Case Study

From a young age I have always had a passion for, and wanted a career in, the arts. I am an actress and performer and I chose to study at Sunderland because it gave me the opportunity to study a degree that covers both on-screen acting and on-set jobs such as camera operator, director and editor. Sunderland was the only place that offered me the degree I wanted to study to get into the industry.

My favourite module was Live TV Performance as my main two passions are acting and directing. The module gave me the experience of directing a full live episode of Coronation Street and pushed me to think about directing and the challenges directors face. I learned about camera floor plans and live mixing which allowed me to add another skill to my tool kit. As well as directing I got to act too, exploring emotion memory and Stanislavski by playing an emotional character."

After graduating in 2022, Katie landed a job working as a 3rd Assistant Director (AD) on iconic ITV soap, Coronation Street. Her new role includes coordinating extras, preparing and cueing them as well as directing them in any required background action. She says, “I feel very grateful every time I am at Coronation Street. It’s such a lovely team of cast and crew to be a part of and everyone is very down to earth. The most recent storyline I’ve been working on is about Max and Griff’s gang and the issues around far-right extremism. I was 3rd AD for a lot of the larger crowd scenes, where the bomb exploded.”

In 2021, Katie started her career as a Runner on Season 9 of CBBC’s The Dumping Ground, then went on to work on shows such as BBC1’s King Gary; Netflix series, The Last Kingdom; BBC’s Gentleman Jack; Channel 5 series, All Creatures Great and Small; and ITV’s Vera, as well as feature films The Railway Children Return and Paramount’s Dungeons and Dragons, which is yet to be released. So, what does the future hold for Katie?

“I’m currently still working at Coronation Street as I just love it there. I would absolutely love to work on another feature film, ideally Marvel or Disney! That would be the dream.”

Published 11 January 2023