Throughout my winternship I was able to explore many activities and experiences. I sat in on meetings with producers and learned about the business side of filmmaking, which is something I never thought much about before. My friends and I previously would film short sketches in our own homes, and we never considered anything like budgets, grants, licensing, etc. I also had a lot of fun TA-ing two middle school video production classes throughout the week. I loved working with the young students and seeing how eager they were to bring their stories to life. I definitely learned a lot from everyone at the company, and there was almost always something to do/learn. I spent some time making phone calls, sending emails, and preparing spreadsheets, but I still learned valuable communication and organization skills. The week was overall a very educational and worthwhile one!

Filmmakers Collaborative is a rather small company, so I was fortunately able to spend most of my time with the executive director herself. She kindly explained how certain processes and regulations work, and she always kept me busy with things to do. When I observed her meetings with the two different producers that visited, I realized that the producing process is a lot more complicated than I thought, and films are expensive! 

I enjoyed learning more about what specific responsibilities film producers have, and all the applications and processes they must go through. For example, applying for the NEH grant was a big deal for one of the producers, and I read the 25 page instructions document just on how to apply. The producer said she'd been working on her application for months. The process is so long and complicated and getting the grant isn't even guaranteed, but it was fascinating to see her determination throughout it all. Another favorite part of my winternship was getting to assist a teacher in a kids video production class. It was similar to what I did as my summer job, and it was great to work with such passionate and motivated young filmmakers.

This was a great first internship experience for me because I had an ideal amount of background knowledge -- not too much and not too little. I knew enough about the basic technical filmmaking process to explain it to middle school students (different ways to set up a shot, how to cut and move clips in Adobe Premiere Pro), yet I still was able to learn so much about the business/producing side of film the other half of the time.