Mission Control

My Name is Jackson Grove and I am going to be a junior video/film major. During my Summer in 2012, I spent my time as an intern at Mission Control, a high end post production company in Portland, Oregon. I found out about Mission Control through my father, who is a director of post production at a different agency in Portland and has used Mission Control's services before. Through him I had in interview in March with George Mitchell, editor and Co-owner/founder of the company. He found that what I had to offer was more then qualified to have an internship at Mission Control. And from that point I only needed to get the internship set up through school.

At Mission Control, I started out with the simple tasks of creating slates for spots, so they can be organized and mastered to tape. Tape form is still a process used in public/national broadcast. My supervisor, George Mitchell showed me the different steps to importing and exporting from tape, and  required equipment connections that are necessary to make the process work. He would give me old projects he has already done, but set it up from scratch so that I could practice my editing. As I got more experience, new challenges arose to assist in editing on current projects they were working on. I did some cutting on companies such as Gamefly and Fred Meyer.  I also did audio syncing for web pieces for Daimler trucks. There were times also that I would observe George working with clients to see the interaction they had and see what techniques and skills George would use to problem solve.

The work I was most proud of was editing together an old project George did for the Northwest Film festival in which I created my own story from the material from a basic set of direction. I had to challenge myself to figure out how I wanted the piece to flow. I was able to get an end product that I was satisfied with and knowledge and realization coming from the after thought. Something important that I learned from Mission Control, is that you should always double check your work. Dilemmas and crises mostly happen during the time in between production and post, or post to final. It could save someone a lot of money to just double check for any mistakes.  I also learned how important connections and contacts are in this business, because there could be that one person that could make your world heaven or make it hell. Also you need to love what you do. I sat in with a color corrector for a day and he is in his late 60’s. He told me that he has loved what he does every day since he’s started and that was a long time ago. 

Mission control has helped clarify my career path in showing that I do love the video and film business. I love the excitement and thrill that comes with it. The good the bad and the ugly you could call it. Postproduction is an area of the field that I am heavily interested, especially editing and color correction, but I like to keep my mind open to other aspects of the field.