EIT Springboards a Career in Film

EIT Springboards a Career in Film

For filming whiz Aleisha Staples, the springboard to a dream job working on cruise ships in the Caribbean and along the North America coast was training in video and electronic media at EIT Hawke’s Bay.

From Taradale, the 22-year-old recently snatched a fortnight’s break back in Hawke’s Bay before jetting off on her next adventure – a self-funded year filming in South America.

Basing herself in Chile, Aleisha will also travel to Argentina, Brazil, Peru and Mexico, all the while catching up with friends made while working as a videographer on board the Caribbean Princess.

Her job for the cruise company was making videos of land-based tours to help passengers decide how to make best use of their time in such exotic destinations as New York, Boston, Puerto Rico, Bermuda, the Virgin Islands and The Turks and Caicos Islands.

“It was a crazy good time,” she says of shipboard life. “I definitely wouldn’t have been able to start at that level without the skills I picked up at EIT. I was doing the same stuff as when I was a student but getting paid for it.”

After completing her two-year diploma programme, Aleisha moved to Auckland to work for Colenso BBDO, one of New Zealand’s biggest advertising agencies. She started as a production assistant, and after six months was promoted to TV editor.

Making many well-known television commercials for two years she felt was a solid enough start to her cv. Travel beckoned. After applying online to work on a liner, she parked the thought and was rather taken aback when she heard from the cruise company.

“A lady rang a week later and two weeks after that I was on a plane to Puerto Rico. So it was really fast. I could travel, work and get paid for it all at the same time!”

Aleisha says the family lore is that she was interested in filming from age two – “I loved working out how things you see on TV were made to look the way they did.”

As a student at Taradale Intermediate, she used the school’s television studio and that confirmed where she wanted to head her life.

“I knew I needed a course of some kind if I was to have any hope of getting a job in the media industry. The EIT diploma was very hands on, and exactly what’s needed for working in the media.

“I don’t think the programme is as well-known in Hawke’s Bay as it deserves to be.

“We covered all aspects of filming – operating a camera, sound engineering, scriptwriting, editing and set building. You have to know how to be resourceful when you’re out filming so we even learned how to repair our equipment.”

Aleisha packs a camera wherever she goes, so home is fast filling up with footage of places she’s been and things she’s seen. Eventually she hopes to use the tapes to make documentaries.

“I would like to keep working on the editing side of things as I love the technical part of cutting and seeing something come to life in front of you,” she says. “Ultimately I want to get more into cutting together music videos or movie trailers.”

ENDS

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