Student Spotlight
Gaylord's Outstanding Senior
Takes Hollywood
By Chelsey Kraft
An internship stint at Cartoon Network Studios and return trips to Hollywood for the Creative Arts Emmy Awards, Primetime Emmy Awards and Screen Actors Guild Awards have highlighted the past few months for public relations senior Christine Murrain.
Early in her sophomore year of college, Murrain, who is from Lawton, started to recognize that she had a really strong passion for on-screen media and how she personally believes that it is a vehicle to create social change.
“I’m always told that you should make the things that you’re doing in your free time the work that you’re getting paid to do if you can, and so I thought to myself maybe we can pursue this,” the current Outstanding Senior of Gaylord College said.
This eventually led Murrain to enter a Google search of “Television Industry Internships,” with one of the first results being the Television Academy Foundation (TAF). TAF, which is the philanthropic arm of the television academy, hosts an internship program that accepts 50 students each year from across the United States. The foundation then places them with various companies in a number of different categories like screenwriting, cinematography, marketing and broadcast news.
Murrain applied and was selected to an eight-week publicity internship at Cartoon Network Studios in Burbank, California. In her publicity role, she had the chance to work on press releases and media kits, do media relations, pitch to different outlets and attend San Diego Comic Con. She even heard from HBO’s West Coast Head of Productions on how they make “Game of Thrones,” which she said is one of her favorite shows.
Saying yes to the initial internship has continued to open doors for Murrain. She attended both the Creative Arts Emmy Awards and Primetime Emmy Awards last year, and in January, Murrain worked with the publicity department for a week for the SAG Awards.
“It definitely taught me a lot about how one yes can lead to a hundred yeses,” she said. “The biggest thing I think I’ve learned since this time junior year is really that you don’t get what you don’t ask for, which means that you have to do a lot of self-reflection on what you want and then be really confident to ask for it because a no is a no, but a yes can change everything.”
As a TAF intern, Murrain attended the Creative Arts Emmys, which recognizes winners in technical categories like animation, sound and editing. Some of the LA-based interns were set to serve as trophy presenters the following week at the Primetime Emmys, and Murrain made a comment to the internship coordinator that she would come back and sweep the floors for that awards show.
Although it was mostly a joke, that opened yet another door as she heard from the internship coordinator the following Tuesday offering her a work assignment in the Gifting Suite at the Primetime Emmys. Here she engaged with the talent, telling them about the TAF, sharing her experience as an intern and how the foundation has shaped her career thus far. She said this taught her how to carry herself in a professional manner while in a setting that was in no way normal to her but was normal to the celebrities.
“It truly was the coolest thing I’ve ever done,” Murrain said. “It’s people coming in after they’ve won their Emmys and people coming in during their rehearsals to present Emmys. Sandra Oh came in, and I’m thinking, ‘Oh my gosh, I’ve loved you since I was 12.’”
Murrain, who is active both in Gaylord College and on campus in roles like the chair of the Gaylord Ambassadors and of the CAC Speakers Bureau, said she is thankful for the support provided from the college. This includes the Student Experience Fund, which helped make her summer internship and trip to the Primetime Emmys a financial possibility.
“I’m so grateful to have gotten to do it, but I also recognize that there was a lot of work done on my end and other peoples’ ends to make it happen, which is huge,” Murrain shared. “The Student Experience Fund will be the first thing I donate money to as an alum … We’re told that it’s the professional experience that you have outside of the classroom that sets you apart, and that student experience funding allows for all of our students to be able to do those things and have those experiences.”
