Set Ready, in conjunction with Screen Manchester and ScreenSkills held its latest two day free training programme for young people wanting to break into the TV and film production industry. Set Ready aims to connect talent with opportunities and create training, networking and learning pipelines. This in turn, supports more diversity in the UK’s film crews.
The trainees were given professional advice by industry experts including lead trainer EJ Richards, Senior Location Manager whose recent projects have included superhero thriller Secret Invasion for Disney / Marvel, which will be released early 2023 and the darkly comic series The Baby for Sister for HBO/Sky. More released projects include Shondaland, the Netflix TV drama Bridgerton, and Batman drama Pennyworth for Warner Bros. Alongside Ed was Louise Read, Location Scout, for film, TV drama and TV commercials. Louise’s credits include It’s a Sin, Coronation Street, Shameless, as well as ad spots for Nike, McDonalds, BT, Adidas, National Lottery, Vauxhall and Coca-cola. Our guest speaker on the Manchester course was Vic Ramsden who came through the ScreenSkills First Break course and worked in locations on the Sky One Drama, Brassic.
Set Ready course attendees can then look forward to one on one support as they navigate their first jobs as work placement trainees.The Manchester cohort of young people got to experience working on set for the filming of the BBC ‘s new Boiling Point series. Filming of the five part series began in Manchester on 30th January, with Stephen Graham posting a photo on his Instagram account to mark the start of the shoot.
Our feedback shows that the knowledge and confidence our trainees gain from working on professional productions means they are in a much better position to succeed in their chosen role. Amongst the Set Ready graduates, Oscar Tsui was singled out for special praise from the locations team manager, who he worked with to manage over 70 extras for a ‘nightclub shoot’. Their feedback was really positive: “Oscar is a grafter! He was keen to get into the thick of everything with us and was a great help over the two days. The team all said how well he fitted in and admired how involved he got.” The experienced location team summed up Oscar’s commitment: “He has great potential to go far in the industry if he continues with that level of enthusiasm and commitment.”