Alice Seabright

When I left university, the one tangible skill I had that might be relevant to the world of film was editing. I knew how to cut something together, and I had a basic understanding of deliverables. So I got a job as an assistant in a digital media company in the editing department. I edited promos, sizzle reels, internal videos, and generally just did whatever needed doing. I love editing even when the work isn’t that exciting, it’s just so much fun. I learnt much more about codecs than I did about filmmaking, but it was a job and I was being paid. After just under a year though, I got a bit demoralised and didn’t know how on earth to progress or what to do, and I got into a bit of a rut (that is a euphemism for being completely depressed!). 

I ended up getting out of my rut by getting out of the UK. On a whim, I wrote to a documentary filmmaker and journalist in India and asked if he needed an assistant. He said yes, and off I went to Delhi for four months where I did research for his articles and made a really strange promotional video for the Bombay Chamber of Commerce. After that, I took the small amount of money I had saved up over the last year and a bit since graduating and, with my partner who is also a filmmaker (we met at university, being the only overlapping members of the Psychology course and the Film Society), we travelled around South East Asia for two months. I say travelled, but in actual fact we found a series of places to hole ourselves up and write, because even including flights, we could live there for two months on the amount of money we would have spent in three weeks in London. I’d been writing for a number of years now but never seriously, and had never written anything longer than about 20 pages. This was the first time that I really tried to be a writer, to treat it like a day job, and to see what would come from it. This was a dream time, but of course it had to end and soon I was back in London, deep into my overdraft and with some scripts that were too expensive to make.

Back in London, I tried once again to get a job in the film industry and really struggled. I’m lucky that one of my grandmothers lives in London and she agreed to let me stay with her for nearly a year, which meant I was able to get through a couple of months of earning very little money – looking for jobs, doing some freelance work here and there, making a few more little shorts, each for a budget of about £20. I applied to film school and didn’t get in. I reached out to producers and production companies to try and get any kind of entry-level job. Eventually, just as I was totally running out of money, I got a one-month internship and this is where I got incredibly lucky (you’ll see there’s a LOT of luck in this story, as well as perseverance). One week into that internship, the person I was working with told me she was leaving her job and they didn’t have a replacement. So I learnt everything from her and when she left, they hired me by default. I was an assistant at that company, which was in the process of imploding, for about a year. The job was a lot of diary management, making coffees, organising and filing paperwork, photocopying etc. But it was within the offices of a talent agency, and through this proximity, I learnt a huge amount. I got to know the work of everyone they represented, having access to all of their scripts and links. I read all the scripts coming in for consideration for their cast. I would sit in on the weekly company meeting in which projects and jobs would get discussed. This was how I got an understanding of the industry.

It was also how I heard about the next job I ended up getting, which was as a development assistant for a really brilliant production company. I probably learnt more from this job than any other. Again, the job involved a lot of admin. But I was also reading all the submissions to the company, keeping track of emerging directors and writers, going to see National Film and Television School graduation shows (which inspired me so much), reading drafts of company projects by incredible writers. I also really concentrated on writing during this time. I would get into the office an hour and a half early most mornings and write. I was lucky that my colleagues knew this was what I wanted to do, which meant that I was able to share drafts with them. I cringe now at how inexperienced I was and how kind and generous they were to read me, but their encouragement was a huge part of making me think I should keep going. 

After nearly three years at that company, I hit another serious rut and realised I had to leave. I was getting to meet lots of great people who worked in the industry I wanted to be in, but I was seen as a development person not a filmmaker, and every time I met a filmmaker for the company, I just felt I was on the wrong side of the table. If I wanted to be taken seriously, I needed to show the world I was serious. 

So I decided to quit. Just before leaving, I managed to get an agent for my writing work, again thanks to the support of my colleagues, which was a necessary psychological boost for me. But I just sat on that agent’s list and didn’t even really get any meetings. I was still not earning a penny from filmmaking, although I had managed to save a bit over the last three years by sharing a small room in a very large house (my rent was £275 a month!), and being very frugal. I moved out of London and lived with family for about eighteen months, then eventually moved back to London. During that whole time I worked mostly as a temp receptionist and PA, as well as in a restaurant and as an occasional support worker in a homeless shelter. It was an exhausting few years and I was constantly either working for money, or working on my film work, but I actually found it easier having day jobs that were nothing to do with film, which I didn’t have to take home with me, and which were flexible.

I wrote lots during this time, and got my first short film funded by Film London. I started to develop work with production companies, changed agents, and interviewed for many directing jobs (none of which I got). I felt committed to this career, but I wasn’t getting anywhere, and was still earning money entirely from other work. 

At this point, I applied to a scheme run the National Film and Television School (NFTS). It was a free course designed to support female and diverse filmmakers, and in which I got to develop and make a short film. This was a bumpy road – it was the first year they’d run the course and the parameters were shifting, so the script I developed over months was not able to be made and at the last minute I had to write something more contained and more achievable on budget. But the experience of making the film was amazing, and it led to one of my luckiest breaks of all. I’d got to know the people at the NFTS and a few months after making the film with them I got a call from the new head of the school telling me that one of their directors on the Directing Fiction MA had dropped out and they needed someone to replace them. This came along with a scholarship. 

The following year was incredibly hard and incredibly worthwhile. I was 29 and living in Walthamstow, which meant almost a two hour commute each way to get to Beaconsfield where the school is. Although the fees were paid for by the scholarship, I still needed to covered my living expenses. I borrowed money and was also continuing to do occasional temping, plus I had a few writing commissions which were a godsend financially but nearly broke me in terms of managing the workload. 

I went into the school thinking I knew a lot and quickly saw sense. The teachers there are amazing and really pushed me. I came in with no preparation and immediately had to make a first short film, followed by my graduation film. No time to think, I just had to write and jump into making them. I also applied for the school’s kickstarter scheme and ended up making a third short film straight after my grad film. I made more mistakes that year than in the rest of my filmmaking combined, and in some ways I found the process very painful. At multiple points that year, I spent an evening in the foetal position thinking I was a bad filmmaker. I should JUST. GIVE. UP. But now I look back on it as a year of risk-taking and discovery. What I learned from the things I got wrong were lessons that I still carry with me. 

After that, the combination of having spent a number of years building up contacts in the industry, developing material, and going up for jobs, with my recent graduation from the NFTS, meant that things then happened quite fast for me. I got my first TV job directing on Sex Education shortly after, and the pilot script I’d been working on with the BBC during and after my time at the NFTS got the go ahead. Thirteen years after I left secondary school, ten years after first deciding to build a career in film, I’ve now been earning money from writing and directing for just over a year, and the future looks bright, although I know there will be many more obstacles ahead.