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Toby:

I'm Toby. I'm 25 years old and I'm a director of photography. The director of photography works really closely with the director of the film to create a beautiful image. The way that they do that is by deciding on different kinds of cameras, different lenses, as well as different types of light. Basically, lighting is really useful, because you need to be able to see what's in front of the camera, but also what's awesome is that you can be really creative with it, so whether or not that's making a scene look really moody and dark and scary or, on the other hand, you could light the same scene, but with brighter lighting and it could become a comedy. Something that's really key for a director of photography to be conscious of, is exposure. What exposure is, is basically how bright the scene is. The way that we control that is through different settings within the camera. A piece of equipment that really helps us with exposing a camera is called a light meter.

Growing up in the south west of England, I didn't know anybody in the film or TV industry. It wasn't until I was 15 and I was really lucky to get a work experience placement at a production company in Swindon. On this work experience placement, I learnt video editing and I got some hands-on experience with cameras as well. This work experience placement gave me the motivation to apply for a media degree in Birmingham. During my degree in Birmingham, I had the dream to move to London. After graduating, I was incredibly lucky to get an internship at a production company called CTVC. It's quite a small company and what that meant is that I was given so many different opportunities, whether or not that was going out on shoots and meeting people on location or getting to do some editing in the office. Through doing this, I found the role that I want to progress down.

Toby's colleague:

Toby is probably the most hard-working person I know and it's because he loves film. He lives and breathes film. He's a very trusted work colleague and to win two BAFTAs at such a young age, it's astonishing. So, you know, BAFTAs before the age of 30, Oscars before the age of 40 maybe, I don't know, we will see.

Toby:

Working on any production, it's all about teamwork and working with different kinds of people and for me, initially, that was quite difficult, because I was quite an anxious kid. I didn't really like crowds or new people. But working in this industry has really helped me come out of my shell.