Not every university student is aware of how to turn a hobby into a profession, and Valerie Boucher ’20 admits that she didn’t both — until she took her passion for film and introduced a few Bentley instructions: doing an internship to increase her strengths and mixing business with the arts and sciences. It wasn’t long till a celeb become born.
“I’ve continually wanted to pursue a profession in movie and amusement,” remembers Boucher, who is majoring in Information Design and Corporate Communication. “I determined that I desired an internship in Los Angeles running in a film to peer if that turned into sincerely the direction that I wanted to go with my diploma.”
The very concept was a ways-attaining: an internship within the competitive Hollywood leisure mecca — and for a commercial enterprise student no less. But Boucher found her big wreck whilst she scored a threat at an internship at a production organization based through the distinguished actors/filmmakers Bradley Cooper and Todd Phillips.
Once she landed the interview, she depended on the education she had found out in Bentley’s profession development creation seminars.
“The mock interview that we did sophomore 12 months showed me that anytime you’re interviewing with someone, that individual of course merits admire however they’re additionally just a regular individual who probably feels awkward asking you a gaggle of formal questions,” Boucher says. “If you bring yourself with self-belief and make them feel just like the agreement among you will be mutually useful, you’re a good deal better off.”
To pass a step in addition and keep off potential degree fright during the interview, Boucher met with Alyssa Hammond, Bentley’s director of undergraduate career education and outcomes. The training paid off while Boucher aced the interview.
During Boucher’s internship there, the agency launched the field-office hit A Star is Born. The enterprise had also released the well-known films American Sniper and War Dogs. And Boucher’s paintings enjoy became just as exceptional as the movies being produced.
“My internship became honestly hands-on,” she says. “Every day I went in, I become analyzing and writing insurance on scripts or sitting in on enterprise conferences in which we discussed a way to take an easy concept and turn it right into a -hour film or a successful tv collection. I in no way as soon as left work feeling as although I hadn’t contributed something significant.”
After analyzing, summarizing and analyzing a 120-page script, Boucher had to “reset” earlier than diving into the following.
“The 2d I finished one script and moved directly to any other, I had to permit pass of each feeling I had simply experienced studying the previous script,” she remembers. “That capability to forestall, reset and begin up a new script with clean and open thoughts is important. There’s no excuse to by accident skip on an extraordinary TV or movie mission due to the fact you have been caught within the negativity of the not-so-superb script which you study right earlier than it.”
Boucher says that Bentley’s rigorous coursework and her business history – though uncommon for a Hollywood intern – organized her well. “I chose Bentley due to the fact I desired to now not only create, but additionally be able to stroll right into a room full of suits with my projects and ideas and no longer be close down due to the fact I do not know anything approximately the ‘backside-line’ side of factors.”
It gave her the confidence to leap into the movie industry and interact with pinnacle experts and executives. Because a Los Angeles internship at a manufacturing agency comes with “pinch-me moments,” like bumping into Clint Eastwood on a lunch ruin, as took place to Boucher.
Boucher says the internship now not most effective reaffirmed her choice to paintings in the movie, however additionally expanded her desires.
“During my internship, I worked in production, however, I become fortunate that many humans I met labored in all regions of making a movie,” she says. “That inspired me and by the time I left, I wanted to be a screenwriter, manufacturer, and director. You call it and I want to do it!”