JOB: Freelance Director

QUALIFICATION: Bachelor of Performing and Screen Arts (Directing and Writing for Screen and Theatre)

"I'd say the career and programme chose me! I've always been into telling stories. As a director I'm very proud of how well my team, idiotvision, did in the V48HOURS Furious Filmmaking competition. Last year, Peter Jackson selected our short film 'Confessions of a Fabricator' as a wildcard entry for the Grand National Final. It ended up being the Grand National Runner-up! The year before, our film 'The Revenger' was chosen by Peter Jackson and Guillermo del Toro as a wildcard entry for the Grand National Final. At the moment I'm in post-production on my first short film with a very decent budget. Once the short is finished I'm planning to enter it into some festivals and use it as a pitch for the feature version of the story.

Do a few projects before you start, even if it's with a few friends and the family camcorder. It'll become apparent pretty quickly if you have the patience and ability to work on directing or writing projects for three years full-time. And while you're on the programme use the equipment and the fantastic facilities at every waking moment. I look at my first films before I was enrolled at Unitec - at the time I thought there was nothing I could improve and thought 'what else is there to know?'. Pretty soon I learned 'a lot!'"