The former Warner Bros. vice president of Music Operations Doug Frank, who worked on films such as “The Dark Knight,” “Harry Potter,” “Happy Feet” and more, spoke to students in the Caterpillar Global Communications Center last night as part of the third annual Entertainment Industry Reception.
The panel-style discussion, which was hosted by the Musicians in Business group, also featured Jack Manis, the talent buyer and production manager at Jay Goldberg Events and Entertainment, and Gary Manuel, the recording engineer at Mirror Image Studios.
Frank started as director of music and worked his way up to spend 25 years on the executive board and eight years as the vice president of Music Operations.
“Music as a profession is one of these odd things where I don’t know if you can go into it anymore because you want to make millions,” Frank said. “I think that most of you in this room, well, hopefully you don’t see yourself doing anything else and that’s why you’re here.”
Frank told students he has learned networking is very important in the field.
“You need to cultivate and nurture and protect your relationships,” Frank said. “You have to sometimes really think with your head, not just with your heart.”
Manis said he has been fortunate to work with Bradley interns, but the work may discourage them from joining the industry.
“They do great jobs, but the downside is they thoroughly start to see what this business is and what this business isn’t,” Manis said.
Music business major Matt Slifka interned for Manis this past summer and said he was able to see many different aspects of the music business.
“My biggest takeaway [from the internship] was the sheer amount of teamwork between not a whole lot of people that comes together to create really grand-sized events, and the insane amount of work that goes into pulling off what looks externally like a thoughtless thing when really the whole thing is chaotic from beginning to end,” Slifka said.
Slifka said he was glad the panelists mentioned the increasing use of technology in the industry.
“My favorite thing that I heard was saying that you don’t have to go to Los Angeles to be in the music business because, especially with technology, people are very close to one another even when they are on opposite sides of the country,” Slifka said.
Andy Corbin, a 2014 music business graduate from Bradley who works at 101.5 WBNQ in Bloomington, emceed the event and closed by inviting students to talk to the panelists.
