Interning with The Rock and other Adventures in Hollywood

So for the past few months, I've been studying "abroad" in Los Angeles to try and get some pro experience and meet people who work in the industry. I'm not done yet, but so far this semester has been one for the books. I've fist bumped The Rock (pic to prove shown above), hiked Yosemite, rode cable cars through San Francisco, met one the biggest VO agents in LA, and become a source of drama between a director and executive producer.

I somehow managed to land an internship working on The Rock's production team, Seven Bucks Digital Studios. We make his YouTube videos along other social media content. This has been really fun since his channel serves as a hub for collaboration, featuring basically anyone and everyone from Vine star Logan Paul to musician to composer Lin Manuel Miranda (he worked on Star Wars and Moana). I've gotten to meet some really cool people and my job is way more fun than most of the other interns at my office :P

Anyways, I've been having to write journals about my internship for BU, so I thought I'd start off that blog life by sharing some of the highlights of my experience working for Seven Bucks. I've omitted the first six weeks as they were really boring.

Anyways, here ya go.

Week 7: 2/20-2/24 — Where Things Become Mildly Interesting

I signed up to work Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, though this is the first week since I’ve started that I haven’t worked a Monday (not to complain, as I should value the experience and be getting the most bang for my buck, having to pay just to be here and whatnot). I began my Tuesday cleaning up an office for a new President of something-something and attempting to marathon the entirety of Rush’s discography. I only made it to about 1989.

This week was something of a down week at my job. There were no big shoots or famous clients coming in. They said it was eerily the least busy they’ve been since starting The Rock’s channel. Dylan, one of the people I answer to, described it as follows: “We’re going out surfing, we’ve been towed out on the jet ski, and there are no waves around us, but you can see the huge swell forming on the horizon”. Dylan is very good with analogies. I also played the guitar in their office for the first time, which was a nice moment to bond and talk about music.

I spent the latter half of my Tuesday delivering Monday Night Raw footage to someone who I assume works for The Rock. They were vague with what the footage was for and who was giving it to, the converstation went something like this:

"We need you to text this number. Tell him you're with Mo and that you have the drive. He should send you an address that you can bring this to".

It sounded sketchy even though I knew it wasn't, but the fact that the hard drive was put into a secure hardshell case made it feel very important. I spent the rest of my day on this Rogue-One esque mission to Oxnard to deliver this footage, which became significantly harder when my phone died on the way there. I learned the hard lesson that day that you should ALWAYS have a phone charger accessible. Nonetheless, it was good practice for having to navigate an area I didn’t know well, and to do it efficiently, as I ultimately got back to the office an hour after I was supposed to be clocked out.

The rest of the week was spent mainly on the task of getting people on board for a new video series for The Rock’s channel :”Action Science”. Using all the footage I had gathered from weeks before, we would count down The Rock’s best fighting and action scenes, and, similar to ESPN’s “Sports Science” would break down the physics of what is actually going on in the scenes, and providing analogies to show how crazy these fights and stunts would actually be. My job was to reach out to anyone and everyone I knew who would be good in physics: majors I knew, professors I once had, high school teachers, people like that. While not exactly experience with a director or a writer, it was interesting to spend so much time on this and realize how much actually has to go into making these videos. After extensive research and reaching out to dozens of local professors and physicists, we finally found a few people on Thursday afternoon at the end of my week. It was a crazy and busy transition into a fun weekend with a Bruins game, trip to Universal Studios and an Oscars watch party.

Week 8: 2/27-3/3 — The Second Coming of Robin Williams

At the beginning of my work week, we had our weekly seminar and discussed optimization for YouTube, which was surprisingly really interesting. I've since adopted some of the optimization methods, have already seen more views on some of my videos surprisingly. I got my first dislike on a video by some scrub from France, I bet he was eating a baguette and surrendering to someone. Also, one of the higher-ups in my company assured me that the Oscars gaffe was staged by two producers. He explained how ratings went through the roof with the Steve Harvey incident and provided weeks of huge publicity following the event, and that one or two producers likely were the only ones to know about it and handed the wrong envelope. I’m not sure if he knew that for a fact, but it was interesting to talk about.

On that note, considering this week followed the infamous oscars blunder, and gave our team a new opportunity for a video. We definitely wouldn’t have had enough time to do the action science video well, getting all the data, producing the video, etc, in just one week, so we put all efforts towards this new project. The premise was taking the viral photo of all of the celebrities in the audience reacting to the best picture mix-up, and dubbing people’s voices in to make a funny scene. The Rock would play himself, and then the rest of the cast, Ben Affleck, Matt Damon, Meryl Streep, and so on, would be dubbed by voice actors. I spent way too much time trying to get the photo licensed, as everyone I had to be in touch with was untimely with responses and wasted my time redirecting me to others. Ultimately, the person who I actually had to talk told me that The Rock using the picture on his Instagram was a $500 fine and that we could have the video up for one year for $2100. Luckily, my producer taught me the valuable lesson:

Don't take guff from ANYONE.

I don't know what guff is, but I definitely don't put up with it anymore. 

This week was probably the most directly engaged I was with the Seven Bucks team. I’m starting to spend less time at “intern row” and more time in their office with them, which is more exciting and makes me feel like I’m able to be more productive and involved now. While the photo licensing ordeal probably took way too long, I was able to do many other things, such as reach out to potential voice talent, help write up scripts, and be involved with the recordings for the video. The guys who came in were hilarious. One of them, Jamie Costa, I had heard of before. He's basically Robin Williams reincarnated. He looks exactly like him and does all these amazing impressions. When he was sound-checking as Matt Damon, it took all of my willpower to not laugh my ass off. At the end of the week, I felt I had already gotten to know my employers much better, and they seemed interested in trying to get me into a video on The Rock’s channel in the future, whether it be on-screen or in voice over, which I’m obviously very excited about, but that will have to wait until after spring break.

Also still trying to get my voiceover demo reel going, have to get that done today and be sure to send it out to everyone I can.

Week 9: 3/6-3/10 — A New Hope

Spring Break was a nice break from the grind of classes and work, and for some reason, was also something of a turning point for me this semester (explained later). I was able to take the week off, and on Monday night, decided “hey, let’s go on a road trip!”. After some convincing, I managed to get my two very not-outdoorsy roommates to join me on a journey to Yosemite and San Francisco the next day. I just have to say that it is mind-boggling how barren California is between the major cities. As soon as you leave the city limits of LA or San Fran, there’s no suburbs or anything, just hundreds of miles of farmland. It was quite beautiful, but just jarring to see how different it was.

Our first destination was Yosemite. I don’t think I’ll be able to go skiing this winter/spring, but climbing around Yosemite is a pretty good way to make up for it. One of the most beautiful places I’ve ever seen, hoping I’ll be able to make my way back there. Two days isn’t enough to see all of Yosemite, I’d go for a week and explore. We also didn’t anticipate how much snow would be up on the trails, and were horribly unequipped to make the Yosemite Falls hike in one day. We tried to tough it out, but were still about half a mile shy when we decided we had to turn around (otherwise, we would have been stuck on the mountain at night).

San Francisco was a lot of fun too. We were staying at an airbnb in Oakland, and I’m honestly surprised that I was able to wear my Patriots hat in public without getting stabbed. Anyways, one of my roommates’ friends lived in San Francisco and was able to show us around for the day and take us to all the best sightseeing spots. Saw the Golden Gate, the ruins of an old bathhouse, and all the famous piers. Also rode in a cable car, so I can cross that one off the checklist. Living in LA, you kind of forget how big California is (and the world if you want to get deep). It was a really great experience and I hope that someday I can return to these places. Nonetheless, I felt recharged and ready to get back to the grind.

Week 10: 3/13-3/17 — The Rock Awakens

Here’s where things start getting crazy.

As I said before, I’ve been spending much more time in the Seven Bucks office as opposed to intern row, and I feel like I’ve been able to be much more engaged with the more fun, less interny work that I usually have to do. On Wednesday, I was in the office listening in on a conference call with Erin, a producer on the more development end of the Seven Bucks team. In the middle of the call, Scott, the director asked me “do you wanna meet The Rock?”. All I said in response was "yes.", and he brought me in for a shoot on the set of HBO’s Ballers for Friday. It’s crazy to think that if I hadn’t been hanging in the office, that might not have happened.

The Ballers set by far was the realest, largest set I’ve ever been on. Several massive warehouse/sound stages, the main are had at least twenty different sets up. The Rock’s trailer was bigger than my 2-bedroom apartment. I also accidentally wandered to the wrong part of set and accidentally made awkward eye-contact with Rob Corddry while he was eating a sandwich. In case you don't recognize the name, he's the bald guy in Hot Tub Time Machine. He was also in a bunch of other movies, look him up.
It was my first interaction with a celebrity I recognized this semester.

​Anyway, I got to meet Vine/YouTube star Logan Paul, which was cool, as I had known him well before coming to LA. The shoot was a bit stressful, as we had to be as accommodating to the Ballers crew as possible, and we didn’t know what time The Rock would be able to come over (we would only have him for about twenty minutes regardless), so we had to be on our feet for a few hours and be prepared. It was good experience navigating a giant set and solving problems on the fly. When The Rock showed up, I was able to keep my composure, and was able to shake his hand. I was getting ready to slate and as we started, he gave me a fist bump, so that was pretty cool. He’s a very nice guy, the fame just requires him to always be surrounded by lots of people (his assistant, bodyguard, etc). It was a fun day, and I was able to have dinner with some of the crew after, which was a really cool bonding experience. I finally met The Rock!

Week 11: 3/20-3/24 — Red Tuesday.

This is the week that I became apart of the lore of Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson. If nothing else, I can at least say I've accomplished this by coming to LA. 

So on Monday, I finally got around to recording my animation reel. I forgot to mention earlier that while on the road to San Francisco, I was able to get in touch with one of my professor's friends, a VO artist, who had a lot of good advice for me, the most notable being to record different demo reels for different kinds of voiceover work (animation, radio, commercial). Animation voice acting has always been something of a dream for me, so I was finally able to record that reel on Monday. During that same day, I got a call from the Seven Bucks Production Manager asking me to come into the office for about an hour. When I got there, they explained that a SXSW video that they had shot didn’t turn out the way they wanted. A lot of the humor they were going for fell flat, and they decided that they should try to do something else in place of it, since they had a strict schedule of uploading videos every Monday and Friday. Wanting to get me into a video on The Rock’s channel, they had the clever idea of playing off the SXSW screwup as a joke for a video, leading into the team making a video about the me, the intern, talking about myself, my experiences working for The Rock, and standing in for The Rock for a Q&A session (answering the questions myself as well as talking about what The Rock’s answers might be). I felt very awkward on camera, but I was able to get a lot of laughs out of the Seven Bucks team, which made me happy.

The next day, I came in, and the video was close to done in the morning. I honestly couldn’t believe that I was going to have my own video on Dwayne Johnson’s YouTube channel, putting me in a group with Jay Glazer, Seth Rogen, and other people much more famous than me. Unfortunately though, this brief fame was taken away as easily as it was given. The Rock’s executive producer, who works on all of this movies, didn’t like the video. They spent most of the day trying to meet this EP’s needs and putting the video through several completely different cuts. Late that night, after hours of no responses, the EP once again had more changes to make. Everyone had already gone home, there was no way they were going to change it and still get it up in time. The Seven Bucks guys I work with decided to stand their ground and just release the video. It was the first time they’ve ever missed a release date. It is now known as Red Tuesday. If nothing else this semester, I’ve managed to become a legendary lost video on The Rock’s channel and be the source of drama between people in The Rock’s team. And that was only Tuesday.

Going back to the animation reel, I was able to send it out to a casting director I had met in Annie’s Pro Production Methods class. Apparently, she was so impressed that she sent it directly to an agent at Abrams, one of, if not the biggest VO agency in LA. The agent’s assistant emailed me and we set up a meeting that day. It’s a really exciting time.

On Friday, I was able to get on a shoot at Paramount Recording Studios. The studio space was probably one of the coolest places I’ve ever gotten to work. The place smelled like lots of things, which I probably don’t need to list, and looking back, I’m not really surprised, I sould have anticipated as much. They had hallways of framed platinum records I loved, and I got to meet Desiigner and writer Jean Baptiste. It was kind of a brutal day. We were supposed to wrap at 2, and went until 7. My day started at 6:45 and I didn’t get a break for breakfast or lunch. Luckily, I was able to sneak food between setups for scenes, and I was able to power through the day. It also helped that the content we were shooting was hilarious. Be on the lookout for a video in roughly 2 months where Logan Paul and Desiigner team up to make a hit song. These two are fantastic, they need a movie together. Desiinger gave me a hug at the end of the day, and a lot of my friends are jealous now.
​
Despite how hard the day was, it was a great experience and I was happy to be there, see the Studio, and meet some cool people.

Week 12: 3/27-3/31 — The Sky Lobby

This was a pretty boring week for the internship. I spent most of my time either driving around running errands for people in the office, or filing an amount of paperwork that you only see in cartoons. I do enjoy driving, and most of the errands weren’t on a time crunch, so I was able to relax while driving around the city. I also had to reorganize and file all of the existing paperwork for Seven Bucks Digital Studios: petty cash reports, receipts, invoices, crew paperwork, all for about 75 projects Seven Bucks has done in the last year. Also had to go through the depths of the production manager’s old laptop and search through hundreds of files to make sure nothing was missing from the hard copies of everything. It was a mind-numbing process, but that’s what I’m here for. I actually do feel that I understand a production manager’s work immensely more than before.

​What was more interesting regarding my long-term career was my meeting with Dean Panaro, VP of Voiceover at Abrams Artists, one of the biggest VO agencies in Hollywood. You know someone is a big deal when you have to take an elevator to a place called the “Sky Lobby”, and then request access to another elevator to get to his office. He was a really interesting person to meet with and talk to, and he gave me an important reality check about the voiceover industry. It was a lot of things I didn’t know and hadn’t heard from others, such as the de facto idea of “waiting your turn”, and how long it takes most people to get signed. He was nice about it though, telling me I had a good voice with a lot of potential, just that having a good voice won’t get you anywhere: being able to voice act and have experience will. I understand more now that it’ll probably take me a while to really land something good, but I’m feeling up to the challenge.

Also found out this week that my professor and I work in the same building. I should probably go visit him at some point before I return to Boston. He's the producer behind the new National Geographic show Genius, which is about Albert Einstein. It's gonna be lit, you should watch it.