Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker was 'the best job ever' for former Hucknall student

Maria Pullen was one of 30 young people from the BFI Film Academy who were selected to be paid trainees on the movie which is released on DVD on April 20.

She saw most of the cast on a daily basis during her time at Pinewood Studios. Maria said: "I met Daisy Ridley, John Boyega, Oscar Isaac (who I was able to speak to the most). I saw Mark Hamill, Adam Driver, Richard E. Grant and Domhnall Gleeson. A highlight was definitely getting introduced to Harrison Ford, I even got to shake his hand.

"All of them were so lovely. At first it was definitely intimidating and I couldn't help be starstruck. But as the weeks went by it became just about normal!"

"I remember being so nervous about being on a big film, on a big set with big names, it all made me feel so small. But I embraced it and every day I grew."

Maria, 23, spent six months working on the film, largely as a script supervisor's trainee which involved setting up the workspace, taking continuity notes and proof-reading documents such as production reports and daily logs for the script supervisor. She said: "One of my jobs was to make sure the script was up to date and I remember holding that script for the first time and feeling so anxious. With that script came a lot of responsibility - it was hard keeping those spoilers to myself for a year. Most of the crew were not allowed to have the script, even pages of it, so I definitely felt very fortunate."

For a month Maria was part of the behind the scenes team and helped log the footage, label what was happening and who was in the video. She said: "It was crazy, I was being paid to watch Star Wars behind the scenes...that has to be one of the best jobs ever!

"One of my favourite things was visiting the new sets, the amount of work put into them is incredible.

"It was such a great place to learn and the crew were so talented, it was an honour to be learning from them. The main unit script supervisor, Dawn Gilliam was my mentor and she would teach me about the craft on set whether it be rebel base or the inside of the command ship."

Maria attended the cast and crew screening of Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker with her little sister Jasmine. She said: "It was definitely an emotional experience seeing my name in the credits for the first time. It brought a tear to my eye because during filming it never really felt real and to finally see it on screen really brought it home."

She has since worked on three short films - two of which, Dawn in the Dark (director Runyararo Mapfumo) and Signs (director Yero Timi-Biu) have been shown at festivals including Underwire, Aesthetica and BFI London Film Festival. The third, Sanjay Saves the World (director Tulsi Behl) is still in production and was made with several Star Wars trainees and other young creatives.

Maria, who now lives in London, is a production assistant at Karrot. She has been working on a new pre-school show called Tish Tash in which she prepped and attended voice records as well as assisting the edit by cutting and labelling the raw audio tracks. She is now getting involved in development for new upcoming projects.

A former Holgate Academy pupil, Maria graduated in media production at the University of Lincoln. During her time at university, she was accepted onto a week-long Animation and VFX course run by the BFI Film Academy. It was her enduring link with the BFI that opened the door to her traineeship on the Star Wars film through the BFI Film Academy Future Skills programme supported by the National Lottery. She said: "I can't recommend the BFI Film Academy enough. It changed my life and helped me get where I wanted to be in my career."