Internship Update

I apologize for the posting delay; it's been a busy couple of weeks. Here's what's been going on in my internship:

Special marquee at the Ed Sullivan Theater

Last weekend I went to my first Paley public event: a 50th anniversary screening of The Beatles' first Ed Sullivan Show appearance and the Maysles brothers' behind-the-scenes documentary of the Fab Four's trip to New York. The Ed Sullivan episode was shown in its entirety, including the other acts and the commercials; seeing the program as it originally aired was like stepping back in time. It was also neat to be watching it with a crowd of people and hearing their reactions. Most of the audience was made up of those who had seen it when it originally aired and had been to Beatles concerts, etc., but there were several people about my age there as well. It really goes to show how timeless The Beatles are and how significant this event was in popular culture.

I've been helping with some pretty awesome curatorial projects. At the end of March, we're doing a screening series of the Alfred Hitchcock Presents episodes that Hitchcock directed himself, plus some of his rare television interviews. My job was to make sure we had each episode in our catalog and that the video quality was good enough for them to be used. AHP is truly a fantastic program; it's basically a series of 25-minute mini-suspense stories sandwiched between Hitchcock's commentary in his fabulously sardonic introductions and conclusions. For a show that was made more than 50 years ago, it has a timeless quality, which is why I'm surprised it hasn't been in syndication recently. I highly recommend taking a look if you haven't seen it before. Warning: it's addictive.

Another project I've been working on is research for a public program about how doctors are portrayed on television. I've gone through several episodes from nine different medical shows--from Dr. Kildare to House, M.D.--looking for clips that can be used for the event. The best part about this assignment has been noticing how the presentation of doctors on TV has changed--and even remained the same--over the past several decades. What's great about work like this is being exposed to a variety of programs and analyzing them through different lenses, seeing how they fit in with history. I've always enjoyed television, but I've never looked at it in this way before; until this point, it was something I had mostly done with movies.

In addition to my three days a week with the curatorial department, I've started working in the social media department one day a week. So far, I've mostly been writing posts for the Center's Twitter, Facebook, and Tumblr accounts. A couple of my projects have included writing trivia facts and questions that were tweeted out during the Super Bowl, and compiling and editing posts that announced which stars would appear at our PaleyFest panels next month. Working in social media has been fun and interesting; I'm learning a lot about connecting with online communities and how to market to them. This and all the other work I've been doing at Paley has been wonderful experience. I'm learning a lot of skills that I can apply to my everyday life, and getting more insight into what I could do after I graduate.

At the risk rambling on too long, I'll save some of the New York stuff I've done for the next post. Thanks for reading!