CAMS Major Zizi Li ’17 Reports on Her Summer Internship with Ark Media in New York

22 February 2016

Zizi Li '17

CAMS major Zizi Li ’17, who did a summer internship with Ark Media in New York, offers the following report on her experiences. “For the first part of the summer, I worked on the development of a feature documentary focusing on biomedical research. This project launched just two days before I started my internship. It was a unique experience as interns do not usually get to be involved so intensively from the beginning of the development process. So I did a lot of research! The team was scrambling through piles of journals, articles, bills, news programs, C-SPAN videos and documentaries related to National Institutes of Health, biomedical research, and funding, trying to get a sense of the directions we could go. The following weeks were even more intense as  I needed to process a large amount of information–texts, visuals, audio recordings, numbers, and weird terminologies from scientists and politicians; beside original research, I was also involved in treatment writing, communication with funders, script writing, archival research, preparation for field production, and more. For the second part of my summer, I worked on several PBS shows, including President Ford, a one-hour documentary on President Gerald R. Ford, Finding Your Roots with Henry Louis Gates Jr. and an American Experience episode, Bonnie and Clyde.  I did archival research for the Ford documentary and was also fully engaged with the post-production assisting process, including tracking assets, archiving production media, footage research and client services. I helped out with on-set production and fact-checking for Finding Your Roots and Bonnie and Clyde.”

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