Claudia Emanual
Claudia thrives on challenge and constantly being on the go. She loves her job working in film and stills production. It’s fast paced, creative and never boring – perfect for her she says. Since graduating from UCT, she dived straight into the film industry, interning at a large production company, before joining another as an executive producer’s assistant. She then progressed to become a junior creative researcher and then left the company to freelance as a production coordinator. She is currently living in Sicily, Italy, where she assists in the running of a production company with her husband. They produce and facilitate film and photo productions in Sicily and mainland Italy.
She says, “My degree, BA Specialising in Interactive Media, has assisted me in all aspects of digital marketing in the companies that I have worked for and currently work for. Besides working in film and photo production, my “side hustle” of creating content and working in the realm of online media consists of many aspects of what I gained from my degree.”
She reflects on the most important lesson she learnt at university and says, “at UCT I was presented with a collection of knowledge, discoveries and pre-existing ideas. An important lesson I learnt and have since applied is to first think INSIDE the box before thinking OUTSIDE the box. It’s necessary to develop the skills and thought processes necessary to examine, hypothesize, test and analyse. If you can’t even leverage what you’ve already got, what hope is there for what’s beyond?”
Her advice to incoming students is, “networking. While at university, you meet a wide range of people - people that you could be working with in the future. Grades are important, but I've realized a lot of the time in this world it's not necessarily about what you know. The real world is often like a dinner party… When you show up at the world's front door, you better have a good answer to the question, ‘Who do you know here?’”