It all started in July 2023, when I sent off a video of myself speaking for 30 seconds and some information about my apprenticeship, company, and background. In September, I was contacted by the casting agency working on behalf of the Department for Education to be part of a filming shoot in mid-October. I was understandably really excited, what could this mean – they gave me an idea that it could be billboards, adverts, posters, and banners, but I didn’t know which part of that I’d be involved in.
They sent me all the information running up to the event where I’d be off to shoot for a TV advert in Manchester in mid-October 2023. I took the 5 hour train up to Manchester one Wednesday afternoon, and stayed in a hotel overnight anxiously awaiting the call sheet they would send me later. The taxi call was 6am, and I went down to find 3 other apprentices and an actress waiting for the same mini-bus, and we were off to the set outside Manchester. We arrived at some trucks stationed outside in the car park of an old school being used as the set and got some breakfast from the truck outside. The truck had been converted into a canteen area, I had never seen that before, felt like I was on the set of something really exciting. I got taken to wardrobe to show them which clothes I was wearing and had to get changed into some new clothing as I was told the director didn’t agree with skinny jeans. The shoot was fascinating – so completely different to my life at IBM – watching the camera, lighting, and staging crew asking extras to walk up and down stairs multiple times took ages but was really interesting to see how this was all put together. I was featured in the classroom scene, along with Harrison and Bolu, and I was seated next to the main actress, and my job was to greet her as she sat down. The video will be put at the end of this blog, and the photos below.
I felt really excited coming out of the shoot, not knowing how it was going to be edited together and whether I was going to be part of the edit. As part of this, I was then asked lots of information from the PR company about my experience as an apprentice and my story. They absolutely loved that I had completed two apprenticeships at various stages of my career and it really gave me a boost to be recognised for the achievements that I’d made. Consequently, they’ve featured me in multiple places: CareerMag, the local radio lunchtime news, and 4 international news outlets.
