From Capital to Culver City, California, Josh Aude ’22, is starting his career this summer as a trainee with Sony Pictures Entertainment. A position he hopes will lead to a full-time opportunity within the postproduction department.
“For the first couple of months, I can’t be placed on new and upcoming projects for legal reasons. I’ll basically just be shadowing different positions within the postproduction department,” said Aude. “I’ll be assisting and doing projects for different people, including the mixing engineer.”
When applying for internships wasn’t panning out the way that he hoped, Aude reached out to his professors for guidance. The music technology faculty at Capital connected him to Justin Herman ’06, supervising postproduction sound engineer at Sony Pictures Entertainment.
“Back in February, I reached out to one of my music tech professors after having no luck in finding internships. I ended up applying to 17 different internships, and I only heard back from three or four. It was just crazy,” said Aude. “Then I got the contact info for this guy who worked for Sony that graduated from Capital. I emailed him and was like, ‘hey, do you have any internship opportunities.’ It was a shot in the dark.”
The CapFam connection worked, and Aude’s search for experience after graduation quickly became a reality.
“Justin responded and was like, ‘hey, if you want to grab coffee, we could meet on the Sony lot on Wednesday.’ That was on a Monday night. So, I flew out to Los Angeles, met him and the whole team on the lot on Wednesday, and the ball started rolling after that first meeting,” said Aude. “It was kind of a crazy thing to do on my end.”
After Aude met with the team, they were able to create a trainee position for him over the summer. The position is from May 31 to August 23, and employees are “almost always” guaranteed a position after the session is complete “unless, in the words of the person who hired me, you’re horrible.”
Shadowing different professionals will give Aude the unique opportunity to really learn about a career at Sony and postproduction in real time.
“I would love to be in the mixing realm of postproduction, so I’d love to work specifically with the mixing engineer this summer. At Capital, that’s something I’ve gotten to do quite a bit, and it’s something that I want to continue to do after leaving,” said Aude. “My career feels so close, like it’s right there.”
While Aude came to Capital intending to major in music technology, he credits his professors for expanding his view about what his career could be and getting him ready for his summer at Sony.
“The faculty emphasized learning a lot of different curriculums within the music tech program. Honestly, it was not what I expected out of it. Studio production is what I thought I was going into when I came to Capital, but they made sure to really take each semester, each year and make it about a different aspect of the music world,” said Aude. “I really enjoyed it because it actually helped me find out things that I don’t like. For example, I don’t like doing live sound production, but I really liked doing movie sound. It was really cool to feel like I had a wide array of experiences.”
For more information on Capital’s Music Technology program, visit http://elayfa.lmjrsygc.com/music-technology/