Title:Star power fuels GEMA

Earlier this year Andrew Morrison (C’15) was nominated for an Oscar for best picture for his work as a producer on The Brutalist, which received 10 Academy Award nominations overall. He credits Georgetown—particularly the Georgetown Entertainment & Media Alliance (GEMA), an alliance group of the Georgetown University Alumni Association—with helping him get his start in show business.

“My first job was interning for comedian Mike Birbiglia (C’00) my freshman summer at Georgetown and my first ‘big break’ was actually while I was still a student. I helped make a short film called He Took His Skin Off For Me that ended up playing at a bunch of festivals around the world and then broke out online,” shares Morrison.

Hoyas helping Hoyas

Back in 2003, GEMA launched an externship to help students and alumni learn about the industry. The program enables Georgetown seniors and graduate students to visit Los Angeles or New York during spring break to meet with alumni from a variety of fields in entertainment and media.

“When I did the externship, I was very interested in new forms of storytelling,” explains Morrison. “The first VR headsets were coming out, people were experimenting with 360 video and AR, and companies like Atavist were publishing longform mixed media stories. I asked my externship planning person to set up meetings with those companies instead of the original list he proposed. It reinforced for me that experiences are what you make of them. It’s your job to shape opportunities to your needs.

“By showing me how corporate so much of the media landscape is, my externship helped me feel confident in pursuing a more independent and artistic part of this industry,” adds Morrison.

“I also met with a few producers, and that was the first time I started to understand what a producer really did. They were incredibly encouraging of me and how I was thinking about what I wanted to do. I left feeling empowered and confident that I would figure this out. For a college kid, that was immensely valuable.”

GEMA was formed in 2002. It is open to all Georgetown students and alumni who are involved or interested in the industry.

Over 270 students have participated in GEMA’s externship program since it began in 2003, moving on to roles across the media landscape, including Lionsgate, Front Office Sports, NBC Universal, the National Basketball Association, the National Basketball League, Blue Marble Pictures, Monumental Sports & Entertainment and others.