Supporting the skills development of early-mid career practitioners in key creative roles by providing hands-on learning opportunities, Film Victoria’s Key Talent Placement program has seen many of its recipients go on to secure employment with Victoria’s leading screen businesses. The latest addition is Paddy Macrae, a budding screenwriter who made an impression on the Matchbox team during his writer placement in 2017.
Supervised by Debbie Lee, Director of Scripted Development at Matchbox, Paddy completed a broad spectrum of tasks over the course of his one-year placement. He performed pitch writing, schedule and budget management, contributed to the writers’ room and took part in strategic future planning. At the outset Debbie and Paddy had mapped out objectives and goals for review upon placement completion of his placement. When the pair sat down and went through the plan at the end of the placement, they saw that many of the objectives of the plan had not only been achieved, they had been exceeded.
Debbie Lee said: “Paddy exceeded the goals of the initial plan in that we were able to get one of his projects into development with a network. He was also able to develop a couple of his personal projects that he brought to the table which we hope to pitch in the near future into the market.”
Paddy is now able to build on the skills he’s gained so far and extend the work he contributed to on his placement. Talking about the experience and his pathway Paddy said, “I'm absolutely thrilled to be moving from Film Victoria’s Key Talent Placement straight into an ongoing role in Scripted Development at Matchbox. It's a total dream to take my career to the next stage at a company with such a demonstrable commitment to story, culture and talent development.”
For more information on placement opportunities sign up for our e-news and check our Business/Skills Support Program page.