Sometimes, with hard work comes a big reward.

Senior film majors Michael Altman and Jay Buim learned this firsthand last week when they traveled to Park City, Utah, for the Sundance Film Festival.

They worked as interns last summer on The Squid and the Whale, a semi-autobiographical account of the breakup of writer-director Noah Baumbach's parents in 1980s New York.

The film's producers invited Altman and Buim to come to the festival to do a small amount of chauffeuring work, but also to give them a chance to meet celebrities, go to upscale parties and attend a variety of screenings including the world premiere of The Squid and the Whale.

"That was the first time we saw it, and it seriously blew us away," Altman said of seeing the film. "It was surreal. You take these separate moments and you remember them doing the dialogue over and over again and you're like 'hey, I was hiding behind that area, watching it play out.'"

Buim agreed that watching a film he had been helping to get made for five weeks was a unique experience.

"It was just a trip watching it," he said, adding that his enjoyment of the film "wasn't just because we were involved with it. It was honestly the best movie we saw there... When the movie comes out, I think a lot of people are going to enjoy it."

The official Sundance Jury enjoyed it and expressed their enjoyment by honoring Baumbach with the award for directing as well as for screenwriting.

Past winners of the directing award at Sundance include Joel Coen and Morgan Freeman; films that won the screenwriting award include You Can Count on Me and Memento, both of which went on to be nominated for the Best Original Screenplay Academy Award.

Altman said he wasn't surprised by the awards The Squid and the Whale won, because it had a very positive buzz at the festival.

"I knew he'd win something," he said. "As we were walking around or on a bus ride, if we heard people mention the name Squid and the Whale we would listen in to see what they thought about it and it seemed everyone who saw it enjoyed it."

The night of the premiere, the producers extended an invitation to Altman and Buim for the official premiere party.

"It was fun," Buim said. "It was great, because it was open bar, free drinks. My favorite thing was not just seeing famous people but hanging out with people we worked on the movie with this summer."

The producers, assistant directors and other creative contributors for The Squid and the Whale introduced Buim and Altman to several celebrities, including John C. Reilly, Steve Buscemi and Adrian Grenier, star of HBO's Entourage, who was in the process of shooting a future episode that will be set at Sundance.

"He was a really genuinely nice guy," Buim said of Grenier. "It wasn't like a type of thing like 'oh man, can I have your autograph, can I take a picture with you?' We were just hanging out at a bar, like you'd hang out with anybody."

Buim added that Entourage's costume designer, who also designed the costumes for The Squid and the Whale, has agreed to use T-shirts from Buim's Philadelphia-based clothing company on the show.

But one the most memorable aspects of the experience, Buim said, were the screenings.

"There was a certain energy at the premieres," he said. "People are definitely way more reactive towards the films [than audiences at conventional movie theaters]."

Altman agreed that watching movies at Sundance gave him some perspective about the film world.

"Right now the theaters are just over-saturated with these bad horror movies," he said. "The production quality is so high that they don't focus on the story and what's at work, but [with Sundance entries] they start from a good script and you can tell the director is really involved with the project."

Buim, who is working with Altman on their senior film project, said the experience was inspirational.

"I wasn't really into movies that much anymore," Buim said. "After seeing so many interesting movies in a short period of time, it's just got me back into liking movies again and I'm really excited to get back to working on our senior film. It's just totally re-energized everything."

The Squid and the Whale does not have a distribution date yet, because the producers have not decided on a definite distributor, but its success at the festival almost guarantees it will be released in some capacity, even if its engagement only extends to a few U.S. cities.