Brian Litwin: “Awesome” internship in sunny California

09/07/2010 1:04 PM

Brian Litwin ’11, music business

For a part of my childhood, I didn’t have cable. When our family finally got cable, I absorbed, as a lot of children that age did, all the classic Nickelodeon shows like All That, Rugrats, Ren & Stimpy, Rocko’s Modern Life, Kenan & Kel, Legends of the Hidden Temple, GUTS, and many more. I never thought I would end up interning at the place where all of these shows were created.

This summer I interned for Nickelodeon in the production department for the new show Kung Fu Panda: Legend of Awesomeness. It was, for lack of a better term, awesome! The production of the show is just like the movie. The animation is incredible, and the quality of jokes and action are superb.

I worked under several production assistants and our task would vary from day to day. Most of our work was preparation for artists in-house at the animation studio or overseas. We could be adding dialogue to storyboards for animation artists to get the movement of mouths to match the audio on one day. The next day we would be adding numbers that corresponded with a character just in case an animator cannot tell which character they are putting into a scene. There is a lot of action in this show, so sometimes characters on a 2D storyboard can be difficult to determine. Interns also helped with other tasks as well as updating the intern guidebook.

A really cool part about working at Nickelodeon is all the perks interns get. Human Resources holds classes for interns that are very helpful. We met the general manager of the studio, the director of post-production, storyboard supervisors, and many others.

Another great part of being an intern was sitting in storyboard pitches for different shows. This was a chance to see how the creative process of a show actually works. Then, for one of our classes, we had to pitch an ending to a Spongebob Squarepants show to one of the storyboard supervisors. We had to pitch the end to everyone, and then were critiqued. Later, we drew up the pitch in storyboard frames, and were critiqued again. Finally the finished project was shown to everyone in the class.

Spending the summer last year in Manhattan was incredible, but being able to spend this summer in sunny California was a dream come true. I made a lot of great connections, friends, and memories out here and will sure miss the weather come December. Look for Kung Fu Panda: Legend of Awesomeness to premiere in the fall. SKADOOSH!