Lights. Camera. Internship!

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 was born.

“I’ve continually wanted to pursue a profession in movie and amusement,” remembers Boucher, majoring in Information Design and Corporate Communication. “I desired an internship in Los Angeles running in a film to peer if that turned into the direction I wanted to go with my diploma.”

Lights. Camera. Internship! 1

The concept was a ways-attaining: an internship within the competitive Hollywood leisure mecca — and for a commercial enterprise student. But Boucher found her big wreck when 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 in Bentley’s professional 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 better off.”

During the interview, Boucher met with Alyssa Hammond, Bentley’s director of undergraduate career education and outcomes, to pass a step in addition and keep off potential degree fright. The training paid off. Bouch; er aced the interview.

During Boucher’s internship there, the agency launched the field-office hit A Star is Born. The enterprise has also released the well-known films American Sniper and War Dogs. And Boucher’s paintings became just as exceptional as the movies produced.

“My internship became honestly hands-on,” she says. “Every day I went in, I became 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 left work feeling as though I hadn’t contributed something significant.”

After analyzing, summarizing, and analyzing a 120-page script, Boucher had to “reset” before 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 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 because you have been caught within the negativity of the not-so-superb script which you study right earlier than it.”

Boucher says Bentley’s rigorous coursework and 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 paint 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!”