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Overall Thoughts on Internship

In reflection, my thoughts on this internship are mostly positive. The ability to have creative freedom and expression when coming up with ideas is very valuable to me. In most fields within the media industry, there is usually a strict guideline that needs to be followed when given my superiors, but in this internship, that was not the case. In my internship, I was able to share ideas and feedback not only with other interns, but with a director/producer directly. I could immediately see the impact of my work and thoughts had on the overall tasks being completed in the workplace, this is very difficult to find in other work environments. Though, with all the independence given, the inherent negative of this role is that there is not enough official training within the internship; most of the role uses a “learn-as-you-go” method. This method is fine for an individual with prior experience, such as myself, but if I had no previous experience, I would have no idea what to do within this internship.

Even with such an advantageous scenario within this internship, there was still another negative. The other negative of this internship is the limited networking that could be done. Since Tideturner Films is an independent film company, the resources and contact that the company has with other filmmakers is sparse, and for someone looking to connect with more contacts within the industry (such as myself), this is a downside of the internship environment that is difficult to overlook.

Even with those negatives in mind, I gained more experience within this internship than I thought I would. I came into the internship believing that I would just be making social media picture posts, but I ended up making video posts, developing a social media schedule, and even creating a logo, while understanding how this content can impact follower engagement — all things I will definitely use in my career moving forward.

My personal strengths throughout the internship were definitely my involvement in creating social media posts. The experimentation of using different fonts, framing compositions and editing video clips allowed for a wide array of my creativity skills to be used. The only weakness I found in myself was during the internship was during the the phase of research involving hashtags for social media. I believe part of that may have been due to the lack of availability for proper resources and tools to correctly and accurately analyze hashtag optimization on social media, and this is especially difficult without prior experience.

In the future, based on my experience during this internship, I see myself in a creative work environment in the media industry, possibly as a media assistant that would allow me to use my strengths in editing and creating photos and videos. This skills can then be applied throughout many aspects of media, such as film, television, marketing, and social media.