Our guest apprentice Blogger Thomas Lane recounts his impressions of his first placement at post production company Sumners on Vision+Media's Advanced Apprenticeship in Creative and Digital Media scheme.
"For my first placement period I was placed at the post production company Sumners in Manchester, I was very optimistic about this placement and looked forward to getting some first hand experience within a large company.
On my first day I was introduced to the staff, they made me feel very welcome and answered all the questions I had, this helped me gain a better understanding of how the company is ran and what they expected from me.
Initially I worked as a Runner, this mainly consisted of looking after clients throughout the day and also included some tape finds and pickups from the BBC. Aside from the Runner role I also learnt a lot more about the industry from talking to both members of staff and clients.
After a few weeks my line manager started to put me in different areas of the company. Firstly I was working with the Technical Runners who handle any technical problems within the building, after I had learnt about that particular job role I was then given a chance to sit in an editing suite which was a great experience for me. The editors I shadowed gave me a lot of information about how the editing software AVID works and how they go about their job.
I then went on to a dubbing room for a day, this was very interesting for me because I had not really thought about sound as a career choice, I enjoyed this very much and it was good for me to see more of the editing side of things than just the visual images.
On my final day I was working in a grading suite, this again was an area I had never explored previously, I learnt a lot from everyone who works in the suite and really enjoyed that day.
Overall I am very pleased with the way the placement went, everybody there was really nice and made everything as easy as possible for me by answering any questions I had."
