DESCRIPTION

I produced and directed multimedia content, as well as researched and implemented YouTube digital marketing strategies to increase fan engagement.

TYPE

Internship

WHAT I DID

Although I can’t publicly disclose the details of my 10-week internship, I learned a lot about the music industry ecosystem, how to function as a creative in a large-scale company and what it takes to execute a high-stakes video series featuring music artists.

Over the summer, I worked as a creative intern in the 10Cubed department, a branch of Capitol Records that services digital marketing and content creation. During my internship, I produced and directed two video series for YouTube, designing the logo and branding, social media graphics and title card animations. In addition, I had the unique opportunity to work with a variety of other departments, including Video, Streaming, and Artist Relations, to gain a better understanding of best SEO practices for growing a Youtube Channel and then ultimately implementing those strategies.

WHAT I LEARNED

Coming into my first “real-world” internship, I had a lot of expectations and preconceived notions about the music industry and my role. Over the 10 weeks, some of my beliefs were validated, like the fact that the music industry is very, very fast-paced, but a lot weren’t. However, I can definitely say that I learned more over the course of 10 weeks than I did in two years of college.

Be explicit but be flexible: Filming the two video series required me to pitch the video treatment to my whole team before starting. During this stage, I learned that in order to get my point across, I have to be very specific about my vision but I also have to adapt the way I presented to different audiences. For example, my supervisor is a very visual learner and needs to physically see the concept, whereas the director on the team needs to know the logistics. After pitching and getting the concept approved, directing artists required me to learn how to tell them explicitly what I wanted them to do, so I don’t waste their time or my team’s time. However, during the editing stage of the process, I had to be flexible and put my decisions aside to adhere to what the artist wanted because, at the end of the day, the videos won’t go up without the artist’s approval. 

Prioritize the intersection of quantity and quality: Being detail-oriented, my mind automatically puts quality above quantity and that mindset works out when I have a lot of time to focus on one specific thing. However, given that things happen at an extremely rapid pace in the music industry, I had to learn how to detach myself from my work and produce more low fidelity concepts/graphics in a shorter time frame and then look towards feedback to further improve on them. This is very synonymous with what I learned while I designed my start-up Sova and my case study on SoundCloud since in all three I had to learn how to rapidly prototype my ideas and then use critiques to improve on the best one.  

My work at Capitol is currently covered by an NDA. If you’d like access please send me an email.