“The interns really get weird jobs sometimes,” Max Goldberg said, understatedly, to downplay his co-op at CollegeHumor.com. And he should know, since he’s currently working two internships at the comedy website.
Goldberg, a rising senior in the Film & Video Department in Drexel’s Westphal College of Media Arts & Design, works as a production intern for half of the week and as a post-production intern for the other half.
“I couldn’t pick one,” he said. “I’m the only intern that I know of who is currently doing two internships at CollegeHumor.”
And, CollegeHumor is his dream job, at least post-graduation, he said.
“CollegeHumor and me go back a long, long time,” he said. “It’s kind of weird working there, to be completely honest, since I have been following the site for, I don’t know, maybe six years? I’ve been watching their videos and stuff ever since they were a tiny company, where they were nowhere near as big as they are now.”
Goldberg applied for and accepted the production intern position, and then emailed his boss expressing interest in post-production. With shining potential, he was granted his wish to do both.
“Most people are interested in just one thing, but I want to get the whole experience there,” he said.
The co-op started out rocky as Goldberg struggled to find an apartment in New York—the CollegeHumor offices are in Manhattan. For the first month of the spring 2013 co-op term, he instead worked for Drexel’s Film & Video Department, where he hosted a tutoring workshop on how to make film titles and credits look good.
Once he secured housing, Goldberg moved to New York and began working for CollegeHumor. He’s currently tasked with editing the outtakes of a three-video series parodying “Honey Boo Boo,” which will be featured on the website.
But his work for the company has already found fame outside of the brand. Internet comedy sites like Funny or Die, which was cofounded by Will Ferrell, and The Chive reposted pictures of a “Pizza or Nic Cage” wheel that Goldberg helped create for the annual CollegeHumor all-night event in May.
The event takes place around finals time, and features the CollegeHumor staff staying in the office overnight adding content to the website and hosting a live show.
“One of the games was ‘Pizza or Nic Cage’ and the idea is that the college kids call in and we spin the wheel and depending on what it lands on wherever they live, we will either get a pizza delivered to them or mail them a bad Nic Cage movie. And that’s their prize,” Goldberg explained. “Either way you win, but you know, you either win a pizza or a terrible movie.”
Though Goldberg didn’t come up with the game, he was in charge of sprucing up the large spinning wheel.
Goldberg also decorated the cake used in the “Paula Deen Apology Cake” video, which spoofed the controversial Food Network star’s recent troubles.
Most of Goldberg’s work is behind the scenes, but he did stand in as an extra for a video in the popular Jake and Amir comedy web series. Goldberg, who grew up in the same Connecticut town as comedian Jake Hurwitz, appears in the “Vandalism” video.
“Usually I’m helping out in more useful ways. I like helping out with the production end of things and not just standing in front of the camera,” he said.
The interactive online aspect of CollegeHumor, along with the company’s history of hiring former interns or Drexel co-ops for work, is why Goldberg wanted his only co-op to be at the online video website, he said.
“I’ve always believed that the film industry is kind of shifting to this online, instant gratification kind of thing,” he explained. “It’s the same techniques as filmmaking, which I really love, but without the stress of being on set for a month straight doing a feature, which I’m not too interested in.”