Hello! My name is Nicole Marsh, and I am in my senior year at Chapman, majoring in Communication Studies and minoring in Creative and Cultural Industries. While studying at Chapman and preparing for my future, I have sought ways to fuse my skills with my passion for entertainment and the arts. Luckily, this internship at the Newport Beach Film Festival was the perfect opportunity for me to do just that. For the spring 2025 semester, I have been interning with the festival’s programming departments, assisting with tasks such as watching and reviewing film submissions and helping create and disseminate promotional material. This June also marks the first-ever Newport Beach TV Festival, and being able to assist with this seminal festival was incredibly exciting.

A fun corner of the office — each intern’s film was proudly displayed!

Working with the programming and marketing departments, my primary responsibilities at the festival included watching and reviewing film submissions (including feature narratives, short films, documentaries, and music videos) and assisting with promotional material for the festival, like flyers or reaching out to groups that may be interested directly. While completing this work, particularly with the marketing department, I was reminded of courses I took at Chapman, like Theories of Persuasion. Promoting the panels for TV shows that will be featured at TV Fest required that I think critically about the target audience for each show and how I can reach those audiences. Details like the overall look of promotional flyers and how we reach out to these groups needed to be considered and could differ from show to show.

Sitting in the Newport Beach Film Festival office — a space full of creativity and collaboration.

I first encountered this position via Handshake while actively searching for internships that would fulfill this requirement for credits within the School of Communication. Throughout the internship, I was struck by how warm and friendly everyone in this company is. I had always maintained this subconscious idea that anything “corporate” must be inherently cold, that to be “professional, you must not act like yourself. I was pleasantly surprised when everyone I met working at the festival proved this notion wrong. The people there are professional and organized; they know what they are doing and how to get everything done right. They are also all extremely kind, funny, positive people who made all of us interns feel like our ideas and input mattered. The environment within the office was anything but cold, and this made me realize that it is possible to be professional and good at your job while simultaneously expressing yourself authentically. This realization has excited me about future career prospects, and I hope to always maintain this kind of balance in my place of work.