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By 1994 a proposal had been approved, the Oakwood Toluca Hills apartment complex in Burbank had been rented, and a full-time director had been hired: Stephen Tropiano '84, who had bachelor's degrees from IC in both television-radio and cinema and photography, a master of film studies degree from New York University, and a Ph.D. in film and television studies from the University of Southern California. Forty students arrived to start the spring semester. Then, on the night before classes were to start, the earthquake of 1994 hit.
"[It] was definitely a challenge for me --- trying to keep all the students calm at 5:00 a.m., plus staying in touch with the home campus and assuring them that everything was all right," Tropiano recalls. Having started with a bang, the program settled into cruising gear. Students divided their time between classes --- taught by Tropiano and a team of adjunct faculty --- and one or two three-credit internships per semester. Even in those early days the placements were impressive: there were more than 300 opportunities to choose from, including gigs at The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, the Carsey-Werner television production studio, and Miramax. Today, there's a database of 2,000 placement opportunities that students can access before they even leave Ithaca. Some of the internships involve fairly glamorous work. Laurie Hoppes '97, a TV-R major, appeared in a skit on The Tonight Show when she interned there in the spring of 1996. Some seem less exciting on paper but prove to be a perfect match. Amy Neiman '97, a cinema and photography major with a concentration in still photography, interned at Visages Reps, an agency that books photographers and other support personnel for celebrity photo shoots. There she helped photographers prepare portfolios and get assignments. "This was exactly what I was looking for," says Neiman. "It fit my major and minor completely." Brian Krick '00, a cinema and photography major with an interest in advertising, worked in the online division at McCann Erickson LA, where he did a great deal of independent work for clients like Sony, Columbia, and Tri-Star. "At the time their online division was only two people. We had to split most projects into threes and work independently," he says. "I learned a lot there." Pam Warner '02, a sports information and communication major, did everything from planning concerts to writing press releases during her internships at the Staples Center and the Los Angeles Galaxy soccer team. She credits the experience with helping her to find a job right out of college in the sports information department at the University of Florida. Other internship tasks were pretty mundane. After Hoppes proved unusually adept at transcribing Jay Leno's monologues, she got that job for the rest of the semester. "That was a cool responsibility at first," she says, but "[I] was still there working away when everybody else had gone home." Most supervisors made an effort to ensure that their interns were getting useful experience. At the print advertising department at NBC, TV-R major Rachael Kaplan '97 "had many administrative duties," but she also attended brainstorming sessions and photo shoots, read scripts, and kept the ad books current. Judy Marks '81, founding president of an agency that represents cinematographers, says an internship at her shop "is not an office job. The goal is to have as much set and camera prep time as possible." Sometimes this means reporting to a set at 5:00 a.m. "This is when the students' mettle comes through," Marks observes wryly. She also has interns look at the finished reels and discuss trends in lighting and shooting techniques. Marks says she's rarely had an intern who didn't pass muster: "These kids are dedicated."
Gregg Moscot '94 is an associate producer on the CBS show Still Standing; he'd formerly worked on Dharma and Greg. He has been extremely pleased with the interns IC has sent to his shops in the last several years, including Veronica Motl '00 and Liz Schmidt '01. "Veronica interned with us three years ago, and she was great," he says. "When she graduated from Ithaca, she moved to Los Angeles and we hired her as office production assistant. Now, two years later, she is assistant production coordinator. Liz interned with us two years ago. We hired her as postproduction assistant last year, and this year she is with us as postproduction coordinator. They both worked very hard as interns and proved themselves, and we hired them on for the series. It worked out really nicely that we could have them join us on Still Standing after Dharma and Greg was cancelled this year." |
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