 Whether you're finding your way into the world of work, progressing in your career, or starting something new, there's an apprenticeship for you. You can do a job you love, earn a wage, learn in a way that suits you. Make a genius decision, become an apprentice. With an apprenticeship, you'll earn as you learn. You'll work alongside experienced staff. You'll develop your job specific skills. You'll gain a nationally recognised qualification. You'll have access to further development and progression opportunities. From small start-ups to multinational organisations, from GCSE level to degree level, from age 16 and over, with 23 sectors to choose from, there's an apprenticeship to suit everyone and they come with clear benefits. You'll be entitled to holiday pay, to dedicated study time, to a full package of support, to equal opportunities, whatever your circumstances. Visit gov.wales slash apprenticeshipswales or call 0800 028 48 44. Apprenticeships, a genius decision. One of the 23 apprenticeship sectors is the creative industry and this industry will be our focus in this resource. Theatre Genedatial Cymru is the Welsh language national theatre of Wales and we primarily produce productions in Welsh and we tour across the country to different venues, to theatres and we also do site-specific productions as well. So in Theatre Genedatial Cymru we like to mentor and develop and encourage people into the industry and not so long ago we had an apprentice for a year. It was a technical apprenticeship and that apprentice had a wide introduction to the theatre. I'm Morgan Jayson-Lampiller, I'm 18 now and I've just completed an apprenticeship with Theatre Genedatial Cymru, a year-long apprenticeship about technical, stage, lighting. So I'm now freelance and I'm working out in the industry and I'm loving it. I think it was just after a load of work experience with a company I just decided that, well, and from their advice as well that I should take an apprenticeship. I actually went for the apprenticeship because one of the guys I was on work experiences at the time tagged me in one of the job application forms on the internet and so from there I went and looked on the website and quite quickly just decided that that was for me and that I went for it quite quickly. Atard was actually the first production I witnessed to see it again so every time I walked into the practice room or anywhere I just learned something new. I learnt a load of professional skills so how exactly to do things and actually doing things properly and working towards theatre standard. So I was actually asked to go on tour with Estron about halfway through my apprenticeship and yeah I actually I really enjoyed it. I worked on Estron as a technician assistant so Theatre Gen had a technician and he needed just a little bit of help so I was working with him just helping out doing anything. So I did lights, I did sound, a little bit of video and just helping out. On nurses I was actually a sound number two. I learned loads about sound but also just about theatres again just going into different theatres in different ways you know speaking to different technicians and just the way they've done things. I think an apprenticeship is just hands-on and a learning experience while getting actually paid. You get challenged with different things and every day you learn a little bit more and yes when you're doing this while you're getting paid and while people you mean like looking at you and seeing what you're doing and going oh okay I'd allow three qualification in stage sound and lighting. It gave me a little bit of independence because maybe the first time you did something there was somebody doing it with you or helping you out. The second time then they were just watching you doing it and just giving you okay you need to do a little bit of this by the third or fourth time then you're on your own and I think that's just great preparation for going out in the industry. I think it was just great making networks within the kind of industry just because once you finish your apprenticeship then these are the people that can help you out. What else I loved was just being a part of the team and just being friends with everyone and everyone was just trying to you know egg you on, get you a little bit better, make you do things jobs a little bit better, tidy up your work and everything like that. I think they're one of the best ways to actually get into the industry just go for it. As you can see Morgan enjoyed his experience at theatre again at Leith Dahl and has kind of found his little niche and what he enjoys within the theatre and there are many roles within theatre itself but also the production department with stage management, sound, lighting, costume, a variety of jobs and roles. Morgan has since gone on to work within the sound department in the industry which is great. Hi I'm Dan Lawrence and I'm a sound designer and a music composer for theatre. So a theatre sound designer will need technical skills and creative skills to work on a theatre production. Creatively as a sound designer I'll be talking to the artistic director and the lighting designer and the set designer, costume designer, all the designers all the creators as we call them about how the show is going to sound and look and feel. It might be modern and edgy and minimalist or it might be a period piece that needs to reflect the era that it's set in. It could be a musical or a pantomime all kinds of things. Have a look at this clip it's just a simple scene change but notice how the sound and the lights complement the beautiful symmetry of the set. Even the stage assistants have matching costumes and their movements on and off stage are really tightly choreographed so they don't trip over each other and the sound is timed precisely with the lights so that it happens the same way each night. I will also be talking to the production team about technical stuff. Are we going to be in one venue or touring? Is there a band and where will they go? What speakers and microphones and mixing desks do we need and do we need to hire them in and what's the budget that how much do we have to spend on it? Do we need to hire people in to help rigging it all up? Look at these two pictures a production can be as small as one actor on stage with a chair or it can be as big as a west end musical with cast of 40 and a full orchestra. The sound requirements are going to mirror this. I'm going to show you a few examples now how sound works on a theater production and how I approach composing and designing sound for a show. This is a show called Dredwen that was from 2018 and the company is Kimera and they're a circus company so this is a show that incorporated circus skills and dance and storytelling into a theater show. We're carrying some props on there as we enter the stage the beautifully lit those stripes in the back are different kind of hangings and things the set itself is all kind of metal kind of scaffolding bar stuff and it goes together like a big piece of machado so this aerialist here is doing some beautiful work on a rope and I'm playing some live music to match it but if I change the music this is music from another part of the show it changes the mood now it sounds a lot more sinister and if I try this wow that's just wrong this is the scene that that sinister music was used in and this gives a nice example of how the sound and lights can work nicely together the lights they are shining against the the set and making those beautiful shadows in the background there's pre-recorded sound in there we've got our live musician me on there playing different shakers and guitars and things through a microphone and plugged in there'll be a lot of different sound effects happening in a second so they're visual cues when they see that thing happening and dance so these three black boxes at the front of the stage monitor speakers so that performers can hear the music and dance time to it here we've got the original recording and I've recorded this in Logic Pro up here we can see the drums that's all the drums there you've got a bass that's a fake bass a sample and then we've got real guitar it's got a mixing desk in there it's got lots of different effects really handy too Logic Pro you've got thousands of different instruments in there and lots of different loops that you can just throw in there you can use it as a DJ you can use it for remixing you can use it for recording bands I record most of myself in Logic there but for actually running a show in a theatre production live we use another piece of software called QLab so let's take a closer look at QLab itself this is QLab here this is what we use for queuing sound during a theatre show but you can also queue lights and video queues and captions and subtitles and things like that it's a very versatile piece of software and this is called a QStack these are all our individual queues we've got 49 queues in this show including pre-show music and after-show music and we're going to be looking at Q21 and 22 which is in size if we open that we've got quite a few things going on in here we've got some piano music it's a bit spacey in the middle we have got some spooky music some kind of like bell backwards bell sound effects and we have got some atmospherics happening we've got a seagull and I think you'll notice here that there's a little delay on this when it comes in this column here means that you can put delays on everything and that means that you can time everything beautifully and tell it when it's going to happen within this whole sound queue so you'll notice when I play it in a minute everything will come in at different times and when it does start playing you can see it kind of runs out here when it gets to the end it stops you can also loop things around so they keep on going as well okay and the other things are these two snaps here now these snaps are they correspond with the lighting changes um so if I play one of these so those kind of noises there hopefully will match up with the lights so I'm looking at my script here and I can see that we've got two visual cue points here Q21 if we look at this here is going to happen during this scene change here when this fella he's going to look at him for a couple of seconds and then we're going to cue the music and he's waiting to hear the piano before he turns and leaves and our second cue Q22 is going to happen when this guy here's put his plate down and he starts leaving and when he just gets past that chair that's we're going to that's when we're going to cue some Q22 okay this is again from the show that we saw earlier this is called atard by theater again uh done in 2018 okay let's try it there you go off he goes first lighting state coming up now we'll hear some seagull and some garden and you're going to come on and they're going to lay the table and I'll get ready for my second cue when he puts his plate down off he goes and cue and we'll see if it matches up people get into theater in different ways you may have done drama in school and you might go on to university or drama college and study of course in technical theater and your cover sound and lights and set design and props building and stage management and all those things and you can you know you can specialise in each one of those as you want to you can also follow an apprenticeship path where you'll learn all of these things in a real working environment in a real theater on real plays and you'll get paid for it whilst you're learning so what's not to like about that the sound in particular you may have a background in music or composition or you might play in a band and you can get a theater job based on those skills and of course there's loads of other jobs in a theater as well you've got box office you've got your marketing you've got your ushers you've got set builders behind the scenes you can get jobs like that based on your skills and your experience and what your interests are it's a great place to work there's so much going on there so I hope that's given you a taste of working in the sound department in a theater and if sound isn't your thing remember there are plenty of other jobs in a theater that need doing too I think this is the perfect place for an apprenticeship because we're always looking for doers people that want to do people that want to be hands-on people want to tell studies this an apprenticeship works in a way that you're there from day one you've got a 12-month contract within the company doing a job hopefully that you love and having a wage while you're doing it and you also get a qualification so I would say your company is the place to be if you want an apprenticeship in the media industry we are the only people that offer this we're the only people that offer this kind of apprenticeship we're based within the industry the assessors come from the industry we understand the industry inside out and I also like to consider us as the kind of the naughty ante in the middle if you like we're friends with the apprentice we offer the past personal care the wraparound care but we also know the industry really well so if there aren't any problems we can easily be that middleman crew is a brand new scheme that we've started this year we piloted it last year actually and it worked really well it's a production scheme where productions can actually have apprentices for the length of the production and for the whole 12 months so it can be anything from a couple of weeks to four or five six seven eight months even which means that it's much easier for a production to take an apprentice particularly proud of my former apprentices I find myself being there like a proud parent I suppose when I see what they've done samples of people that have stellar careers ahead of them I think and Zara is one example who's going to vote really far my name is Zara Irami I'm originally from Anglesey currently living in Cardiff and I am a digital journalist for ITV Wales so after the apprenticeship I've been lucky enough to keep my job at ITV Wales so firstly I went on a traineeship with Hans Paderac and now I am working on a short series of digital documentaries for Hans which is something that is totally different than what Hans usually do and just being involved with creating content for young people around my age and younger that people will sort of resonate with is really exciting and something that I've always wanted to do so I've always been a creative person and always wanted to be involved in a creative industry but I didn't know how that was going to manifest in my career I've always been not the most academic person school wasn't my favourite place but I've always been someone who learns more from more practical things like I've always had jobs outside of school that I was involved in or projects and that's kind of where I was able to sort of learn on the job and I think that sort of environment just suited me to the team that's why I think the apprenticeship was perfect because it meant that I could learn on the job learn from other people in the field it made it a lot more appealing so the apprenticeship that I went forward it won based in the creative and digital field and so I went into a more journalistic role but it was open to sort of all sorts of roles and so I know that a few of the people have had specific roles working within the industry as a grip or like a camera operator on radio but in 90 weeks Wales it was kind of an open role so that meant that we could try everything which was amazing so you could have one week where you'd be shadowing the camera operator another week where you'd be in the studio or in the gallery or shadowing a digital journalist so you really got to put your feet in every sort of pool just to see where you sort of work best and that was one of the best parts for me in terms of finding my sort of journalistic flair as you as you as I was a it was definitely better than I expected the apprenticeship because I think everyone kind of thinks of apprenticeships as something like engineering or like plumbing or something like that something sort of that you in a more I suppose a more practical workplace but the the opportunity to do that in a tv and film industry was just like quite exciting I think another misconception when you think about apprenticeships is that it's of a lower pay grade than maybe an average job but I went from like a manager position at a retail job to an apprenticeship and the pay was kind of similar or the same um but I was kind of it was mind blowing for me that I could gain a qualification get job like a very like hands-on job in a creative industry and get paid for it and I was just like how lucky could it be? So anyone thinking of going on and taking an apprenticeship opportunity just go for it but just have confidence and be yourself and there's always something you can offer um that they might not have thought of I owe my career now working for the Wales to doing an apprenticeship if you've left school want to change career or are ready to return to the world of work make a genius decision and become an apprentice you learn a wage receive hands-on training and gain a nationally recognised qualification you'll also develop the skills that businesses need now and in the future find out what an apprenticeship can do for you and your career search apprenticeships wales genius decision or call 0800 028 48 44