Brianna Matthews ’16 always knew she wanted to be involved in filmmaking. Her father was an actor, and she had her sights set on a hands-on, conservatory-style undergraduate program that teaches students how movies are made.  

As a film production major at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts, she learned the ins and outs of how each motion picture studio department works together to create a film. 

As she replicated sets from Hollywood movies, learned software, and studied filmmaking fundamentals, she realized there was still a lot she didn’t know about the film industry. After graduation, she was completing internships and doing freelance production work on television and movie sets like American Idol, Bird People, and Love is in the Air. 

“I didn’t really have a pathway to something long term,” she explains. “After a while, I realized this wasn’t the lifestyle I wanted. I wanted to move to the business side of the industry—to something a little more stable. I wanted to learn how movies get to the set stage in the first place.”  (more…)