Venita Singh-Warner on joining the Film Forward programme

Film Forward Step Up Role: Production manager in film

Venita, who grew up in London, has a background in Special Factual Documentary production. She says she is excited for the opportunity to work in Film production. Passionate about film since childhood she says - “I remember growing up with the Saturday morning film club at the local cinema, it was the highlight of my weekend and something I’d jump out of bed for”.  It’s an enthusiasm that never dimmed and she later had ambitions to work in the film industry but thought it was something “that only very few people got into and as I had absolutely no connections, it just seemed like too much of a dream”.

Venita studied psychology at University College London and while there produced dance shows performed by fellow UCL students at the Bloomsbury Theatre. She found that that experience consolidated her desire to work in some kind of media production, to be involved in creating entertainment, and the secretarial skills she had learned in her gap year served her well when she started working in television production, first as a freelancer and then with the BBC for 12 years. Latterly she has been working as a freelance TV Line Producer in unscripted production including recently on the BBC/Disney documentary series Planet Sex With Cara Delevingne.

“My talent lies in organisation & communication; running the schedule and budget, managing the workflow, helping the team realise our creative ambitions on screen,” Venita says.

Venita, who is of Indian heritage, says she is not aware of being overtly disadvantaged by her ethnicity, but: “If you don't see people like yourself in senior positions then, subconsciously at least, you may think it's not worth applying for those jobs."

As for unconscious bias in the industry, she says: “It's perhaps inevitable, and not just about ethnicity - we all align ourselves with someone because we have something in common. We need to include everybody, but because of its freelance nature and budget constraints, it's sometimes harder in our industry. I've seen those conversations about, say, 'How do we accommodate someone with accessibility concerns, where are we going to find the budget from?'. And that's not what we should be saying, not the way we should be approaching it.”

Venita is a fan of ScreenSkills and has been on some of its training programmes before. She read about Film Forward on the ScreenSkills website, which she often points younger members of her team to for the assistance it can give them. “ScreenSkills is invaluable in helping people get into the industry and I wish it was there when I was starting out,” she says.

Upon discovering Film Forward, she was pleased to see a programme that catered to those at her career level and offered exactly the opportunities she needed to step-up. “Film Forward is a great initiative. I'm particularly pleased to see it placing value on people who are experienced, given what we can offer. It's great for me personally that there's some recognition of having transferable skills because it's very easy to go down one path in this industry and then not be able cross over to another. To have Film Forward provide mentoring is especially important; partnering with someone who is ahead of you on your career journey is a very good thing.

“People may question schemes that focus on ethnicity or diversity but I can see now that sometimes we need to do them to eventually get to a level playing field - and reach a point where we won’t need them in the future.”

Venita says she hopes Film Forward will help her see where she might fit into the film industry. “I'm looking forward to having an opportunity to see how I can have a career in the industry, be introduced to people who can guide me and to get some real experience from my work placement.

“Film Forward will help to give me focus and direction to move to the next stage of my career.”