Our Morning at Turner Studios

By Kelly Eisenhower

hour of 10 a.m.Anticipation was high as we headed to Turner Studios at the oh-so-early Wednesday. After passing by the building several times (both walking and driving) we all wondered what was behind the walls. From my experience and what I heard from everyone else, we all had a great time.

First thing, we had a quick five- minute marketing lesson that was extremely informative and interesting, which is a lot to say coming from a public relations major. After this, we quickly made our way to the studios where we toured in two separate groups. The group I was in went to the control room first. This room was surprisingly dark, filled with about twenty different television screens and what seemed like thousands of buttons. The two gentlemen spoke about our generation being one stuck between Hi- Def and SD TV. So until February 2009, some of our shows may not sync up between sound and picture. Either way, we thought it was very cool, although somewhat technologically advanced for us.

The next place we went were the sets of MLB on TBS and Dinner and a Makeover from TCM. It was all very apparent to us when we walked in, and of course we were all saying “ooh, ahh” and recognizing and remembering episodes of shows we had seen. The coolest part of this trip so far (in my opinion) was the set of the NBA show on TNT. It cost a total of about $5.2 million to build and was amazing. I got to sit in Charles Barkley’s chair! So of course I was extremely excited about this.

Next we broke up into three groups and saw various other parts of the studio. My particular group went to the Final Cut suites and editing rooms. One of the rooms showed us a project they had been working on since the previous day. It was an advertisement for the NBA playoffs on TNT and it was Madonna and Justin Timberlake video and clips of NBA games. It was a really well put together commercial, and I had NO idea that it took so much work to do something like that. The music library has 13,000 CDs in it, none of which are mainstream music, which I thought was really interesting. My group saw sound editing last and again, we were amazed at how much work it really takes for something that lasts about 30 seconds during a commercial break.
I know this is probably a longer blog than most, but I felt like there was so much to tell about Turner Studios. We all left saying how great it would be to work there because almost everyone had smiles on their faces. They also wore casual clothes, which was very attractive to all of us. Alison Carnes, an alumna of the J-school, was a fabulous hostess and we all got the opportunity to speak to her again later that night. This was definitely a great experience that I hope other classes will be able to have in the future.