Discovery: An Adventure in Media

by Meredith Peruzzi, Class of 2011

For most people, watching the Discovery Channel means watching "Shark Week," Animal Planet, TLC, or Planet Green. But, when senior ThaÍs de Moraes watches these channels, she's looking for specific production techniques or even her own work. That's because she interned at Discovery Communications last spring.

Thais, a Digital Media major from São Paulo, Brazil, worked with Discovery's Digital Media department. In particular, she had the opportunity to work with animation, editing visual media, and production, all in support of the various television shows and websites Discovery produces. Although other employees provided the audio used in Thais's clips, she was otherwise fully responsible for the production of several projects. Her internship gave her a broad variety of experience related to her major.

It was that complete involvement, nurturing a video from concept to completion, which Thais found most beneficial.

Working alongside professional editors and animators, Thais used software such as Final Cut Pro and After Effects to create logos, animated clips, and graphics for television episodes. Thais also gained experience in capturing footage on film, working with the digital broadcasting system, and writing text to accompany the clips she produced for the many websites run by Discovery Communications.

"In order to create each segment I had to perform footage research about assigned regions and edit them in Final Cut Pro," says Thais of one of her projects. "After seeing one of the segments I created, the vice president of Production came to my cubicle to say he thought it was beautiful."

Thais first heard about this opportunity through the Career Center at Gallaudet University when Discovery invited Gallaudet students to its headquarters in Silver Spring, MD for an internship workshop. Discovery hires interns at eight locations throughout the U.S. for positions available in various fields, but each location only hires a limited number of students for any given twelveweek period. Thais was one of two international interns chosen out of the 65 accepted nationwide, and Discovery headquarters' first and only deaf intern.

"Overall I've learned a lot through this internship and would like to continue my work with Discovery Communications and perhaps do some volunteering with them in the fall," says Thais.