I was accidentally on the news when recording my interview with Mariana! I'm in the bottom left corner.
About
During my 2025 Fall semester at George Mason University, I was an intern at FOX 5 DC for their creative services department. Although my time here was short, with the internship only spanning 12 weeks, I still learned so much. Working on commercials from the planning stages, to script writing, shooting, and editing was usual in my daily schedule. Additionally, I worked on news broadcasts, topicals, social media posts, editing, and writing. The most valuable skill I learned here was to be a go-getter and do everything there is to offer, and I improved my time management. Alongside this internship, I was taking 15 credit hours and working at the Student Video Center. I sacrificed a lot of my free time for this internship by leaving two personal clubs I was a part of, but the experience, knowledge, and skills I gained from this are outmatched.
Commercial Bumpers
I was given the task to record a short promotional shoot that advertises the FOX 5 DC brand in only five seconds. These are called bumpers and are put in between commercial breaks when there is empty ad space. Adult Swim, Cartoon Network, and Boomerang made the best bumpers back in the day, and I wanted to make something like theirs. It was difficult as I was limited to being physically shot rather than being animated like my examples all tend to be. I decided to go with mugs and pens as the main symbols within these shots, as we had a lot lying around the office at my disposal. A fun fact is that the mug video is shot in reverse, as I kept bumping and moving the mugs around if I did it forward. I think these came out pretty well, and im happy how they came out.
Marina Marraco Interview
Marina Marraco is a news reporter at FOX 5 DC and has had an exciting career in news. I interviewed her between commercial breaks on her show, The Take @ 2. Due to the time constraints of the video, only being one minute, I could only get a few questions in. The main one I wanted to touch on was what story has she reported on here at FOX 5 DC that has stuck with her the most.
Additional Media
On the left, there is a social media post I made. This post is a summary of a news section we covered of a local celebrity going to jail and her friend giving the station her first reaction to it. The person who usually does these posts was out so I had to make it fast and while following the company's guidelines. On the right there is a short topical preview I made, which previewed a story that was going to be previewed later that day.
Reporting on Dick Cheney's funeral live with Tom Fitzgerald
Final Thoughts
I wouldn't have interned anywhere else if I had the chance to, my time here at FOX 5 DC was amazing and I can’t wait to see what the future holds for me in production. While I was here, I have learned a countless amount of information relating to media and my life in general. On top of this, I gained real work experience before graduating and have made plenty of connections.
