High School Students Explore their Interests in Career Lab

Career Lab is a program that serves as a bridge from Reel Works filmmaking programs to real career experiences. Through this program, students take work readiness classes, attend workshops with media companies including American Documentary and NBCUniversal, and tour colleges. Sonam, a current participant of Career Lab, summarized our program well: “One thing I like about this class is the balanced combination of career-related trips and career workshop sessions… Career Lab teaches me that having a career in film is possible and prepares students with the proper skills to succeed.”

Career Lab on a field trip visiting HARBOR.

A major highlight of the program are the site visits conducted every week. Students have already visited various production companies such as Light Iron, Harbor Picture Company, and Vice, with their final visit being at ShowTime. These companies have been incredible partners and happily opened their doors, gave tours and shared more about their experiences in the media industry. One of the students, Vinny, shared: “I’ve really been enjoying all the trips to production houses. The people we’ve talked to at those locations have always been so engaging and I’ve definitely learned so many new and interesting things about the film industry.”

It has been very exciting to see this program come together and uphold goals of access to the media industry. We’d live to thank our incredible company partners, funders, volunteers, alumni and partner schools who have helped make this possible and shared their perspectives and insights with our community. 

Keyonna, a current student in the Career Lab, put her experience this way: “this class is a good way of learning how to navigate [our careers] as up-and-coming adults in the work world. It creates a fun environment while simultaneously being educational. I’m looking forward to using what I learned here in the real world.” 

We look forward to hearing more stories of how these experiences help shape the next generation of storytellers.