Summit Entertainment, LLC was still a developing business when Full Sail grad Regan B. Pederson, Esq. first started interning at the motion picture production/distribution studio in 2008. Six months later, one of the Santa Monica-based studio’s projects (a little film called Twilight) was released, and things haven’t been the same since.

“Before we had a major hit, Summit had mostly just done international distribution and our notoriety in Hollywood was limited. Now I don’t have to go through an explanation of who we are and what it is we do every time I meet someone, and of course post-Twilight there was suddenly a dog pile of people trying to get hired here,” says Regan, who now serves as a Legal Consultant for the company. “The timing was very fortuitous.”

With about 150 employees on staff, Summit is an exceptionally small studio – as a result, Regan’s position covers a wide range of duties. The Film/Entertainment Business graduate is responsible for coordinating film "billing blocks" (the group of key talent and personnel names found on posters and at the end of trailers) as well as working as a part of Summit’s licensing operations.

“We license our properties to be used on everything: t-shirts, board games, cell phone content, ice cream, make-up, cardboard stand-ups – the list is endless. Each deal with each vendor must be individually negotiated and executed, often with foreign companies, and it takes a lot of coordination to make sure that a license with one company doesn’t effect another,” says Regan, who also received a Juris Doctor from Chapman University School of Law.

Regan is also involved in Summit’s co-promotion dealings, which finds the studio coordinating ad campaigns with outside partners to help promote Summit’s films. Regan points to Summit’s recent Volvo deal as a good example of the co-promotion process. “In the Twilight books, [author] Stephenie Meyer wrote that the character of Edward Cullen drives a Volvo, and we kept that in the film,” he says. “That presents an opportunity to work with the company to do something more than just have their product shown. We actually set up a Twilight Saga: New Moon-themed game on Volvo’s website; Volvo gets a promotional campaign, and our picture gets added visibility. It’s a win-win.”

While Summit has had many other projects on its plate (the company releases a total of 10-12 pictures a year, and in 2009 self-produced six films), the recent buzz around New Moon has provided some particularly memorable experiences.

“I was invited to the film’s premiere, and it was pretty surreal,” Regan says. “There were fans who’d been waiting around the theater for days. I actually happened to get to the red carpet at the same time that [New Moon star] Robert Pattinson arrived, and the sound from the crowd was deafening. I kept thinking to myself, ‘we’re a company of 150 people, how did we do this?’ It’s been an amazing phenomenon to be a part of, and it’s great to be able to watch it continue.”