Q&A: Jillian Banner, Video Fellow @ The Atlantic

Each year, Atlantic Media hires around 40 recent graduates for its fellowship program. Fellows are placed in editorial or business positions across Atlantic Media’s four brands: The Atlantic, National Journal, Government Executive, and Quartz.

Tell us about your role and what you do.

I’m a video fellow at The Atlantic. At the beginning of the fellowship, I was mostly editing a video series called “Quoted,” and now I’m working with the other video fellow who’s in New York, Violet, to develop ideas for a co-production. We’re going to make a documentary together.

Otherwise I’ve also just been helping out, assisting on different projects for the producers. I’ve gotten to shoot on some projects (be the additional camera person), and I’ve done a lot of logging footage and transcribing.

What were you working on before you answered these questions?

Before coming up here, I was helping out one of the animators with an interview shoot that she had.

Where did you work before coming to The Atlantic?

I graduated college in 2017, so I did video production for a nonprofit in Birmingham, Alabama making promotional videos for them. And then also I did a little bit of video work for an ultimate frisbee reporting website.

What’s the coolest thing you’ve gotten to do since the fellowship started?

The coolest thing I’ve gotten to do has been being an assistant camera person on shoots — just going with other producers and getting to shoot scenes with them.

The thing I’m most excited about is getting to work on a documentary with Violet.

Did you do a lot of video-related work in college? Is this what you’ve always been interested in?

I was a cinema and media studies major at Carleton College. I did a lot of video things — a lot of documentary but also some fiction projects. So yeah, I’ve done a lot of video stuff.

Is there anything you’ve learned in a non-media job or position that’s weirdly applicable to what you do now?

For most of college I worked in the student activities office. My main role was making posters for different events, but also event planning and organizing dances for the school and art events, so I was helping out in a lot of different areas. Mostly poster making.

But I think helping out with organizing and planning events helped me learn how much I like working with a team to accomplish something bigger, which kind of relates to video, where you’re always working on a team and trying to bring one bigger project together.

What’s your dream job?

I’d like to work on documentaries. I don’t know what would be the dream subject. It would be fun to work on something where I could spend a lot of time outside, so maybe something where I’d be shooting outdoors a lot.

Would you ever do scripted or fiction tv/film?

I would love to. I think some of my favorite directors of photography or cinematographers are people who started out in documentary and shoot fiction movies but in a documentary style, with a camera that’s more mobile, for example, or with actors who are improvising more.

It could be really interesting to one day be a camera person or director of photography who takes what I’ve learned in documentary and applies it to fiction.

Any documentary recommendations?

I really like the documentary “Man on Wire” because of the way it incorporates archival footage and reenacted scenes.

That’s one thing I would be interested in in the future — making a documentary that incorporates elements of fiction, maybe reenactments. Or something a little bit more complicated than the projects I’ve worked previously. It could be interesting to make something like Man on Wire that blends together fiction and nonfiction in a new way.

Do you have any advice for undergrads/recent grads/people looking for entry level jobs in media?

It seems like a lot of people who are equally talented apply to a lot of jobs, so it can be kind of random what you hear back from and what you don’t. So apply to a million things, and chances are one thing will work out!