Aleisha Edenfield

ENC4942-01
24 April 2015
Self-Evaluation
When the spring semester first began, I had no hopes of finding an internship before
the end of drop/add period. I spent the entire winter break searching for one that would not
only fulfill the requirement I needed to graduate, but also gain me the experience I would
need for the future. Before I knew it, though, winter break came to an end, classes started,
and I was at a lost as to what to do. I had just given up hope of graduating this spring,
making it a new goal to graduate during the summer, when I heard a ding that indicated that
my FSU email had just received a message. Curious, I took a peek, and right before my
very eyes I read the title of the email, Final Call for Interns for The Torchlight Program
Spring 2015, and I grew intrigued. As I read through the email, I discovered that the
purpose of this internship was to market independent films via social networking, and I was
hooked. Although I enjoy reading and had hoped for an internship that would involve more
editing than marketing, films was a close second in what I enjoyed, so I didnt hesitate to
send an email response in regards of wishing to interview for the available position. And
when I got the immediate response informing me to be there in a couple days for the
interview, I vowed to do my best to get the position.
To say I was nervous about the upcoming interview would be a vast understatement.
Before then, I had only one other interview tucked under my experience belt, and that
interview had been done under pure chance. The retail store HobbyTown, in which I now
work, and its new owners were in desperate need of new employees, and when they saw I
was friends with one of their most trusted workers, they took one look at my application,
asked me a few basic questions, and hired me within the next 24 hours. I knew there was no
chance of it being that easy for me at the Torchlight Center, even with it just being an
internship. So, for the first time in my life, I wore slacks with a very nice blouse. I was so
desperate to make a good first impression, I even put all my paperwork in a nice, black
folder and showed up 30 minutes early for the interview only to spend the first ten
minutes trying to figure out how to open the door.
Claiming it was the nerves getting to me, I eventually figured out how to open the
intricate, button-handle door, just in time to see a young man walking about the hall,
dressed in a very simple t-shirt and shorts. I had always heard that it helped to show up
over-dressed rather than under-dressed to an interview, but I still felt out of place as the
man walked up to me and asked if I was here for the interview. I confirmed that I was and
shook his proffered hand before he glanced at his watch and remarked that I was early. Was
that a bad thing? I didnt get a chance to ask, though, as he led me to an empty room,
handed me some paperwork to fill out, and informed me he would be back shortly. As I
worked on the assignment before me for the next 15 minutes, four more people showed up
and were placed in the room I was given in and given similar paperwork to fill out. Then,
while I was signing the last page, I heard the very phrase I had not expected to hear: By
the way, there is no need to worry. You all are already hired.
What!?

Sure enough, the young man whom I know now as my team leader Casey, was
right. Paul Cohen, the boss, soon came in to discuss what this internship was going to be
about, informed us of the first movie we were going to work on, and welcomed us all to the
marketing team as Casey collected our paperwork. I was shocked still as, when I went to
see Mr. Cohen about signing my internship class contract, he talked to me as though this
was not the first time we have met, and confirmed he would see me the following Tuesday,
the first day I signed up for. As the interview had taken place on a Thursday, I had five
days before my first four hour shift with Mr. Cohen and his marketing team. I felt sure that
I would get an email or call in between that time informing me that my services would not
be needed. But those days flew by fast, and before I knew it, I was sitting in front of my
first not-yet-released, independent film, slowly starting to gain ideas for my first social
media posts.
As you may have noticed, between the time of gaining the opportunity to interview
with the Torchlight Program and sitting down before my first project, I had the tendency to
overthink a lot of things. It has been a major weakness of mine in the past, and was one of
the first weaknesses to be broken down during my time as an intern. Over the four month
span of working with the Red Hills Motion Picture Releasing Company, I have learned to
not only gain more confidence in what I say, but also what I write and what I think. This
was helped also by Twitter, one of the most popular of social media networks, and a
network that I used to despise. When I first heard about Twitter several years before, and
how each post you made was equivalent to the size of a text message---before cellular
phones started increasing their text message sizes---, I was far from pleased. As someone
who was, and still is, a passionate reader and writer, I could never fathom the idea of
expressing my ideas in 140 characters or less. So you could imagine my horror when, after
watching the first movie (White Rabbit), I was told to set up a Twitter account for
marketing purposes. I first thought I would never use it that much, and spent the first
couple of days mainly posting on Facebook. However, I slowly began to realize just how
much easier it was to find a tweet to respond to on Twitter. I did struggle at first, and often
had to edit my posts several times before I could fit it into the 140 characters limit, but I
eventually began to see why Twitter was such a popular network and why so many
marketers of different realms use it today.
Thus the process of marketing independent films began. During the remainder of
the month of January and the first few weeks of February, my fellow interns and I worked
solely on marketing White Rabbit, a film that I found interesting because of the subject
matter it focused on: school shooting. What was exciting about this project, unlike any of
the others we worked on, was that my fellow interns and I got to help promote and
successfully launch the Kickstarter for the film. That probably made this film the most fun
to promote out of all the ones I did, and I felt I was off to a great start at my internship with
Paul Cohen and the Red Hills company. And the fun aspect of this business continued to
grow. While still promoting White Rabbit, my fellow interns and I had to prepare for
another upcoming event. This event was for the Torchlight Program specifically, as FSU,
and its Opening Nights Performing Arts Building, was screening a new, yet to be released
film to its audience. Mr. Cohen, the lead of this event, wanted as many of us to be there and
be prepared for what we were going to see. He had us all watch The Cove a week before the

event, and that following Sunday, a good number of us showed up to the event. This, by
far, was the best experience of my life. Documentaries are the one type of film I am rather
edgy about watching, but Racing Extinctions, a film that shows humans what we are doing
to our planet in intricate detail, was probably the best thing I could have ever seen. I even
got to meet the director, Louie Psihoyos! I shook his hand and even stood beside him for a
photo shoot he did with Mr. Cohens interns. I was flabbergasted, to say the least, and I
thought this internship could not get any better.
Until I learned the next, most important aspect of business work: sometimes you
will have to do things you absolutely do not like. As White Rabbit had now reached its
released date, and there was a new movie coming out that the film producers wanted Mr.
Cohen and his company to work on promoting, my boss deemed it would be best to show
us the filming style of the director before having us watch the film we were to promote. I
will tell you right now, I think Kids by Larry Clark is by far the worst film I ever seen and I
was glad I did not have to promote it. Not saying the acting or cinematography was bad, for
both are far from the truth. Instead, this film hit home on a very delicate subject in one of
the most gruesome ways possible, ending with a rather detailed rape scene. To say I was
disgusted would only partially sum up my feelings about seeing that movie, and was
probably the longest two hours of my life. But I guess I could say it did help to see it,
because shortly after, we watched the film we were going to promote, Marfa Girl, and after
already seeing his filming style, I knew what to expect. There is no doubt that this film was
my least favorite to promote during my semester-long internship, but I still had a lot of fun
coming up with interesting things to say on Twitter and Facebook to get the message out
there, things I likely would have never said before.
The rest of the internship flew by at a relatively fast pace. After Marfa Girl, Paul
Cohen had us promote a video streaming app that was just about to be published. One that
catered to not only TV show and movie lovers, but also those who loved Comic Con and
anime. Along with the app, we also promoted one of their newly published films within the
app, known as Mythica: A Quest for Heroes. As an RPG game lover, this by far was my
favorite film to watch, and I found it quite easy to find my way onto similar gaming pages
on Facebook to spread the word. Unfortunately, though, we did not get to promote this film
long as we immediately moved on to our next to last project of the semester, SydneysBuzz,
a blog created to spread the news about independent films and who had the rights to them.
Regrettably, I did not get to categorize everything I did throughout this internship,
but I feel I focused on the most important projects we worked on. If someone would have
told me last semester that I would be promoting films 12 hours a week during the spring for
my internship credit, I more than likely would have deemed them crazy. But I did, and I
had a lot of fun with it, too. And with the experiences I gained upon working with social
media platforms and learning not to overthink things, I feel like I am ready to take the next
step in my career path and see where it leads me. I know I still have a lot to learn,
especially if I want to get into the business of editing book manuscripts, but I am willing to
do whatever it takes to make it to that level. Thank you Paul Cohen, Torchlight Program,
and Red Hills Motion Picture Releasing Company! I could not have gained this valuable
experience without you.

Word Count:
White Rabbit: 4,510 words
Marfa Girl: 3,777 words
CONtv: 1,434 words
Mythica: 314 words
SydneysBuzz: 586 words
Total Word Count: 10,621 words