Significant Intern Moment #3: Scriptwriting Sink or Swim

In all the time I was in school, learning how to create ads, I wrote one TV spot. More print ads than I can count, a whole lot of non-traditional placements, some online pieces, a few radio spots and one TV spot. And I believe my teacher’s comment was something like, “How is this interesting?”

So when I got my first TV assignment about a month into my internship and found out that the first creative internal would be in two days, I felt a tiny bit out of my element.

And when the team called me two hours before the internal was scheduled to start and told me that they were just going to go ahead and start NOW instead, I felt a whole lot out of my element. So without any time to ask anybody how one was supposed to present a TV script in a professional agency, I walked into the room. And with this being one of the agency’s biggest clients, that room was pretty bloody full. A few planners, a few managers, the principal on the account and the two creative directors on the account. And me, the clueless intern clutching three raw TV scripts in hand, waiting for my cue to present, and acting as if my brain wasn’t screaming: OMG, I DON’T KNOW WHAT THE HELL I’M DOING. HOLY CRAP, HOLY CRAP, HOLY CRAP!

And that, y’all, was how my 2nd, 3rd and 4th TV scripts met the world.



Also, I’m not going to lie. I LOVED it. This kind of delicious adrenaline being a performance major’s crack and all (not the right reason to choose a degree in music, by the way.)