Welcome to a 13-part special series for Alumni Live: The Podcast.

These are conversations with Grand Valley State University film and

video students, faculty, and alumni about the film and video major.

There's, you know, so much more to filmmaking than just the storytelling.

Of course, you know, whether you're in Hollywood or whether you're in Grand

Rapids, Michigan, you're going to have clients and, you know, the whole industry

is an industry and it's a business.

Grand Valley has this whole section called filmmaking for clients, and Jazz,

you've been in some of those classes.

Can you tell us what are they saying about the, the business

prospects of, of filmmaking?

Yeah, sure.

I'm actually taking producing for clients as we speak, and over my

four years of school, I have found this class to be my favorite at GV.

Suzanne Zack is my professor.

She does an excellent job in preparing students for work outside of school.

We first send in our resumes as well as an application for which projects we

want to work on, and from there we're assigned a position and a client to

work with for the semester, and we cover proposals, budgets, schedules for shoot

dates, and we really make the transition from pre-production to on-set shooting.

Or if you are working on a motion graphics video, like how I am currently,

you go straight to the editing room.

Another thing that I really enjoy about this class is the workshops that

we have with various guest speakers.

Suzanne has invited producers, script writers, and editors to come

in and talk about their experiences in the industry, as well as work

alongside each group and provide any assistance they can along the way.

And you know, these are, these are pretty big brands that I'm seeing here,

you know, Feeding America was there.

Do you feel some pressure when you're, when you're working

with these organizations?

At first, that was one of my main concerns.

But it's actually not that scary.

The first thing you do is you meet with your client.

So as of right now, it's all Zoom meetings, but you really

connect with your client.

You ask them what they're looking for in a video.

What, what are their goals?

And just really sit down and listen to them them.

That's the main thing when working with clients, just sit down and listen to what

they have to say before offering any help.

Yeah, once you really connect with your client and understand what they're

looking for, it becomes less worrisome, especially when you're working alongside

a team of very creative people, which I have had the pleasure of working with.

So my experience has been great.

When you talk about like, you know, the value of learning something

like that's value that can actually be measured in dollars and cents.

Like, you know, you now have gotten over that initial hump of being

nervous of talking to a client.

Now you can go in there and be more confident, you know, potentially

even, you know, make a deal that's worth more money when you're

producing stuff out in the real world.

Because of this class, I can honestly say that I'm more confident than

ever to take my skills outside of the classroom and into the real

world and work with real people.

It's been great.

Thank you for joining us for this episode of the Alumni Live: The Podcast special

series about the film and video major.

Be sure to listen to the next episode in the series and subscribe to our

podcast to hear even more from our alumni as they talk about their work

in different parts of the industry.

Check out Alumni Live on Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube for more

conversations and networking.

Let us know what topics you want to hear our alumni talk about.

The Grand Valley State University Film and Video Alumni Network is here for you.

And we're glad that you're here.

Thank you for listening.