A BUDDING director has won a competition to make an hour-long documentary to be screened on national television.

Ryan Lee Gregory, of Leighton Drive, Leigh, saw off competition from 50 other wannabe filmmakers to triumph in the BBC Three Northern Docs Pitch at the Crucible Theatre in Sheffield.

The 24-year-old was one of six finalists who pitched their documentary ideas in front of a panel of four industry professionals and an audience of around 100 people last Monday, June 12.

The former Lowton High School pupil's idea of making a documentary on schizophrenia in which voice actors express victims' thoughts will now become a reality, with production work due to start later this year.

Ryan, who has suffered from anxiety and depression in the past, said: “I am delighted to have won the competition and that my documentary will be made.

"I am both nervous and excited to start working on the project as this is the biggest creative project I have led.

“There are a lot of assumptions people who do not have schizophrenia make about it, so I wanted to make a documentary which includes reconstruction scenes of what it is actually like for sufferers.

“I thought it was a perfect mix to use filming techniques which observe the day-to-day lives of people with schizophrenia and combine them with voice actors to make it more real.

“In my research for the documentary I had great help from the charity Hearing Voices Network, which educated me about schizophrenia and put me in the right direction in terms of how I will make the film."

The competition was part of the BBC's mission to start new collaborations with talented filmmakers based in the north of England who are yet to direct a long-form film for broadcast.

Ryan, who will be given mentoring and production support from Blakeway North, delivered a five-minute presentation in Sheffield before answering questions from the panel about his documentary idea.

“I have done informal pitches before but never on the scale of the amount of people I presented in front of," he said.

"Thankfully it went really well."

Danny Horan, the documentary commissioning editor for BBC Three, said: "I am delighted Ryan won the live pitch for our new scheme.

"He is an extraordinary new talent and we feel privileged to be working with him."

Ryan is also working on other production ideas, including short films, but documentaries are his main focus.

“At the moment I am very happy to keep working on documentaries,” he said.

“I have made short films before and would love to make more in the future.

“There are filmmakers like Ken Loach who cross between making fiction and documentaries and that is what I want to do.”

Ryan studied film and TV studies at the University of London's Royal Holloway campus in Surrey.

He is a member of The Grierson Trust’s DocLab Training and Mentoring Scheme, which aims to prepare new entrants to the industry with the skills to make them ‘job ready’.