Sarah Lau from Two Geeks Talking: Intern Synopsis

As August 2014 comes to a close so does my summer internship with Two Geeks Talking.

The highlights of my internship are as follows:

• Interviewing Danielle Corsetto of Girls With Slingshots (even as awkward as I was)
• Attending my first convention: Super Summer Comic Con in Windsor, Ontario
• Attending a famous convention: Fan Expo Canada 2014 in Toronto, Ontario
• Meeting the artists of Archie Comics especially Dan Parent and attending the Life After Archie panel
• Attending the My Little Pony panel featuring Tabitha St. Germain (Rarity) and Andrea Libman (Pinkie Pie/Fluttershy)
• Seeing my name as the author of my articles and on the Staff page (the feeling never gets old)

Kurt actually recommended me Girls With Slingshots about a year or so ago and I fell in love with it. The characters are adults going through life crisis and hilarious antics. When he surprised me that he was going to have a Skype interview with Daniella Corsetto I nearly freaked. I contained my inner fan girl when I got to interview her a bit during the Skype call. She is so sweet and wonderful!

Now, for my first convention ever I made a taboo in footwear. I wore brand new, black, leather flats to break in on a day where I knew I’d be walking around (but I didn’t know how much I’d be walking around). My heels chaffed and I had to get masking tape to put over them. Only a few days before Super Summer Comic Con, Kurt taught me some basic camera skills with his Canon T5i, tripod, monopod, shutter speeds, aperture, and ISO. I made sure I kept repeating what he taught me so I could drill it into my memory. On the day of the convention, I was introduced to his Zoom H4N (audio recorder) which looked much more complex than its functions. I also had to carry a lot of the materials and kept reminding myself “this is intern life, suck it up.” You don’t realize how bad of a photographer you are until you use a professional camera and have to use manual focus for photographs and video. My rule-of-thirds was great but wow, I sucked. But I was happy that I went through all that because it’d prepare me for Fan Expo – or so I thought.

Fan Expo Canada 2014 had me excited for the merchandise I wanted to purchase but nervous for the interviews I was going to conduct and/or film. Kurt and Mike informed me that Day 1 (Thursday) would  have less people and therefore less traffic. Since I only had one other convention to compare it too, I tried to multiply it by a few hundred people. I was so wrong. People kept pouring onto escalators to get in between the north and south building of the convention. There were thousands of people! I made the mistake with my interview with Dan Parent to point only the mic at him and not to me when I asked questions. So embarrassing since I was fangirling inside. Day 2 had me really upset because as a naturally fast walker conventions shouldn’t suit me. I was frustrated at how often I had to stop. But what had me really going was being patient since I am not a patient person. But I lived. Day 3 was incredibly busy and packed. Security had to actually stop people frequently from going on the escalators to not let it overheat the motors which caused a back up of hundreds of people. They even were stopping people from entering the building since it was a fire hazard. And the stupid part was that if you were already inside the convention, you better think long and hard about if you want to switch to another building because that’s about a 30-minute to 1-hour wait. But I did some shopping on Day 3 so that consoled me. Day 4 cooled down a bit and it was great going in the morning since there was room to walk but as lunch approached it was chaos. The food court in Artist Alley was mayhem!  But I loved the experience and building a smidgen of muscle while working with Mike’s shoulder rig.

I obtained my internship by asking Kurt if he still needed someone for that position as he had offered it to me about a year or so ago. He was willing and guided me on how to use WordPress and how his site functions. He asked me what I wanted to contribute to Two Geeks Talking and I said text articles because I wanted to practise and polish my writing skills over the summer.

This is a pretty short and what seems to be an irrelevant synopsis of what actually happened during these four months but I appreciate having the opportunity to do this. I might be back to write more text articles with artists but I will be signing off now. Thanks for reading my text articles (if you did) and I hope you enjoyed them.

Sarah Lau