Five Point Park students had the experience of a lifetime while interning at the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah.
The students spent a week (Jan. 21-28) at the independent festival creating films and working behind the scenes on sets of film studios. The Creative Mind Group, a Hollywood-based company that searches for upcoming talented film & TV professionals, provided the opportunity to the students.
For freshman cinema production majors Daymon Long and Dave Randolph the festival allowed them to network with future potential employers.
“I know that in film, connections are your best friends,” Long said in a telephone interview on Jan. 29. “Part of my motivation to go was to make some good connections whether it be professionally or with the other people who I interned with.”
“The program is such a big opportunity because in the film industry it’s all network and who you know,” Randolph said.
Randolph now knows screenwriter Jonathan Nolan, co-writer of The Dark Knight and The Dark Knight Rises and brother to Christopher Nolan. He spoke with the producer and writer for about 15 minutes about his movies, style of writing, and current projects he’s working on.
“He was so down-to-earth and he was so open to have a conversation with me,” Randolph said. “In my head I’m thinking ‘Oh My God. I am meeting the writer of Batman!’ At the end he said if I have any question just email his agent and he will answer them for me.”
Randolph was not the only one to meet someone they look up to. Many celebrities were in attendance at the festival including Kid Cudi, Gina Rodriguez, Ryan Reynolds, Jason Segel and Spike Lee.
“You kind of realize that they are normal people, I think seeing them in a flash kind of humanizes them rather than seeing them on screen or in interviews,” Long said. “Even just having a few brief words with them definitely brings them down-to-earth.”
The internship came with a price for the students. The Creative Mind Group provided scholarships to help reduce the cost. A few were able to fund the experience through GoFundMe accounts, a crowd funding website that allows people to raise money for various events, and family donations. Long did a lot of fundraising in order to intern at Sundance including a bake sale in his hometown over winter break.
“I personally raised a lot of money to go because I didn’t have the money when I first got in,” Long said. “So I made a GoFundMe Fundraiser online, I also did a bake sale back home over break, made $300 that way.”
While at the Sundance Film Festival, Justin Illig who’s also freshmen cinema production major, had to create a short film with a group of other interns from around the world.
“After you make the film they send it to a panel of Alumni of the program,” Illig said. “The Alumni vote on which one they think is the better one in terms of editing, screenplay, cinematography and directing. I got voted for Best Editor and the prize for that was a $1,000 scholarship to any of the other film festivals that they do which is Sundance Berlin, Cannes, Toronto and Hollywood.”
Twin brothers, Aaron and Neiman Outlen both senior acting majors had the opportunity to promote their own independent scripted series, Schema, that they’re currently working on to a live streaming audience of millions of people. Neiman was introduced to Slava Rubin, CEO and founder to crowd funding website Indiegogo which started at Sundance in 2008 and focuses on fundraising for film.
“During his interview session he was talking about Indiegogo,” Neiman said. “He called me up and said ‘We actually have someone in the audience right now who has an Indiegogo campaign running right now.’ Aaron was there too, we both went up there and basically kind of pitched Schema for about a minute, minute and a half.”
According to its website Indiegogo has funded more than 41,000 films and distributed funds to filmmakers from 166 countries.
All of the interns expressed that if the could they would like to attend Sundance again, whether it’s as a returning intern or on the other end having one of their films premiere there or even another film festival.
“I’d love to go back to Sundance again,” Illig said. “It was an amazing opportunity, as such a young filmmaker it definitely inspired me to continue with my career in film.”
