It's a hot summer afternoon, and Katy Carmichael pauses outside to take a swig from her water bottle. While she's standing there, with the Manhattan skyline in the background, a dog runs to her, wagging his tail. Carmichael smiles and leans down to pet the pup. Suddenly, a shadow falls over her; she squints up at the imposing figure in the sun. It's Susan Sarandon, in full witch makeup.
Carmichael is momentarily startled but quickly regains her composure. After all, she's working at Steiner Studios in the Brooklyn Navy Yard where the Disney fairytale, Enchanted, slated for a November 2007 release, is filming. (Stephen Schwartz A'68 cowrote the original music.) Carmichael has become accustomed to seeing scores of Enchanted extras flitting around the back lot in lofty powdered wigs and elaborate ball gowns, talking on cell phones.
She remembers well the star sightings from her eight-week internship last summer at Steiner Studios, which was founded by David Steiner (E'51), who heads the company along with his son, Douglas. Carmichael was there as a member of the inaugural class of Carnegie Mellon's master of entertainment industry management program. She and her six classmates directly experienced the behind-the-scenes operation of the 285,000-square-foot Hollywood-style studio that handles everything from motion pictures to television programs to commercials to music videos.
"Three movies were shooting over the summer," recalls Carmichael from Los Angeles, where she's taking classes at the University's Los Angeles Center and apprenticing at United Artists as part of the program's final year. "We could go on the stages, just be a fly on the wall. Being exposed to the crews, the equipment, the lingo ... it was so valuable."
She also thought it was a "pretty cool" bonus to look out one window and see the Spider-Man 3 stunt double practicing tricks on a motorbike, or look out another and spot Scarlett Johansson acting in front of a blue screen for The Nanny Diaries.
