Travel Channel in Santa Barbz!

Posted on May 6th, 13:17

Sup STAers?

Right now I’m daydreaming of paradise…the sun, the surf, the beaches, and the shopping. I think you understand what I’m talking about – Santa Barbara, California! The week I spent there with TCA (Travel Channel Academy) rocked my socks. The people I met were all wicked friendly and so talented – just like you guys! (Insert Kodak moment here.)

TCA is a fierce course. It’s a four-day, fire-breathing dragon that will have you stressed out of your mind as you try to combat nature and make pro-style travel videos. Can I get a hoorah? After listening to lectures from Michael Rosenblum and Lisa Lambda, it’s clear that I learned the ‘know-how’ on making top-notch travel videos. (Seriously, these lectures were cooler than that weird ab exercise machine at Brookstone’s that middle school kids like to sit on before the store manager flips out at them.)

I wish I could parlay some of the excellence that was shared in those meetings but, alas, these secrets are kept under lock and key. (AKA: The advice and the connections you can make with Travel Channel Academy are so ‘in the loop’, they don’t want this info leaking into the outside world.) Although I would love to spill the beans, they will remain in their tin can right behind the olive oil and next to the soy sauce.

But really, this class was sick. For eleven to twelve hours a day (basically the amount of time your little brother spends playing video games or the amount of time it takes to find an alligator in a New York City sewer), we would edit and shoot our own videos. If you’ve ever sat at a computer for more than three hours at a time (writing a term paper or editing a project or something) you can understand how those floaty eye things just start to appear. We went to this nice Italian restaurant after class one day (granted this is 10PM), and I was just seeing those black dots from staring at the computer screen and I was like, “Why did you black out every other word on your menu?!?!?” Lo and behold, it was just the black floaty eye things. Should you never have experienced the black floaty eye things, stare at a computer for three hours, or a light bulb for three minutes, or the sun…actually, refrain from that one.

Santa Barbara is one of those strange places (like New York City) where everything just seems to be happening at once. So when it came time for us to go out and shoot projects, everyone found this ridiculously unique topic that could only exist in a place like Santa Barbs. We’d go back and critique our work and (no lie) there were topics like a juggling squad raising money for their trip to the African desert (to give juggling DVDs to young kids, nonetheless). Just these crazy things.

So well I’m sitting here – a proud survivor of Oil Spill ’08 (an oil truck tipped over in our town…yikes) – it’s still wicked sweet to think of how fantawesome (new word?) TCA was. Actually, fantawesome is a really cool word. Adding it to spell check. Done. Catch ya later.

-Pat

Travel Channel Academy, World Traveler Intern 2008