PS John Mayer tonight? Anyone?

Sorry to be slow to post, guys, but I have been busy at work and hitting the town! Over the last month at IFC I have gotten much more comfortable - I have been working on getting the word out about IFC.com's new contest site: Media Lab Studios (the brainchild of last year's Zeta Psi intern, Chris Reid, Theta Xi). The site is a splash page for sponsored film contests, ranging from a music video contest to a mini-documentary contest. I spent a lot of time calling just about every school in the US that has a film department, asking them to let their students/alumni know about the site; in an effort to get more submissions to the documentary film contest, I got involved with the online independent documentary film artist community (theres more of them than you'd think...). I really got to see what the weight of a brand like IFC can do. Several of these blogs and websites were very willing to help me disseminate the info among avid documentarians. Hopefully we will be seeing lots of very strong submissions!

I was also charged with the ever-entertaining job of pre-screening the entries (the final judging will be done by a panel of industry experts). New videos come in every day - some promising, some funny, some downright bizarre. It's IFC's policy not to censor anything, so these aren't your average Youtube videos...

Currently I am working on putting together a proposal for a long-term project that I can do for the rest of my time here. Hopefully I will be able to leave a lasting impression on IFC, and affect it positively.

First week in New York

I arrived at the Zete house at Rutgers University about two weeks ago now; I spent a week getting to know the immediate area around New Brunswick and some of Manhattan island, then jumped headfirst into interning at IFC last monday.
I was overjoyed to find out how close the IFC offices are to Penn Station - literally across the street; you may recognize 11 Penn Plaza by the massive LCD newsfeed that runs along the building and sidewalk. This flashy decoration is part of Fuse's (another TV station owned by IFC's parent company) efforts to seem more youthful, and they also have four or five large display screens that play music videos and interviews with pop stars. Thankfully, there is no audible element to this display.
Anyways, as soon as I got into the building the level of class went up about 5 notches. I grabbed my guest badge and went up to the 18th floor to find the IFC offices. Within minutes of my arrival I was put to work - handed a beta tape of never-before-seen advertisements produced by Axe and asked to write up a summary of the videos. Getting to see how branding and marketing works up so close is both an eye-opener and a blast. For now I have to go, but be sure to come back for more updates!