Tallulah takes on the roll of Production Assistant
Tallulah in Year 13, who has been at Finborough for 3 years, has secured a Production Assistant job in the London based thishe.re company working for former student Livvy Moore, who is Head of Production and Creative Director. Hundreds of applicants, mainly graduates applied for the role and Tallulah’s incredible success highlights the importance of character development that has grown through the support of the Finborough family.
Livvy details below just why Tallulah got her dream job and what an amazing impression she left on people.
“It is extremely rare in my position to meet an entry level applicant that genuinely surprises you, and even rarer still for them to be eighteen years old and still at school. Meeting Tilly was a truly unique experience, from the way she carried herself, the honesty she was unafraid to show us, and even the way in which she applied for the role at all.

I met Tilly briefly on a visit to Finborough. In the 45 minutes we spent together, I was struck by her intelligence, but more so by how headstrong she was. Unlike most her age, whilst she wasn’t sure exactly what she wanted to do in life, she was very sure what kind of life she wanted. She wanted to live authentically, unapologetically and fully. It takes most of us years to work out that these things are the key to happiness, yet she seemed to have cracked it already.
I invited her to attend a shoot day with me as a production runner for work experience. The days are long and hard, and being a runner is far from easy – especially on my sets, however they are deeply rewarding and are a real look into what the production industry is really like.
Tilly turned up early, something I always appreciate, just before the brutal call time I gave her of 5am. I later came to find out that when she walked into the base location, full of cast and crew members, she was naturally nervous. It didn’t show at all, as she immediately put on her crew jacket and got to work.
I have lost count of how many productions I have led, and how many runners I have had assist me for shoot days. In truth, I cannot remember most of the runners at all. Yet with Tilly, in my entire career, I have never had such overwhelming feedback before.
Multiple crew members pulled me aside, telling me how remarkable she was, and each asked me the same question:
“Where did you find her?!”
I tried to contain my smile each time, as I told them she was from a school called Finborough. Their reactions were all the same. They’d tell me they couldn’t believe she was still at school, as she was the most talented runner they’d met before, and her work ethic was above and beyond the norm, let alone for an eighteen year old.
A few days after the shoot, we received an email that took some immense courage. Tilly wrote to us to thank us for letting her attend, and informed us that she didn’t want to go to university, or even for a gap year – all she wanted, was to work for us. She’d seen our job advert online for Production Assistant and wanted to put herself forward.
Despite there being hundreds of applicants for the role, almost all of which were university graduates, we felt strongly that Tilly had earned her right to an interview given how well she’d done on the shoot day with us.
She was up against some tough competition. Some of the other candidates – many film school graduates, were wonderful and had we not met Tilly, we would have gladly offered them the position. However, what caught us off guard was the way in which she handled her interview.
We asked her tough questions, and it wasn’t just her answers that blew us away, but her honesty in which she answered them. It is my biggest belief that as people, our vulnerability is our biggest strength, and Tilly was unafraid to show me hers. When I asked her what her values were, she told me above anything else, it was empathy.
She answered the standard questions beautifully too, telling me why she wanted to be a producer in a way that smoked the other applicants’ answers. However it was her deep character, and her willingness to put it all on the table, even the painful parts, that really made the decision.
Tilly joins our family as our new Production Assistant the day after her last exam. I am extremely confident she will grow with us over the years into a star studded Producer and has a bright and long career ahead of her.
Whilst Tilly only has herself to thank for the door that she quite honestly smashed down with a sledge hammer – as a former student with the luxury of hindsight, it would be remiss of me not to credit her teachers a little.
The lessons you teach the children are so much more important than the things you teach them to pass their exams. No matter what is going on at home, you provide a safe place for them to express themselves, and to understand that they are allowed to take up space in the world.
They walk out of your care and carry the deeply rooted values that you have instilled into them into everything they do. It is not their academic abilities that will serve them after school, but their ability to love, to be loved, and to share that love with the world.”
We wish Tallulah the very best in the next chapter of her life.