Production Apprentice Review

The nature of the apprenticeship means that you travel round different departments for 9 weeks at a time. Every day is completely different, working with new teams on different projects, especially when covering on the day news. You are made to feel a valued member of the team as you are given massive responsibility and trust to do tasks and carry out key jobs. The people you work with are very generous with their time and they are always willing to show you how to work something or spend the time helping you which is completely invaluable when you are trying to learn in a new environment. I often go out on location to film or conduct interviews which gives me a chance to meet interesting and diverse people that I probably would never have met before but you also get the opportunity to work on longer form projects at various different points in the production timeline.

I have learnt many new skills by immersing myself in tasks that I have never done before. I confidently can use industry standard cameras and filming equipment and I can edit audio and video across many different software's. I have edited and filmed videos that have been featured on social media and Reporting Scotland, I have also written and recorded bulletins for radio programs and conducted interviews on my own. These are all tasks I had no experience of before becoming an apprentice yet in such a short space of time I am able to be given the responsibility to work on or create important output.

I have thoroughly enjoyed my apprenticeship so far, I have had many great experiences and I have been given the opportunity to work on some outstanding teams and programs of which I have learnt above and beyond what I believed possible. There is yet to be a task or a job that I haven't liked as I have learnt so much from every placement and job that I have been asked to do.

The scheme is very structured, you follow 5 x 9 week placements and also get to take time out of your placement to work on big projects like Celtic Connections, Children in Need and the Edinburgh Festival. You go to college on the last 2 days of every month and have regular meetings with your college lecturer and scheme manager.

We have access to many support systems within our placement. We have our line manager which looks over the whole scheme and we meet for monthly progress meetings and receive feedback from them on placements. We have our placement managers which change every time we move department and they are responsible for us whilst we are on placements in departments and usually set up rotas and talk to different teams about us doing placements with them. We have our mentors which are usually established members of staff that we can go to with any questions, problems or queries we may have and we have our buddies which are often previous apprentices which we can also talk to about any questions, problems or queries we may have.

We receive reasonable support from our college lecturer, we meet them every two weeks to go over college work and also go to college 2 days a month. A lot of the units are very rigid and we usually just have to refer to guides on how to answer the questions rather than being taught them by the lecturer.

I have learnt a lot more by being in placements and as stated before the units are very rigid so a lot of the time you are referring to guides on how to answer the questions rather than being taught what the answer to the question actually is. The units also are sometimes hindering, they ask for you to provide a lot of evidence for very medial tasks which is often very time consuming to find and frustrating to do.

The access to external events is spectacular, we get to work on very exciting projects such as Children in Need, Celtic Connections, EBU Conference, Anniversary Ceilidh and numerous networking events which are always very exciting and rewarding to work on. We are given fabulous opportunities to work on external events with teams all around the building.

Yes

You gain a vast depth of experience and skills in many different areas and there are opportunities all over the building to get involved with many different projects, teams and outputs. I would not hesitate to recommend the scheme to anyone who is passionate about the media and who has a strong work ethic.

The advice I would give is be yourself, through every stage of the application process and in your daily life; don't try to dress up your skills or experience to what you perceive to be impressive, just be honest and your passion for the media and work ethic will shine through. I would say to anyone that's successful in the application process, this is a once and a lifetime opportunity so make the absolute most of it and be very open to learning as much as you possibly can. You must maintain a very strong work ethic and soak in as much as you can possibly learn from the scheme as there are sometimes long or difficult days but they are absolutely worth it.