Robert Walpole

"There was an element of madness to it when I became a tea boy on a film, bottom-of-the-rung stuff, after finishing college," laughs Robert Walpole, producer of the Irishmade film I Went Down, which was released last year. His degree was in economics and political philosophy.

"When I was in college I knew I wanted to be broadly involved in the media. It was easier to move up in the business when I started around 1990. We went out and celebrated when I got a job working as a location scout on The Commitments. Now the industry is buzzing. Nobody celebrates when they get a job. The competition is greater now. There are so many new young people in the business.

"You work very, very long hours and when you're shooting a film you're up at 4.30 in the morning and working until midnight. You could be doing that for 10 or 12 weeks, but the rewards are great. It's a very exciting job but I think it's demanding. You have to really, really want to do it."

Alan Lambert

The first job Alan Lambert, artist and independent filmmaker, had in film was to produce a range of paintings for use as props in Moll Flanders, made by director Pen Densham with Morgan Freeman and Robin Wright at the Ardmore Studios in Bray, Co Wicklow, and in and around Dublin. Since then he has worked on a number of films in various capacities.

Lambert, from Dun Laoghaire, has written soundtracks, put story-boards together and provided material for use as props. He has also been working on his own short film - it's almost in the can.

"Both painting and sound-track writing are two areas for which I haven't encountered any particular procedure," he says. "Painting is what I find most interesting. Story-boarding is producing a visual script. You work with the director and the cinematographer - that's the person who communicates at the end of the day with the camera crew and the lighting team.

"Film is something that I got into through the back door. I still make paintings, but I feel very comfortable with film. Like many of my contemporaries, I grew up with it."

David McLoughlin"Entry is very undefined, particularly in terms of producers," says David McLoughlin. "As the industry has expanded, it has become very obvious that there's a lack of producers." McLoughlin became full-time manager of the Dublin Film Festival in 1991 and worked there until 1996.

During this time he started working with Alan Gilsenan on a small film, which was screened last year at the Cork Film Festival. He also wroked as a trainee producer on The Boxer. "People need to work on the floor of a film and see how it happens and the numbers involved. You get an appreciation of what people do. It's more than book-keeping. You have to be a good motivator."