Behind the Clipboard

Sheila Faris-Penn Shares More of her Warner Brothers Experiences

July 2, 2007

Sheila Faris-Penn, director of web communications for University Advancement, is spending seven weeks as an application developer intern at Warner Bros. Worldwide Television Marketing’s New Media Division, thanks to a Staff Development Award she received this spring.

Inside Online asked Faris-Penn to provide a weekly blog about the experience. This is her second submission.

Week 2

The DAMM Project is Coming Along

The Digital Anthology of Marketing Materials (DAMM) Project was sketched out last week, so we know what we’re all working on. I’m working with two designers and a system architect (my instructor). Everyone else on the DAMM Project has other work, so I get to do a lot of this, which is pretty cool. We met with the department heads to get their ideas on what the project should do, had several brainstorming sessions, went off and worked on fleshing out ideas, and brainstormed some more. Then we worked on the “Spec.”

The part of the Specification that I worked on was putting together the definitions of the Content Management System (CMS – the “back end” or the part that updates and populates the fields of the database), as well as the definitions for the fields in the database itself. I had to specify the requirements for the CMS presentation layer (what it looks like), the business logic layer (what it does) and the data access layer (how it works).… I’m learning exactly what that means – right now I’m just typing it, lol.

The next week I worked on the plan for the creating the database. We created the tables (entities) and columns (attributes, or fields) and relationships. We had the diagram and had everything “normalized.” And I started learning how to use SQL Server. Very cool.

It seemed like it was going so slow. I knew there were a lot of web pages that would have to be done, and this seemed like we were taking so long to get to it. Then we met with the department heads with our plan. They changed some major parts of what we thought they had asked for. If we had run off and started in on the pages without planning exactly what we should be doing, we would have had to do a lot of it over again. Taking the time to plan it out really shouldn’t feel like a luxury; I hope I’m always able to plan projects this well in the future (measure twice cut once…).

By week’s end we had the database all worked out, and we “took it physical” (created it on the server.) It was empty, but it was there. And we got one page of the DAMM CMS working. It was a great start!

On the Warner Bros. Lot

My daily passes (along with my picture ID) let me onto “the Lot.” This is really cool, because they film a lot of stuff here. I recognized the set for the ‘ER’ ambulance bay on my first day. Of course, my timing could have been better; TV shows are on hiatus and the lot looks a lot like a ghost town. When I mentioned it to one of my co-workers, she agreed that there was a lot less activity than normal. “Usually they’re filming SOMETHING during the summer, but it’s pretty much dead.” Sigh.

Still, there are some really great things here. ‘Central Perk’ is a nice gift shop – with a Starbucks in it. I got some cool Warner Bros. T-shirts and videos there (much cheaper than I could find it elsewhere). If I had a permanent ID, I could get an additional discount; I may try to talk my instructor into coming with me next time to get HIS discount.

Other than the sets, production offices, sound stages, etc., there are some great things behind Gate 4. There is a commissary (good food), along with some “convenience” stuff – a magazine stand (the one you occasionally see on "Friends"), an ATM, a theater, vending machines, etc. The vending machines even have Advil (good thinking). There also are some touristy things that I hope to see before I leave, like a museum that has been recommended by several employees, a section of the Berlin Wall and a memorial to all the employees who went into the service for World War II. I’ll check them out and let you know.

Different from Other Work Environments

You might imagine that a lot of stuff would be the same, even in an office of highly creative people that markets TV. And you’d be right. Office supplies, copiers, cubicles, printers, etc. But there are some pretty cool differences, too (and that’s the fun stuff).

I don’t think I’ve seen any conference rooms at CSUF with a huge, flat-screen, high-definition TV mounted on the wall, for example. And there are several DVD players, etc., underneath. Also in the conference room, littered on several shelves as if this happens every day, are tons of industry awards. (Really, there are a lot.) There’s also a statue of Tweety Bird. Well, I guess you might see that at CSUF.

There’s a room with this large bank of equipment, with two regular sized and eight small (4 inches) TV monitors, all tuned to different channels, and a TiVo for each network channel. They record everything. Once a week they burn the TiVo recordings to a DVD and archive it. And the lobby has an updated wall schedule of what programs are on any network at any time.

The entire floor has a really high ceiling, and the walls sport huge artistic images of the actors from shows like “Friends,” “ER,” “Smallville,” "West Wing" and “The Sopranos.” And there are lots of paintings or illustrations of Buggs Bunny and his pals. People are creative at decorating their offices, too, clear up to that high ceiling. (I imagine the enormous movie posters that are available to them help them decorate, too.) It’s a really colorful place.

But the thing that’s most different is the sound. One morning I heard some great music playing kind of loud, and just thought someone was sharing. But it stopped, was rewound, then started again at the same place. Then it did it again. A day later I heard realistic sounds of glass breaking. I was about to go investigate when I heard the exact same glass breaking. Over and over. I imagine it was part of a video or soundtrack they were working on. The sound isn’t all the time; frequently it’s quiet. But it’s enough so that I will probably tune it out the next time I hear someone drop a glass.

Where Couches Retire

Have you ever thought about what happens to the furniture that’s on the set of your favorite TV shows? Yeah, me neither. But apparently there’s a lot of it. It’s frequently quite expensive, because some set designer had to have a specific couch for a specific vision – and that vision may include a $1,400 couch.

The couch stays on the set for the duration of the show, which could be days or years, and still gets very little use as people only sit on it a couple of hours a week. And then it needs a home.

The floor that houses New Media is one of those homes.

This place has some of the coolest couches I’ve ever seen. We had our first meeting on a beautiful couch, which some great matching chairs. (It was comfy, too.) There is a lobby area with some crazy couches: a zebra-striped one with a back that’s taller than I am (with orange throw cushions) and a couple that look like the end of those cars with the fan tails. There also are some truly artistic coffee tables, too.

There’s a placque on one of the walls that says all the furniture in the building is “recycled” from various other uses. That’s good to know.

Wouldn’t it be great if I just happened to be there when they needed to find another home for a cool couch? My timing is off (I think I mentioned that all the shows are currently on hiatus) but I can keep my fingers crossed.

Week 3 Previews

Who Ya Gonna Call?
Signs of Green-ness
Smoking Break
Lot Sale