Nuts and Bolts

After only a few months working as a production assistant, I was thrust into the world of associate and segment producers. While producers mostly worry about the big picture and the overall direction of a project, the associate and segment producers are tasked with bringing everything together to get the job done. I first worked as a segment producer and writer on the series “Assignment Discovery”, an educational program for The Discovery Channel. At first I worked on repackaging previously made shows, but my responsibilities steadily increased to the point where I was writing and researching whole segments on my own with little to no supervision. I began taking the initiative to find solutions without going to my producer first. In other words, I became a contributing member of a production team.

Since they were educational shows covering every classroom topic, being a segment producer for “Assignment Discovery” required a heavy amount of research. Although my education had prepared me for the task, I found that I had to reeducate myself on topics that I hadn’t studied since high school. I learned to research and understand concepts quickly so that I could write about them more confidently. To aide the production process, I learned to work with a style guide and properly format my scripts for clarity. This writing experience eventually lead to my working on the mini-series “Greatest Inventions with Bill Nye”, where I worked as a writer and producer.

I also worked as an associate producer on “TLC Elementary School”, another Discovery educational program, and “All About”, a children’s video field trip series. In these positions, I learned more about what needed to be done to accomplish the larger goals of a project. From little things like printing out mailing labels, to larger tasks like getting equipment ready for a shoot, working as an associate producer taught me about the logistics of production. One of my specialties in this position was working in quality control. With my background as a post-production assistant, I found that I was well suited to performing quality control checks for the programs I worked on. I also have a meticulous attention to detail, which proved very helpful in this task.

I enjoy seeing my hard work pay off, and these positions gave me the chance to do that. It was always satisfying to send a finished show to a client, knowing you had contributed to an effort that produced outstanding results. At times the work seemed never-ending, but the rewards were always well worth the struggle.