Senior Ian Clark interned for Fox Sports West and Prime Ticket this past summer.

Andrew Frischman interened for HBO last summer.

Anyone who works in television production knows the epicenters of the industry reside in New York City and Los Angles.  In order to get a job in the industry,willingness to live a bicoastal lifestyle is a must.  This past summer, senior Ian Clark ’11 journeyed cross country to Los Angles to intern for Fox Sports West and Prime Ticket and spent the summer before interning at Fox 5 in New York City.  Clark swapped coasts with his classmate  Andrew Frischman ’11, who spent his summer in New York City interning for HBO studios,  previously working for The Tonight Show with Connan O’Brien in Los Angles.

Frischman, a mass communication major with minors in advertising and political science, and Clark, a mass communication major and journalism minor, plan to pursue a career in production after graduation.  The two knew the first step needed to achieve their future goal would be getting internships in the field that would make their resumes pop to future employers.  Both said big name companies that brought them out of their comfort zones would impress future employers.

After spending a summer working for Fox 5 in New York, central New Jersey resident Clark made connections and looked to these connections to get an even better internship in the near future.  He was persistent, keeping in study contact with the people who could help him.  He sent in many applications and interviewed in different companies within Fox.  Finally, he was offered a position at Fox Sports West and Prime Ticket. Clark attributes his success in getting his internship to follow through.

“Good internships, if you want them — you can get them.  It’s all about your follow through,” he said.  “If you cannot follow through, constantly stay in contact and keep your name swirling in their head, you’re not going to get it.  But if you want to go through all the pain and waiting of going through all the interviews, you’ll get it.”

It never crossed Clark’s mind to turn down the opportunity because of the location.  He made arrangements to live at University of Southern California for the summer as soon as he found out he got the internship.

Frischman worked for Connan in January when he started looking for summer internships.  He describes getting an opportunity with HBO as a combination of luck and persistence.  Luckily, Frischman’s grandmother was friends with the mother of an HBO executive.  Frischman talked to his grandmother’s friend which lead to talking to the HBO executive.  Then he received a call from the internship coordinator and went through the interview process.  He interview with five different people.  After each interview, he asked for feedback from the intern coordinator, the persistence aspect.

“A little bit of luck and a lot of persistence goes a long way in the entertainment industry,” said Frischman.

Frischman was based in the duplication department, which made sure footage got to air, in the right place at the right time and in the right format.  He said his internship consisted of some post production work, normal production and a lot of paperwork.

Clark’s preformed many duties for Fox Sports.  He was involved with live sports production and film production.  On a day to day basis, he did highlight clipping, transcribing interviews and other editing tasks.  Clark was also aloud to go on sports film shoots as a production assistant, which is something most interns do not get to do.

Frischman and Clark said they learned a lot from their internships by picking the brains of executives as well as through hands on work.

One common stereotypes of big name internship is interns sit and watch others work.  Smaller companies utilize interns more because these companies are under staffed or they do not have the talent, so they trust interns to complete difficult tasks more often.

Clark said he does not believe the stereotype because he learned a lot from his time at Fox Sports West and Prime ticket and felt like the “higher ups” trusted him.

“The best compliment I ever got was this summer.  The senior producer of Fox Sports West and Prime Ticket told me to linear edit a highlight reel and then left me alone.  He came back a little later because he forgot his glasses.  He asked me how it was going.  I said ‘It’s going good.  Do you want to see it?’ he said ‘No, I trust you that it’s good.'”