My name is Ella Meyers, and I’m a junior Sociology and Film & Media Studies double major at Whitman College. I have spent this past summer working as a Marketing & Communications intern at The Grand Cinema.
On a typical day, I come into the office and check with my supervisor about the day’s tasks. This can range from working on email campaigns, to walking around Tacoma and taping up posters in the windows of local businesses. I’ve also enjoyed having some creative involvement in marketing projects—a recent one being drafting Instagram posts for our Exhibition on Screen: Encore Screenings. I crafted a seven-row spread of images of artists' works; researched trivia pertaining to each artist, painting, or art period; researched relevant hashtags; and wrote the copy for each post.
Another favorite task has been creating GIFs for The Grand’s social media posts; some film distributors provide GIFs for marketing, but most don’t. For example, The Grand is now playing the film The Farewell, which has lots of assets for us to use, but we’ve also played films as part of the Classic Film Series, for example, that don’t. It’s been fun to take a cult classic film—which I often know nothing about—like Rock ‘n’ Roll High School and watch the super old and grainy trailer, then somehow turn that into a quintessentially 21st century thing like a GIF for Twitter.
I’ve also enjoyed using my design capabilities to create different assets for The Grand’s use. I made multiple cards for The Grand’s Instagram Stories to help drive awareness for all of our different series, each with their own unique branding. The template I designed will be regularly updated and used for future marketing, even when my internship is over.
This experience has been extremely rewarding. I’ve learned so much about independent film, and I’ve read dozens more film reviews that I ever would have otherwise, which is rewarding in its own right. I’ve also learned a lot about how an office like this operates—how important it is for coworkers to lean on each other and communicate. This internship has really instilled in me a strong interest in non-profit arts organizations; I hope that further down the road I am still involved with this kind of work.
