Make-Up and SFX - Post Graduate Stories
UCEN Manchester graduate Rebecca Douglas talks about how her time at our School of Art, Media and Make-up prepared her for a career in the industry.
Rebecca completed a Foundation Degree in SFX Make-up Artistry and then converted it to a BA (Hons) in Media Make-up Artistry.
Since graduating, Rebecca has done lots of TV work and has ambition to do some work in theatre alongisde that. She had opportunities to gain work experience with theatre production companies during her time at UCEN Manchester, and she says she is still in touch with the contacts she met.
Her advice for any potential students thinking about studying at our School of Art, Media and Make-up would be open to every opportunity that comes your way, and to take advantage of the facilities and tutors at UCEN Manchester to explore all your options.
Video Transcript
My name's Rebecca Douglas. I studied my foundation degreein special effects makeup artistry.
I did my top-up bachelor year in media makeup artistry. I graduated in 2018.
The career I'm pursuing at the moment is to kind of dip my toe in a few things, and I'm wanting to do a bit of TV, bit of film as well. I'm doing a little bit of TV here and there at the moment, but I'd also love to do some theatre now everything is picking back up.
Yeah, some work that I've done. I've done a lot of, I've done a fair few commercials. They seem to be quite popular in this area as well, which is great, so for local football grounds I'm sure you'll know, like Manchester United, and I've done like local, even just restaurants and brands. There's lots of opportunities for that, and TV up here as well.
I think the facilities here were amazing. To be fair, we had, we had options to pretty much try anything that we wanted and even things we'd not considered before. So whether it was related to hair or costume even, we had lots of things that we could have a little play with. It did make it easier when we went out there, just because I feel like nothing, nothing scared you.
I think we're very lucky with the tutors we had to be fair, they took us down lots of different paths, there were some tutors that were good for different things as well.
We learnt a lot and yeah,things like I said that I never thought I would be able to do. I loved how creative it was. You could... any idea was, was accepted, and you could run with it as much as you wanted. You could go crazy above and beyond, and they loved that actually, they loved how original you could be.
I chose this career to... I do like making people feel more confident. I like to create characters quite a lot and get the creativity side of things. I like the freedom that you get and to make people feel good before they go on the set, before they go on to shoot.
I liked UCEN Manchester for the opportunities that it brought to you. So I even did my first competition when I was in my final year here, which was a great opportunity. All the... just all the things that you're like able to go to, and we work a lot closely with all the other campuses, so e.g. the film school you've got like close by and even theatres, so you can really try everything.
So when I was here I got opportunities to do a lot of work experience of theatre productions, especially ones passing through Manchester, and that is something that even still now I speak to the contacts that I made then. Networking is such a great thing, and you can actually do it in this area.
Advice I would give to someone thinking of studying here would be to be open to every opportunity you get. Don't say no to anything and don't leave narrow minded thinking you know exactly what you want to do. There's so many options out there and thankfully you've got the facilities and the people that will guide you.
