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.

In addition to building jobs through internships, there's also jobs on campus.

So Josh, Jordan and Cody, sounds like you may have had some jobs on campus.

Cody, can you tell me about, what are on campus jobs?

Yes, absolutely.

I am currently a production assistant at WGVU, which is a public broadcasting

service located in downtown Grand Rapids, and I'm on the sports crew.

And I actually have classmates who are also colleagues and we can build our

relationships outside the classroom.

We go-- before COVID, we would go and travel to film men's and women's

basketball, track and field, and baseball, lacrosse, soccer to name a

few, and we would go all over the Midwest visiting different college campuses.

And when we come back, we use the footage to create highlight reels

for the Grand Valley sports report.

And I'm very grateful to be working here because I'm actually a PBS kid myself.

I grew up watching Word Girl, Martha Speaks, and Arthur to name a few shows.

Love to hear that.

A lot of the work I do is with WGVU myself.

So good to see you starting your career where I did too.

Josh, uh, what are some on-campus jobs you've done?

Yeah, so I actually right now work at the promotions office

and the promotions office is part of the office of student life.

And they produce a lot of videos for departments here on campus for

the actual university, for like organizations on campus and they

tell a lot of students' stories.

As a camera operator, I was just hired last spring, actually, I'm on set, I'm

out on different shoots, getting b-roll, working with a lot of advanced equipment.

Now I'm getting to assist our lead cinematographer, which is actually Jordan.

You get a lot of experience in your classes, but to expand on

that and to like really grow and step out, it's very good to have

internships and have jobs like this.

And this is just such a great opportunity for me because I've seen

how much I've grown, especially like with the equipment, with my technical

knowledge, and it's such a professional environment, I feel like it's really

preparing me for the actual work world.

Right.

And I can, uh, say from experience, it will, and you talk about using different

equipment, different places, just having that, you know, variety of experience

will help you troubleshoot something out in the field when, when you're out there.

Jordan, so you're working with Josh over at the office of student life?

Yeah, I'm the lead cinematographer at the promotions office, doing everything

with the camera, and it is just so much fun to-- That's how I know that I'm

in the right field, right, is that I'm at work and I'm just having a blast.

I can't believe I'm getting paid to do what I love.

And so you just meet a ton of people and you get a ton of experience

and you have fun while doing it.

And so I can't recommend enough taking those outside opportunities, like

finding jobs on campus, especially if you're able to find a job in the

field you're interested in, which for this, it would be film obviously.

Definitely go for it

And just to bring back resumes for a second.

I mean, you get to put on there lead cinematographer, like that's...

Yeah.

That's everything.

I mean, cause it's showing my leadership skills.

It's showing my communication skills, my tech skills, because I must

be pretty good with technology if I'm like teaching other people it.

So yeah.

And it's not just production experience, but you're also teacher

assistants, is that accurate?

Yeah.

We, Josh and I both are teaching assistants for several classes here.

So we get to teach lower level students what we've learned.

I'm sure you could teach me some stuff too.

Cody, uh, so you talked a little bit about being on the sports crew.

How do you see that helping you with, with where you want

to go in your future career?

At some point in my career, I would love to be a camera operator for one

of the major sports that are available like NFL, ESPN, going into MMA.

I'd love to be able to do that, and being at WGVU and on the sports crew

will definitely help create a guided path to getting to where I want to go.

Yeah.

And, uh, you get to, again, build your resume right out the gate.

You know, you've got a demo reel.

Can you, maybe the three of you, each kind of touch on like what, what is

a demo reel and, what goes into one?

So a demo reel is basically, it can depend on the length.

Most people do it right around a minute, and it's basically just a video that shows

a bunch of different work that you've done and, you know, different like careers and

different paths have different things.

So a reel for an editor is going to be different from a cinematographer's

reel or a director's reel or a sound designer's reel, but basically it's just

kind of this concise, quick thing that you can send to an employer and you can

say, hey, this is what I'm capable of.

This is the kind of work that I can do.

And it's really like, you know, a resume, you can tell

someone how experienced you are.

With a reel, you can really show someone how experienced you are.

And that's very powerful.

Yeah.

So you're, you're not just building a resume, but you're like building real

footage that you can send, you know, to New York, LA, New Orleans, like all these

like hubs of filmmaking, and you know, they can say, Hey, that looks pretty good.

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.

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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.