Columbians test out glamorous waters with entertainment industry internships

At Columbia, students may be thousands of miles away from the bright lights of Hollywood, but an internship in the entertainment business can bring them a lot closer.

In a broad field like entertainment, an internship can be a great way to narrow down options and get some much-needed experience. Daniela Cassorla, CC ’10, who interns at NBC’s Campus U, has found the experience helpful in defining her future. “I think that generally it would be a career path if you’re into film marketing, which I thought I was going to do for a while, but that’s not so much my interest anymore,” Cassorla said. “I still want to work in entertainment, but marketing is just not the field I want to go into.”

Lily Cedarbaum, BC ’12, a TV writer for Spectator, and a research intern at “Late Night With Jimmy Fallon,” also sees the benefit in interning. “Before I got the internship at NBCU, I didn’t ever think of working in television, because it never really occurred to me that that was a possibility,” she said.

If there’s one thing that TV and movies have taught us, it’s that connections are everything in the entertainment business. However, these connections are often hard to come by.

Fortunately, the Columbia Center for Career Education can help. Entertainment internships posted on LionSHARE run from big-name companies like Disney and Sony to small, independent companies.

“We do the technology behind entertainment, the business side of entertainment, the marketing side of entertainment, the PR of entertainment, the production side of entertainment. All those areas—the functional areas—are covered,” CCE director Niamh O’Brien said.

CCE encourages students to talk to a counselor about resources for finding internships. “We’re here, we’re mining everything to try and find resources for students, so we love when students come in and connect,” O’Brien said. “Often, we will even have information that students who’ve been here a year or two haven’t identified yet.”

CCE also provides opportunities through programs such as the Columbia Arts Experience, and next month it will hold a “Media Networking Night” where students can talk to representatives from several areas of the entertainment industry.

The resources CCE provides can turn a hobby into a career. “Watching television and film was a serious hobby of mine, but I never realized it could be more than that,” Cedarbaum said. “I am having such a great time learning about the industry. I definitely see a job in entertainment in my future.”