A Letter From Our Intern

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I’m Aaron Mefferd, an intern here at Sleight Advertising. I have spent this past summer working with the SA Production team here in Omaha, learning the tricks of the trade, and what a summer it has been. I have been fortunate enough to work with some of the most talented, most creative people I have ever met.

Admittedly, I had no idea what to expect when starting my internship. I’m a senior at Northwest Missouri State University, studying broadcast production. As such, unless you have an advertising minor, you don’t get much experience with the trade. I had always considered going into broadcast journalism, maybe documentary filmmaking; I even considered just general video production, but advertising? I thought: there’s no way I could do that, but I was wrong. My summer was filled with shoots, hot lights, and countless hours of editing, and I loved every minute of it.

I started my love for video in a strange way, with a love for animation. In high school I began to teach myself how to tell stories using stop-motion animation, then computer animation, but I was always limited in my storytelling by technology. That was when I decided to give video production a try. I bought one of those flip cameras with a pop-out USB connector and asked for a MacBook for my birthday. The rest was history.

Over the years, I shot more video, changed my cameras, bought more equipment, and eventually, I was making short films. After high school, I received my associate’s degree from Iowa Western Community College in media studies before transferring to Bearcat country. Throughout school, I have learned all sorts of techniques and skills, but never have I received the amount of real, hands-on experience as I have gotten from my summer with Sleight.

On my very first day, I was helping set up a Canon C300 and Kino Flo lights. I was running a Canon 5D Mark II on a slider, and I even helped with shooting jib shots. I was on a real set for the first time, and it was awesome! I can’t express how great my experience here has been and what it has meant to me. I know that I will have a great deal of knowledge and stories to share when I return to school. (Plus a few bragging rights about the equipment I used while I was here.) Thank you for this experience.