Instead of celebrating the end of his schooling, Matt Armstrong spent a week on the set of Home and Away.
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A year later, he is gearing up for another internship.
It all began at the end of 2016, with a former Albury High School teacher.
“I had a french teacher who was good friends with someone at Channel 7 – she knew that I loved Home and Away and got the email address of the script producer,” Mr Armstrong said.
The then 17-year-old had hoped to spend a day on the Melbourne set for the submission program, where potential freelance writers work on a script, but he was offered a week’s internship too.
“The first day I slept through my alarm, then threw up in the shower, missed the bus and then got off at the wrong stop,” Mr Armstrong said.
“I got there and the guy who helped me with my internship made me feel really comfortable, and they have all been nothing but kind to me.
“I was working with the script co-ordinators and one of them had taken some time off, so I effectively did his job – formatting scripts and checking for typos, writing press releases – I was really grateful I was given so much responsibility.”
Mr Armstrong met his favourite star, Georgie Parker (Roo Stewart), and sat in the room as writers workshopped a scene where John Palmer finds out about his father’s death.
“It was a really big shoot – they were doing a flashback of the suicide,” he said.
“They had restrictions on what they could and couldn’t show and it was interesting watching the director deciding how to do it.
“They work really fast – they literally sit in a room for two days and plot out the episodes.”
The University of Wollongong communications and media student may not have received an offer for freelance work yet, but he’s working his way into the industry.
“They said it was a good first submission but there were a few more things I needed to work on – the hardest thing was getting the voice of the character right,” he said.
“The writer commissioned for that episode told me she writes for Neighbours as well – you can write for both, you just can’t be part of the in-house team for both.
“I did a huge binge watch and got up to date with the episodes and put my name down for their submission program.”
Mr Armstrong was successful and will spend a week on set at the end of January.
He has also just finished writing the first five episodes of his own show, The South Coast.
“It’s a mix between Neighbours and Home and Away with the community feel – it’s a small town,” he said.
“There’s a serial killer, a family that moves there with a huge secret, human trafficking … 70 per cent of the people who move there don’t survive to move away.
“It’s been in the works for a while.”