“To warm up the audience, he was giving away t-shirts and then he said, ‘Does anyone have a talent here?’” Murrow College professor Marvin Marcello said. “And then Max raised his hand, went upstage and started doing flips in the air and I go, ‘now that’s a talent.’”

Max Caldwell, senior broadcast production major,  seized the moment to showcase his talents on stage at “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” This spring break, six students from the Murrow College of Communication took advantage of the opportunity of a lifetime to learn from experts in the broadcast and production industry and have fun living the Hollywood dream.

From March 7–12, Murrow students traveled around LA and Hollywood, meeting producers, broadcasters and other industry experts, many of whom were WSU alums.

Marcello, the trip’s organizer and faculty advisor, said he hoped the students would see many of the people working in LA were just like them, Cougs who studied broadcast at WSU. The students got to see the heights former students like them reached in the industry.

“I think they got to see the realities of how tough and competitive it could be, but at the same time, very fulfilling as a career,” Marcello said.

Caldwell, along with fellow seniors Annabelle Pepin, Spencer Tull and juniors Madalynn Rhay, Maria Uribe and Cruz Garcia, formed a group that featured five students who had been involved in the student production club Cable 8, including three members of the executive board in Caldwell, Pepin and Tull. Those three helped inspire the trip, applying pressure early to Marcello in their Murrow News 8 class.

“Actually me, Spencer and Annabelle, we were taking his broadcast class last semester and we were kind of egging him on to be like, when are we gonna do a trip?” Caldwell said. “Like you used to do all these trips with kids, what happened kind of thing? And so I feel like maybe he got pressured.”

Between piqued student interest, the presence of Coug alums in LA and Marcello’s planning, Marcello’s first Murrow trip to LA was born.

“Boy, when we got together, when we started talking, when we started understanding what we were all trying to do, that group just gelled,” Marcello said. “All of a sudden, instead of a bunch of individuals, [it] became one group and their mindset was: we got to find out more, we got to find out how they do this.”

On the trip, the students got to engage and learn in a variety of settings, including ABC studios, the talent agency Digital Brand Architects and Tull’s favorite: the Amazon Dolby Atmos studio.

“I think it’s like a million-dollar sound studio or something like that, full of all the speakers hidden in the walls,” Tull said. “They’re all the way around you. We listened to Bohemian Rhapsody, and hearing every single instrument of the songs you’re listening to, it makes the song sound completely unique, way different.”

The students met Cougar alums such as mDots design president Ian Kennedy and CNN reporter Veronica Miracle, but there was one guest appearance that was most unexpected.

“We’re sitting around and all of a sudden the girls are waving and Spencer’s waving and I go, what is happening?” Marcello said. “I look around and there’s Adam Sandler waving to us, and I go, well, see, you know, that never happens in Pullman.”

The night at “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” was another highlight of the trip, especially for Caldwell, whose appearance on stage impressed a 150-plus crowd.

“The adrenaline was kind of rushing, so I could barely even hear him,” Caldwell said. “He was just asking about like Washington apples or something because he was asking me where I was from and I just ended up doing like parkour flips and stuff and everyone was kind of like, Oh my God, I’m like crazy, or whatever.”

The students sat about five rows behind the band and were able to see the full action from the audience perspective, allowing them to use their broadcast knowledge to analyze the situation.

“There was this one time or one part where someone’s microphone got rubbed against, while they were doing it and as production students, we could hear it and then we’re like, ‘oh, no,’ like, what’s going to happen?” 
Pepin said. “They played it really cool and it was fine. But like seeing what seems like an everyday show from the production, like from the production perspective, was super cool.”

The students emphasized networking with the Coug alums as one of the top things they learned, something that came to light at a barbecue on the Sunday afternoon of the trip, where Pepin found something in common with an alum.

“It was like a super professional conversation to start out with and then we ended up finding out that we were in the same sorority and she was like, ‘oh, my God,’” Pepin said. “Like we were like freaking out, and we like did our secret handshake and all that. And it was like, super cool to meet someone who was like, in her 40s, in a similar position as me and we bonded over being able to do communication and be in a sorority.”

The students all got the chance to connect with alumni and the former Cougs were primarily there to give them advice. Those interactions weren’t just meaningful for the students, though; they were for their professor as well.

“It’s very intrinsically happy for me,” Marcello said. “It makes me feel very complete to see that what they took from class was just a small little smidgen of information and then they blew it up into as big as they could and went to the biggest market they possibly could and made something of themselves.”

Between Caldwell, Pepin and Tull, the trip did not necessarily give them full clarity about their career aspirations, but instead gave them valuable advice and showed them there is a place for them.

Caldwell’s experience networking on the trip also led him to develop advice for future students looking at the Murrow trips.

“The biggest thing that you can do to network with people is just show them who you are,” Caldwell said. “If they vibe with you, then they want to work with you. If they like you, they like you. There’s no way to manufacture that.”

Tull said the trip pushed him away from producing live sports broadcasts but opened up new avenues of interest for him. For Tull, there may still be a bigger takeaway from the trip aside from career aspirations.

“Caring about what you’re doing is huge,” Tull said. “Being willing to put your nose to the grindstone and just grind it out is a big skill. That’s not what everyone wanted to hear. I certainly didn’t want to hear I have to hear that. I don’t have to grind for the rest of my life, but I think that’s just how it is. But, you’re gonna have fun while you’re doing it.”