...Continued and Tuesday

        A quick recap of Monday.  It was relatively uneventful...I went to breakfast with the majority of the Conrad fam in the morning at the Original House of Pancakes (not to be confused with IHOP).  There were exorbitant amounts of food on the table, and I ate my fair share of the goods.  I don't ever crave sweet things for breakfast and I ordered pancakes with strawberry syrup (never in my life have I had strawberry syrup...but it was pretty good).  I hung around the house for a couple of hours, regaining energy from a long weekend and relaxing before what is already turning into a busy week. 
        There is really only one reason for going back to finish my blog from the weekend before talking about the work week, and that is to share a rather amusing anecdote.  My uncle is level headed and seemingly fearless.  He can put murderers in jail for life, face threats from federal criminals, and deal with extremely high stress situations while showing no sign of fear.  A raised eyebrow is about as much expression as you will get out of him.  So when he came rushing into the house I was sort of shocked!  "BRYSE!!!!" he said with BOTH eyebrows raised, and had to pause to let his jaw return to its upright position before repeating "Bryse...you gotta come see this.  I don't know what it is!  It's a huge animal...What do I do??!!"  This series of words was repeated, in alternating orders as we walked out to the back yard.  Turns out, there was a ferocious possum in the garage.  OK, in all seriousness...it was pretty big, and when it moved I immediately ran to the porch.  When Bobby tried to get it to leave the garage, it had been scared by us and hidden...somewhere.  I look down in the house every once in a while to make sure he didn't crawl in the house, because I noticed I left the door open when I went outside to take a look at the beast.  But really, the expression on Uncle Bobby's face was priceless...I wish it had been caught on camera...that and the scary possum.

FEROCIOUS BEAST, AKA, Possum.  This image is compliments of wikimedia.com (filed as: Awesome Possum, American Possum, but I can assure you that our furry friend was bigger, and whiter.  There was some discussion as to whether or not it was pregnant.

        After that picture, I'm sure it's hard for you to be excited about a good homemade meal, I am afraid of going to sleep tonight-I'm pretty sure I'll be seeing that sucker in my dreams- but I do need to announce that I finally made dinner for Ann and Bobby...and Carrie and little Bobby came to join.  I made a variation of the tomato pasta my mom makes that I love...it was a bit different but still good (I think), parmesan crusted crusted chicken, and cheddar bay biscuits.  The dinner seemed to be an unhealthy hit...if they didn't like it, they were very gracious, and I can appreciate that.  I realize now that I should have taken a picture of the dinner spread to include here, and left the image of the possum out of the post.

TUESDAY

Having a four day work week is not quite like having a four day school week.  When you miss the Monday of school, you get to skip a couple of classes, syllabi are adjusted so that the workload reflects the times you are in class (for the most part), and you generally get to cruise through the week with less stress...at least, that's how my holiday weeks went in college.  Now, a four day week means you have one less day to get the exact same amount of work done.  Can you say wake up call?  Last night I had a to-do list for today running through my head on repeat.  By 9:30 this morning, the receptionist had already called me a worker bee...and that trend continued throughout the day for Sarah and me.  We have a luncheon for Leatherheads who have met half of their sales goal on Thursday at Quail Hollow featuring football legend, Bob Griese and although the site and menu had been locked down prior to our start with CCF, there was still a ton of stuff for us to do today.  I had to get the final count for the guest list, which was changing up until the minute I sent it to Courtney.  We had to arrange for specialized name tags for each type of guest: Leatherhead, Board of Directors, VIP, or guest.  We also had to compile a short bio of Bob Griese for his introduction at the luncheon, come up with a sales update to be presented to the guests, work and rework and meet about and rework again the sales incentives for the Leatherheads, brainstorm centerpieces, and decide on the best way to present the Extra Point passes at the lunch.  Yes, that took pretty much the whole day.  After work, I stopped by the YSPN (Young Sports Professionals Network) social.  The sport world is seeming to get a bit smaller and I'm starting to say hey to people I at least recognize instead of introducing myself to the first person I see...I'm still meeting new people, but feeling a little less lost.  I talked to Chris Clouden, Director of Marketing and Events for the Charlotte Sports Commission for a long time and I think he is going to be a great contact and ally in the Charlotte Sports World.  The Charlotte Sports Commission will be heading up our ACC Night of Legends for the Championship game so I asked him to keep me informed on any planning that goes into the event, and requested to attend some of the planning meetings.  It's another great opportunity to get involved in something that's not directly part of my job (because we have handed much of the responsibility for this particular event over to the commission), and I'm fortunate enough to have the freedom in my work to ask to been involved in the extra stuff. 
        On another note, my car currently sounds like it's been wrapped in bubble wrap and a thousand tiny elfs are running around popping it everytime I have my foot on the gas.  Anyone have any idea what this means??!  It's a little bit troubling.

Photo Shoot

        I'm realizing more and more that this (as in this job) is all much bigger than me and I can't do it on my own. God is blessing me in that I'm definitely learning lessons that are bigger than the internship itself. I've been feeling the need for a confidence boost in the past couple of days. Because of the events leading up to landing this internship, I was completely sure that this is where I am supposed to be, and started last Monday without anxieties or fears about being able to perform in an industry like this. I'm still confident that this is where I am supposed to be. But since jumping in with both feet, I've realized that I'm a little fish in a really big pond. Still loving the internship...every day I love it even more. Just feeling a little unsure of myself, and I'm asking for that insecurity.
        ANYWAYS, we went to the photo shoot for one of the ad spots for the games today. The concept for the ad is simple, but definitely creative and quite effective for our purposes. This particular image is centered around the "x's and o's" of football and grilling out...think bacon crossed to form X's and onion slices shaped like O's placed on hamburgers on a grill. Let your imagination run wild (pictures to come at some point, although you may be seeing these images on billboards or in magazines in the near future). You would be surprised at the amount of effort that goes into making a picture of hamburgers on a grill sell football tickets. The crew started rolling in around 7:30 this morning...we arrived around 1 and they still hadn't started shooting. The process is quite long and involves a model (even though you only see his hand and maybe a shoe, a food stylist, a photographer, a creative director, and assistants to capture this one image. Courtney, Sarah, and I went together and were 3 of 10 people in this room to take a picture of hamburgers! It all made more sense once I saw what everyone was doing.
        The food stylist prepared the hamburgers with defined grill marks, and chemicals to make the meat the perfect shade of brown, and to make it glisten as only a perfect burger would. The stylist prepared and placed the burgers, bacon, cheese, onions, etc... on the grill in order to capture the essence of a playbook in food.
        I didn’t understand why they (meaning LGA, the marketing/advertising group we work with) hired a model to pose, when in reality the end result of the photo would have very little focus on the person in the shot-I would have done that for free! I didn’t understand, until I saw the shoot in action. This guy held a spatula in the exact same position, arm flexed and feet in the same position, head tilted just so, and back at the perfect angle for several minutes at a time while the photographer and creative team would take pictures adjust lighting, scrutinize the image, take a picture again, and so on. I asked Lisa from LGA what the qualifications were to model in this shoot and she said that they literally just sent in pictures of this guy’s hands to make sure they were “good hands, you know, manicured and everything”. His jeans weren’t showing off the tiny bit of shoe that you could see in the photo so the photographer hiked them up and clipped them in the back so they would fit him just so. There was even a wardrobe change for the shirt that you, as consumers of the ad, will probably never see. But apparently a light gray shirt picks up detail better than a white one…these are the kind of details the common eye doesn’t catch, and it’s why these guys are great at what they do. They spent endless amounts of time on body positioning. “Should he hold a can in the other hand? No, should he put that hand back on his hip? No, that makes his waist look too small. Would you mind moving that foot back just the tiniest bit?” Some call it nitpicky but these are the things that make the difference between an ok shot and a really good one.
        We were in an indoor studio so the "outdoor" set had to be created completely from scratch. That meant that the lighting had to be set perfectly. They had to recreate a backyard patio, so they brought in patches of grass, and individually laid bricks, to create the illusion of your typical outdoor cookout scene. Detail orientation is the key to capturing the perfect image, and this became obvious when I saw one of the assistants on his hands and knees with a squirt bottle spraying each individual brick in the patio area to make the red color pop. They even had 4 different options for spatulas…and there were distinct opinions on which spatula worked best. Overall, the shoot was eye opening, and I will be looking at all ads and professional photography more analytically from now on!
        On a personal note, it was a great day because my baby sister, Mary Catherine, turned 15 and reality set in that she’s not my baby sister anymore...kind of bittersweet. I also got to talk to my brother, Will, today on the phone for a little while and we haven’t gotten to have a decent conversation recently so it was just good to hear his voice. He’s starting Film school in the next couple of weeks and so I put my plug in for him to come see me in Charlotte and possibly visit the production hall of Raycom soon!