I didn’t grow up around film sets or cameras, but I did grow up with sitcoms and movies. They were the one constant in my life that connected me with everyone around me. Growing up in an Asian household, shows and films filled the emotional gaps that my parents and I didn’t always know how to communicate. We could always talk about the movie we just watched, though. Whether it was a Nickelodeon sitcom or a blockbuster that they’d take me to see in theaters, shared watching experiences became ways of expressing our excitement, humor, and affection.
As I’ve gotten older, my parents have been more curious about what I’d want to do with my life. For a lot of Filipinos, the clear choice is healthcare. My aunts, uncles, cousins, and almost everyone in my extended family have some sort of connection to the healthcare industry. Because of this, although I knew early on that being a doctor or a nurse would not be my calling, I realized that I valued serving people through other means. Throughout senior year of high school, I realized that I wanted to be at the intersection of business and film, a medium that serves people through representation and storytelling.
When I arrived at Penn, I quickly realized that I barely had an idea of how to bridge the two. I had vague ideas about clubs to join and little flexibility with classes to try. Adjusting to college life in itself was overwhelming. By the time I felt like I had established a sense of self on campus, deep into second semester, my peers were already talking about their upcoming summer plans: where they were going to intern, upcoming trips, things that I’ve barely thought about because I was feeling overwhelmed while navigating adjustment.
A few weeks before the last day of classes, I cold–emailed alumni and small studios in my hometown asking them for opportunities to intern at their company. I landed an internship at a small, independent video production studio. It’s a place with no corporate ladders—just a handful of former performers, creatives, and freelancers. The kind of place where everyone does a little bit of everything, gear is always in motion, and something is always guaranteed to go wrong throughout the day.
Some days are quieter than others, but no two days are the same. I organize and manage equipment before or after a production. I’m sometimes a production assistant on shoots, managing clients and talent. I help out with keeping track of production budgets and expenses.
There’s a constant sense of organized chaos at the studio. Shoots can run later than what was noted on the call sheet. In one shoot, I worked as a production assistant for an immersive multimedia experience dedicated to Bob Marley. That shoot, I worked for almost 12 hours. In those hours, our set didn’t have enough talent to fill certain scenes, so my production manager and I improvised by pulling people from the casino floor of Mandalay Bay, convincing random people to be a part of the shoot. Even then, not everything came together. Throughout the shoot, initial ideas were scrapped or reworked on the spot. It was unpredictable and chaotic, but in the middle of all the chaos was a sense of trust, collaboration, and shared problem–solving from everyone in the crew. In production, you learn to let go of perfection. You stay present and you rely on the people around you. As it’s not just about making something happen on camera, but rather making something happen together.
At Penn, it can feel like success is tightly defined. Everyone is on a track, a pipeline, a five–year plan. People like to talk about what they’re doing, but rarely why they’re doing it. And I often wonder if I’m falling behind because I’m not in the same mold. It seems like all of my friends and peers already know what they’re doing. Some of them are making pitch decks or attending stakeholder meetings this summer, but I’m here trying to find a V–mount battery charger in our equipment closet or sitting in a dark room editing footage in DaVinci Resolve for a behind–the–scenes reel.
My summer internship hasn’t given me a fully polished answer to what I want to do for the rest of my life, but it’s given me clarity on what kind of work makes me feel present, fulfilled, and like I’m actually building toward something tangible. I’ve gotten to see the many moving parts of production, from the business side to the hands–on work happening in the studio. I value the unpredictability that each day brings and the community built by shared struggles. Production lives in the balance of creativity and logistics, a place where ideas meet execution and vision turns to something tangible. Where community and a shared sense of purpose that holds everything together.
As this summer ends, I may not have it all figured out, but I know I want to keep growing in spaces where ideas and stories are built collaboratively from the ground up.
