Meet The Intern: Trey Batchelor

Hey everyone, I’m Trey Batchelor. I’m the newest intern here at Jpixx. The way the year 2020 was going for me and the rest of the world, I didn’t think that I would end up on a high note like this one. It was quite a journey this year. Fortunately, my loved ones and I were able to stay safe and healthy. Though, I still had other forms of adversity to overcome. When the pandemic began to shut down our day-to-day lives, I was in Miami, Florida, celebrating my best friend’s bachelor party. Little did we know, that would be the last time some of us would see each other in person.

Once I got back, my classes resumed without much hesitation. I majored in Communications with a focus in Film and Television at Old Dominion University. I finished my production classes early so I only had history and sociology classes left. This made my last two semesters harder to get through. While knee-deep in schoolwork, I had to pick up a second job. Once the effects of the pandemic and social distancing came, I found myself unable to work as much as I could before. It took a few all-nighters and a lot of coffee, but I pulled through to finish school in the summer of 2020. After graduating, I realized that without school I had nothing to put effort into except for my jobs. I viewed my career in radio as something that would eventually fail to keep my interest. I wanted to take that knowledge and drive and put it into something that would make me happy. For me, that’s filmmaking.

For a few months, I worked on my own scripts and continued my passion for writing. I knew I wanted a job in the field of videography or video editing where I could work on my craft. When I was in school, my favorite projects were creating documentary videos for local businesses. So when I found out that I got the opportunity to become the newest intern at Jpixx, I nearly jumped out of my clothes. I could finally be doing what I love the most and be around people who love videography and filmmaking just as much as I do.

I spent my first day at Jpixx working with Jon and Tyler on a live stream with Sentara Healthcare. It felt so good to be back in production mode. My job involved running the teleprompter for April, the speaker. I found myself nervous to do it because I’ve worked with a teleprompter before and it did not go well. Let’s just say I wasted a good amount of people’s time and I did not want a repeat of that moment. But everything went smoothly!

Things at Jpixx slowed down around the holidays, so I took on as many edits as could. Jpixx filled December with internal productions, including end-of-year interviews, client thank yous, and a narrative video saying goodbye to the strange year of 2020. Jon had the idea to create a GIF library of everyone at Jpixx, which became my task and it was an absolute blast. I connected with Jessa and Andrew, and we went over hours of footage to find a few seconds of GIF gold for each staff member. It felt really nice that everyone at Jpixx trusted me with a project. It showed me how Jpixx really gives their interns the tools to create whatever their imagination can come up with. I hope to use this liberty of resources for my internship project in the coming weeks!

For 2020 to be such a hard year, I couldn’t have imagined that it would land me an internship with such a down-to-earth and accommodating group of people. Everyone has been so supportive with everything I have turned into them. It makes me excited to come to them with ideas every day. It has only been a month, but Jpixx has already inspired me to explore any idea that comes to me.