait for other peoples’ pictures to show up on Facebook.
Here’s one I managed to upload to Facebook before my phone deleted it. It’s me standing outside our hotel, the Hyatt Regency in Jersey City on the first day of the trip. We were all in awe as soon as we got there, honestly… so we stopped and took pictures. Alizeh took this one with my phone and I liked how it turned out. Usually my phone isn’t so great with pictures…
The city was so visually stimulating that it was hard to keep track of the tasks at hand. Zach and I had to stop many times to wait for the girls to take pictures of themselves standing in front of stuff and I found myself trying to snap pictures with my phone every ten minutes.
Best of the Trip…
Best NBS Session: Definitely the NBC tour. It was awesome getting to meet some of the crew that works on shows like Saturday Night Live and the Nightly News, and it definitely got me interested in looking for a career in TV production. Also, I met some pretty cool people in the NBS group that Zach and I happened to talk to while we were there.
Best Food: Definitely Bill’s Bar & Burger in Rockefeller Center. It was a bit pricy, but that was the tastiest, spiciest burger I’ve ever eaten… too bad my stomach hated me for it. Steve’s Pizza was a close second… being my first experience with true New York pizza. Best slice of pepperoni pizza ever.
Best Location: Rockefeller Center has to take it for me. I loved Times Square too, but I enjoyed my time in Rockefeller more… The NBC studios, Nintendo World, and the LEGO store really sold it for me. Pretty nice pubs nearby also.
Best Moment: The Wrath of Zach Dooley… Or Hurricane Dooley… Or Dooley’s Revenge. On Friday after the NBS sessions were over, we planned on going out to Queens for the Museum of Moving image and other things. Everyone gets ready, but some of the girls are still in bed trying to nap. Zach storms into the room, knocking bottles off of tables and throwing blankets around in an attempt to wake them up. Within moments, the room is covered in papers, pillows, and wet towels from the bathroom. It was pretty hysterical and needless to say, the girls weren’t napping anymore after it was over.
Best Nerd Moment: Meeting Master Yoda in the Museum of the Moving Image! There was honestly a crapload of Star Wars memorabilia in there. I even had some of it! I may have to make a donation some time soon…
Best WTF Moment: While walking through Times Square… Our group was harassed by a guy trying to sell tickets to a Comedy Central show. When one of our group, Cartez, denied him… he said something along the lines of “Well give me something free then… like a blow job.” The couple of girls with us thought he was referring to them, but nope… he was referring to Cartez. Then the guy used the same line on us again the next time we passed him!
Best Fail: On Thursday, Zach and I split from the group to chill with some people from Florissant Valley Community College. We had a good ol’ time wandering and looking for different places to hang out. The girls, however, got into a bit of trouble… On their way back to the hotel, they were told by someone that they were on the wrong subway. They decided to listen to this person and got off at the next stop… only they didn’t all make it off the train. Mel and Amanda got stuck on the subway when the doors slammed shut early. After all of the girls freaked out over it, they find out that they were actually on the right train and the person they had asked for directions just didn’t know what the hell they were talking about! So the two that got cut off from the group made it back first while the others got lost in New York…