Hello Everyone!

So, my graduating class of 2017 has finally made the trek to L.A.! We have just finished our first week in the summer semester in L.A. program, and it has been absolutely amazing so far!

Every morning we start the day off at Raleigh Studios where we have class for 2 hours. Every single class is different, and new speakers are brought in every day to discuss different aspects of the industry. So far we have had David Blau; Entertainment Lawyer, Joel Douek from the Society of Composer and Lyricists, Chuck & Karen Gold; Tax Accountants, and White Bear Public Relations. For the rest of the summer semester we also have Peter Rotter; Musician Contractor, Buddha Jones Trailers, James Newton Howard, John Rodd; Scoring Engineer, Mae Crosby; Music Editor, Harry Gregson-Williams, Debbie Lurie, ASCAP, Tyler Strickland, Jake Kozarec; Agent, Mike Kramer, Blake Neely, Reza Safinia; Urban Pop Producer & Composer, an Alumni Panel, and Mark Watters.

Our class with White Bear PR’s Chandler Poling and Thomas Mikusz

After the two hours of class we have in the morning, we have an hour for lunch and then we all go off to our internships. Everyone is interning with a different composer. I am the lone ranger of the class that decided to go a more business associated route. I have been interning with White Bear Public Relations. The first time I sat down in my chair at the office, Chandler Poling, President of White Bear, had me write a pitch for an album of a soundtrack created by Laura Karpman and had me send an email to pretty much every radio station that concerns film music. I won’t lie, I had absolutely no idea what I was doing! The great thing about it was that I would send it to Chandler and he would respond with how to make it better. I got a hands on chance to write a pitch and go through the process of every decision of what to write or add to it from the bottom up, and now I have my own template for writing pitches. Outside of writing pitches, I’ve been researching online for press outlets for various media such as radio stations, news stations, magazines, online news, etc. I think my favorite thing so far has been proof-reading articles and giving feedback for websites. When I was growing up my mom used to drill me a lot in English, so thankfully this stuff comes quite naturally to me!

Part of our class with the Group Materia Collective!

Outside of classes and the internship I have been exploring various networking groups and making new friends and trying to really dive into the community. If you’re worried about moving to L.A., don’t be! The community is absolutely incredible, especially as a film, T.V. and game composer. Everyone understands everyone’s mentality and the need for a community because majority of the time we are all in our studios. If you reach out to the various groups, they will welcome you with extremely open arms. I joined the Society of Composers and Lyricists this week and attended one of their events that featured various T.V. composers, and I also met with the Materia Collective which is a group of composers that arrange game scores and have them performed by musicians around the world and then put the result on iTunes, etc. They are amazing people, and have given us composers an incredible opportunity to write for live players.

This is my last blog post, and someone will be taking over shortly. Thank you all for coming along for the ride of my journey these past two years!

If you ever have any questions or would like to chat, you can find me on Facebook as Katrina Zemrak, or you can email me at katzemrak@gmail.com!

Also, one last bit of marketing!