Hi! My name is Amy Merena, and I am a senior Strategic & Corporate Communication and Psychology major here at Chapman University. This summer and fall, I was a Marketing and Community Partnerships Intern at the Newport Beach Film Festival. I heard about this internship through a few of my friends who had interned there previously. They raved about all the amazing people they met and the excitement of the festival. In May of my Junior year, I saw a post on Handshake for the internship position and immediately applied. In addition, along with sending in my electronic application, I contacted the CEO because I knew this was something I wanted. To my surprise, he got back to me the next day, and we were able to talk on the phone that weekend. After chatting about my goals, interests, and the position itself, I got the internship!

My supervisors, another intern, and I at opening night.

I interned at the Newport Beach Film Festival from late June to early November, going into the office for 5 hours twice a week. I was the first intern in the office for two weeks, allowing me to really get to know the employees and my supervisors. In the beginning, I worked closely with the Director of Community Partnerships. I researched and created profiles for non-profit organizations and the accepted films. The goal was to pair each accepted film with a related outside organization to help advertise that specific film and the festival as a whole. During this process, I was responsible for contacting non-profit organizations and organizing meetings. The closer we got to the festival, the more tasks were delegated to me. I was in charge of creating digital flyers that would be hung up around college campuses and local businesses. I also assisted the programmers by completing marketing/copyright sheets. These included all the necessary information about the film and how it would be advertised/posted about on social media. By the time the film festival rolled around, I was ready to see all of the interns’ hard work pay off. During the festival, I was a liaison for the community partners who were invited to speak before each film and assisted with many of the big events/screenings. It was such a joy to see everyone’s work come to life, and even though I was still on the job, I had the best time.

Courses such as COM 310: Business and Professional Communication and COM 151: Mass Communication helped me a lot during my internship process. COM 310 taught me how to communicate professionally with co-workers, send emails, and pitch ideas. I used these skills not only in my assigned tasks but also in obtaining the internship itself. COM 151 was the first of many SCC/COM courses that taught me how to define a target audience. Most of my responsibilities at NBFF included researching films’ target demographics and psychographics in order to properly advertise them. These are only a few of the many courses at Chapman that have aided me in this experience.

Q&A with the cast and crew of “Queen of the Ring”.

This was my first industry internship, so I was very intimidated at first, but I was able to learn so much during my time at the Newport Beach Film Festival. I gained a lot of knowledge about the film industry as well as marketing itself. Marketing involves many strategic steps, a team of people, collaboration, and hard work to ensure that a company puts its best foot forward. Working at a live event, such as a film festival, also taught me that things will inevitably go wrong, but how you react and problem-solve will create the outcome. There were many instances during a screening or event where things didn’t go as planned, such as the fire alarm going off during a film (which did happen). The team and I were able to react quickly and think of a solution, ultimately creating a desirable outcome. We were able to resume the film and had the director and cast of the film cracking jokes about it later on. I hope to bring these skills to my future experiences and career. If you have any interest in applying to intern at the Newport Beach Film Festival, do it! They are constantly looking for more interns. You will meet the best people, and it will be an amazing opportunity overall.