Ryan Morillo, Class of 2023: Film Production & Development

This summer I was fortunate enough to intern in the Production and Development department at Warner Bros. Discovery in Miami, FL. This internship was an incredibly immersive experience that taught me a multitude of skills necessary for television production and inspired me to further explore my television writing. As a Latinx screenwriter, I found this experience especially meaningful, because I worked for the Latin America department of Warner Bros. Discovery, completing work mostly for South American and U.S. Hispanic audiences.

Going into an internship at such a large company, I was worried that my role would be somewhat passive. However, I was pleasantly surprised by the amount of responsibility I was allowed to take on, and by the end of the internship, I felt like an integral part of the team. While a lot of my work consisted of working with production companies to keep track of cuts and other supplemental elements, I was eventually invited to all the review meetings. There, I worked alongside the supervising producers, watching cuts of each show and providing feedback to the editing team. This process helped me gain a sense of what goes into polishing every episode of a show, and it has inspired me to one day pursue an active role in producing the work that I write. In addition to this production experience, I was invited to many of the sets, where I was able to interact with production crew members and learn about the vital role that each of them plays in the creation of every production. Overall, my experience was fueled by a strong spirit of collaboration and creativity that I hope to carry with me throughout my professional career.

On top of the wonderful experiences that I had working for this company, my internship motivated me to work on my own writing. Most importantly, it helped me establish a clearer idea of how to start off as writer. Before my internship, I lacked knowledge about how to seek out jobs in the entertainment industry, and the difficulty of obtaining them seemed a huge obstacle to my professional journey. My internship gave me much more insight on how to apply for and succeed in the roles of writer and producer. At the same time, it allowed me to explore the ways in which other departments function alongside production, to help a show evolve into what is eventually aired. Throughout my internship, I was introduced to members of multiple departments—production management, ad sales, and business and legal affairs—all of which are essential to helping produce a show and might even pose an obstacle to writers in certain cases. I was able to converse with writers on and off set, to gain a sense of how to land screenwriting jobs.