An oddly un-armed desk inside the Turner fortress.

It's also probably the worst headline you'll ever see in a blog. I hope so. But you've got to start somewhere.

This past week Fast Forward started at Turner Entertainment. We loaded up the van with all of our cameras, lights, and microphones, and headed...around the corner. Literally. Georgia Public Broadcasting and Turner Broadcasting are geographically adjacent--which sounds fancier than it is. They're right next door to each other in midtown Atlanta.

It turns out that in addition to being one of the coolest places to work in Atlanta, Turner also has boatloads of jobs that require STEM skills. So it seemed like a natural fit. And it was.

We started with a tour of Turner's main campus, which is the home of TBS, TNT, Cartoon Network, TCM, Turner Sports, and many other entertainment outlets, both on-air and on-line. So there was a lot to see and do.

Without a doubt, the floors and offices of Cartoon Network made it look more like an amusement park than a place of business. There were putt-putt holes to be played, along with foosball and video games. I guess working for such a fun network means employees have got to have fun too.



And on a related note, the "offices" of Adult Swim were just as amazing. Technically a different network from Cartoon Network, Adult Swim is what the channel becomes at night--disappearing at the first light of day as if it was never there. But it was. And millions of 18-24 year old viewers prove that point to advertisers very, very well. Yes, it is a place of business after all.



We conducted a 2 day visit of Turner's offices, which included time to interview some of their top employees about how they use technology in their jobs. One big highlight was talking with the guy who picks music for everything from CNN stories to original TNT movies. How's that for a "job?" Another thing that caught my attention was a conversation with an animator at Turner Studios. He told me he uses physics all the time in his job. I thought he was joking, until he took me through the ART of animating a motorcycle making a turn. If you don't understand centrifugal force, you won't make that motorcycle lean into the turn, and therefore it won't look realistic to the viewer.

Yeah. Big teachable moment for me. I'm thinking that lesson will make the final video.


But we got lots of great stuff. So we won't know until we dive into the editing process on this one.

Looking forward to that, and more!