The Plot Thickens

The Intern

This summer I didn’t do much of anything. At least, that’s how it feels. I went home for the week of my mother’s birthday at the beginning of July, and at the end of the summer I went on a three day camping trip with three of my best friends. But mostly, I worked at Chipotle and an internship.

I interned for a film marketing company which I won’t name, but I got to promote several Warner Bros films released over the summer and it was actually kind of awesome. Only “kinda” because I actually hated my internship. The one good thing that came from it was I found out that what I definitely don’t want to do in my career is market films.

My job entailed creating events aimed towards college-age people in Denver, Boulder, and Salt Lake City. Each event had to be themed towards the film and would include handing out promotional items such as posters, t-shirts, and stickers. These events had to be photographed for the studio to see, a report about the event including an estimation of how many people attended had to be written, and I had to attend all the events myself (excluding those in Salt Lake).

Does that job description sound difficult? I guess that’s up to the individual, but it was a lot harder than I expected it to be. Part of the issue was creating events for college students during the summer when there’s next to no school happening. Events and ideas don’t exactly fall off the trees, plus you can dream up the biggest event you want but making it happen is another matter entirely.

There were multiple times throughout the summer that I wanted to quit my internship, but never did. I had terrible communication with my supervisors, felt like I wasn’t allowed to be creative, and the job entailed a lot of cold-calling various places, which is not fun.

On the bright side, I did get to promote some cool films like It Chapter Two, I attended several free screenings of films I might not have seen otherwise, and I discovered some cool places here and in Boulder I wouldn’t have found on my own. I finished the internship because at least it was paid and they can’t say I quit. At least I walked away with the affirmation that I want to make films, not market them.