My name is Emily Brennan and I am a senior Film & Video major and Illustration concentrator. During this past summer of 2017, I was a video editing intern at Cartoon Network in Atlanta, Georgia. Over the past few years of exploring video, I’ve narrowed my field of interest to the area of editing. I was interested in getting an internship during the summer before my senior year in order to get more experience, as I still considered myself fairly new to film & video (I had no experience with it prior to the spring semester of my freshman year).
During the spring semester of my junior year, I began to look at video editing/production internships, first around Baltimore and New York City, and then later expanding my search. A few weeks after my initial application to Cartoon Network, which is an opportunity I found online, I was lucky enough to get a callback for an online interview, and later a phone interview with my manager, Sara Griggs. A few days after the phone interview I was notified I got the position - from there it was just filling out paperwork, and then the trip down to Atlanta to start my internship.
As well as being my first internship, this was the first time I worked in an office, and the first time I would be in Atlanta. Everything about the experience was new to me. In addition to cutting daily preview clips for new episodes, I got to work on more expansive projects that would be shown to the public. While Sara was always available if I ever needed help, she was very hands-off when it came to the creative process and so I was able to see projects through from their initial plan to the final edit. Projects I was involved in include the app preview for the new mobile game “What’s Up Snoopy,” and themed recap videos for the animated TV show Steven Universe. Because of the workload, I developed a much more streamlined process and a better understanding for the technical side of editing. Additionally, I was able to work on some personal projects, such as an editing reel.
What was nice about working at Cartoon Network under the Turner umbrella, especially as a first-time intern, was that the video department was so small (essentially just Sara and me), which allowed me much more freedom and leeway to make mistakes, but I still had access to Studios, where many of Turner’s editors reside. I was able to meet many people working in the field I hope to one day be successful in and get some advice straight from the source. The environment was, unsurprisingly, incredibly corporate, and in the future, I think it would be beneficial for myself to try either interning or working at a smaller company for a while, to see if that would work better for my style. However, I still feel incredibly grateful for this experience, and I definitely feel that it’s helped me become aware of more defined steps I can take forward for my future career.
