2.3 Potential progression routes into the film industry and wider sector

Currently, I am studying at Boom Satsuma and am enrolled in their Professional Acting Extended Diploma. Once I finish this 2-year course, I want to go to Drama School to study a ‘BA (Hons) Acting for Stage and Screen’ course. This is so I can receive training for acting for the camera, as well as the theatre. This would be beneficial for me because while I would love to pursue a career in acting for the camera, specifically TV Shows, I still want to harness the skills for acting in theatre as it is where my passion is.

If I decided to follow my current plan to go to Drama School, I would most likely travel to London for this, although other cities (including Bristol), and international schools are a possibility also. Some of these schools include: The Bristol Old Vic, RADA, Richmond Dram School, The Bristol School of Acting, Royal Shakespeare Company or Central. I have looked at these courses because like the style of acting that they teach, and I feel that attending these courses learning the training they provide would be amazingly beneficial for me and my professional development.

Despite this being my chosen route, I have also learned throughout this course that there are many other ways into acting also, these include:

• Educational route: University / Drama School
• The Woking Route: ‘Learn on the job’. Skip Drama School and jump straight into acting jobs and work yourself up to bigger and better roles.
• Do it yourself: Create your own theatre company or production company and produce your own work. This is an extremely common method, although it usually occurs after attending Drama School or University.
• Film festivals: Creating your own work and submitting it to film festivals, hoping it would get seen.

Alongside the above, I am also going to:

• Finish creating my LinkedIn profile for professional development.
• Continue to work on my CV, gaining as much experience as I can in the industry. I can do this by being involved in as many projects as I can.
• Utilise Social Media. I am going to create an Instagram account specifically for my acting. This is so I can promote myself and my productions. I can then join networks and be made aware of opportunities.
• Compile a show reel of different material of me acting, this is so I have something of a professional standard that I can use to show my experiences and talent.
• Practice my ability to produce more Self-Tapes for auditions. I have already created self-tapes in the past, but I am going to need more experience in making them as at the moment and with the way the industry is going, self-tapes will become the norm.
• Sign myself up to numerous acting agencies: ‘Phoenix casting’ ‘Clubhouse’ ‘Mandy.com’ just to name a few.

In the future, I now have a network to which I could reach out should I want to produce my own content. I now know people who would like to work in all three phases of development and would love to create a project with them outside of BFI. I would love to explore the themes of equality vs equity and showing how everyone can be discriminated against and looking at how humans’ bond through sharing life experiences. I know there are various institutions who I can apply for funding future projects, including the BFI.

After BFI I will be joining the BFI alumni in the hope to gain more opportunities that way. I will also join the BOOM Satsuma alumni once I leave my college, this will also put me in the same network as Jane as she also works at Boom Satsuma. As well as this I will also be joining the Bristol Old Vic young company network as I intend to join the young company for the next school term.

I hope to gain opportunities from these networks such as Q&A sessions, film making and acting auditions and opportunities, or even free and unpaid work, working in a professional environment.