Internship Spotlight: Hans Lueders

By Hans Lueders, FCRH ‘16

Working at Efran Films was undoubtedly my favorite work experience and thus far I think it has been the best. At first in the last days of August and early September I was worried that the only organization to respond to my application for an internship would be from a film company; my major is Political Science with a Communications minor so I began to question whether or not I had a chance in a super competitive market. In fear that I wouldn’t have any sort of job for the fall, I accepted the position of Editing Intern at Efran with the reasoning that work experience of any kind was better than not, and while I was not a master of video editing, I was competent and curious enough to learn to hone an increasingly important skill in our digital minded workforce.

Although later on I received positive word back from a local Assemblyman’s office and another film company, I am very happy I decided to stay at Efran. Named after the creator and boss Shawn Efran, Efran Films is a small video production company that gets hired out by a range of organizations, frequently by the New York Times, to make promotional videos and documentaries. Even though I was only doing organizational things and limited video editing, I was in an environment that straddled both of my majors and I had a very close knit group of co-workers to show me the ropes. With no one over the age of 35 working, many of my co-workers shared my interests and creative eye, so they were always on hand to either encourage me or challenge me to approach situations in my own way.

 

The best part about working there was seeing that the work I did affected other people; I wasn’t just relegated to “busy work” like getting coffee, rather I contributed in my own ways to projects the whole team was working on, projects that made their way to the public eye. For example, on one instance I was tasked with locating and getting in touch with amateur Utah truck racers through their YouTube videos so that Efran could produce a video for TLC. The dialogue channels I opened allowed my co-workers to negotiate rights quickly and start production on a video that will air early next year. I think feeling like you’re part of a well oiled machine is truly spectacular, and anyone who wishes to work at Efran Films should know that you will feel valued and if you put in good work, you will be rewarded.