A former Royal Marine has found a new career in the film and TV industry, and now he wants to tell others about the opportunities.

Dave Jones now lives in Sutton Valence, near Maidstone, but grew up in Allington and Shepway. After leaving Oakwood Park Grammar School, he joined the Marines.

He said: "I had a pretty busy career and was away a lot. I did Arctic warfare training, jungle warfare training and had two tours of Afghanistan. I spent nearly 10 years in the Marines, before I was invalided out."

Mr Jones suffered a back injury after slipping down a mountainside while training in Norway.

He said: "While I was recuperating from that, it was also discovered that I had lost much of my hearing, from too much exposure to weapon fire – Afghanistan was a pretty noisy place!"

Mr Jones, 33, was at a loose end for a couple of years. He tried several jobs, but nothing satisfied.

After he quit a job in the motor sales industry, a friend suggested he sign up as a film extra, while he looked around for something more permanent.

He said: "I did that and made a few contacts, and then I learnt about a special training course for veterans run by the ScreenSkills programme."

He soon discovered that the organisational and logistics training from his military service was easily transferred to the entertainment world.

He said: "I first got a job as a location assistant, then I was quickly working as an assistant unit manager. Now just 18 months later, I am a full unit manager – there are only around 150 of us in the country."

His job entails organising everything for a location shoot, from finding parking for the trailers to installing power, facilitating toilets, waste collection, lighting and services for catering.

He said: "I am self employed – each job is a new contract. I am usually the first one to arrive on set and the last to leave."

He has to be flexible. Sometimes jobs are cancelled or delayed, but he has only had a week without work in two years.

He has worked on shows such as the Sky Atlantic/HBO series The Baby – some of which was filmed at Nell's Cafe in Gravesend – and Marvel’s Secret Invasion, as well as series four of Bad Education, and series two of The Larkins.

His work can take him anywhere in the country. He said: "I been on shoots in Liverpool, Leeds, Oxford, but most of the work is in the South East, because the studios are mostly in London and the directors want to shoot as near to home as possible."

Some of The Larkins series was filmed in Sevenoaks and Tonbridge.

Although he meets the stars, it's usually only on a professional basis. The exception was Bradley Walsh. He said: "I went for drinks with him a few times. He's a great guy, exactly like the character you see on screen."

But now Mr Jones is to appear on screen himself, as he features in a cinema advertising campaign by ScreenSkills called Find Your Future, in which he will tell cinema audiences of the broad range of roles and career opportunities available in the UK’s TV and film production industries.

He said: "The industry really is booming. A lot of American films are being made here because of the tax breaks we give them.

"There are so many opportunities, even for people with no qualifications whatsoever.

"I'm very grateful for the break that ScreenSkills gave me – I never thought I would be earning the sort of money I am now. I want to give something back to them and also to encourage others to consider a new direction for themselves."

Mr Jones, who is married to Naomi and has three children and a step-daughter, estimates that he may earn between £80,000 and £90,00 this year. He said: "It's a lot more than the 24k I used to get as a Marine."

The advertising campaign is made up of seven short films each featuring a recent beneficiary of a ScreenSkills programme and is running in Odeon, Vue and Cineworld cinemas across Kent.

Others featured in the campaign include Sharon Soor from Slough, who used to work in her family's MOT garage business and is now an accountant with Netflix; Daniella Orsini, formerly a hairdresser now a stop-motion animator and director; and Mel Cummings from Manchester, who studied transport design at university and is now a concept artist.

Seetha Kumar, the chief executive of ScreenSkills, said: “UK screen is a growth industry so there is plenty of work available – but we can’t recruit people to jobs they don’t know exist.

"People might think that unless you start your career in screen, it's probably too late. However, the reality is that many people have joined the screen industries at a later stage in their careers using skills they have acquired elsewhere.

"We hope this campaign will help to showcase the vast array available of roles available and inspire people to consider using their skills to work in the UK’s booming film and television sector.”