International Business Sophomore Spends Summer Interning at Film Independent

07/30/2014 12:53 PM

By Lindsay Anderson

International business major Brenna Mulholland ’17 spent her summer on the west coast, far from her hometown of Appleton, Wisconsin.  After learning about an internship opportunity through a family friend, Mulholland worked as a marketing and public relations intern for Film Independent. 

Film Independent is a non-profit that helps filmmakers make movies, builds an audience for projects and works to diversify the film industry. 

Film Independent also produces the Spirit Awards, the annual celebration honoring artist-driven films and recognizing the finest achievements of American independent filmmakers, the Los Angeles Film Festival, showcasing the best of American and international cinema, and the Film Independent at LACMA Film Series, a year-round program that offers unique cinematic experiences for the public.

During her internship, Mulholland was either working on prep work or post work for the Los Angeles Film Festival. She gained hands-on experience creating extremely detailed schedules, tracking talent information, working with photographers, writing daily descriptions of movies, events, and media alerts and creating summary sheets to provide answers to questions the press asked.

“My favorite project was creating a Flickr account for the Los Angeles Film Festival,” Mulholland said. “I used the account to organize photos taken at all the events and distribute them to the appropriate press outlets.”

One of the many highlights of Mulholland’s internship was getting to attend the festival after putting so much hard work into it.

“It was fun to see my work being implemented during the festival,” she said. “It was also great to see movies before they hit theatres and know that the movie was being shown for the first time to an audience.”

While on the Film Festival red carpet, Mulholland was able to meet How To Train Your Dragon 2 actress America Ferrera, as well as the cast and crew of Jersey Boys, including director Clint Eastwood.

The experience that Mulholland gained during her internship was just the beginning of the hands-on professional experience she knows she will gain at the Foster College of Business and Bradley University. 

“My advice to other students in regards to pursuing an internship is to just go for it,” Mulholland said. “It was a long shot for me to think that I’d get the internship as a freshmen. I’d also highly suggest that students check out the Smith Career Center while applying for their internship. I was able to apply for a grant to help set off costs of traveling from Bradley to LA, and also received many pointers and tips to get the most out of my internship.”

“I sometimes felt that I worked just as hard to get the internship as I did at the actual internship,” Mulholland added. “It was all worth it though!”