Interview: TV producer Tim Lawry

TV man’s lens tilts from celebrities to critters

Producer Tim Lawry is on the hunt for some of New Zealand’s rarest creatures. He tells Helen Vause about his television career – and the challenge of capturing footage of endangered native species.

When Tim Lawry makes it back home to Devonport for weekends over the coming months, he’ll have some amazing work stories to tell.

Television producer and director Lawry has filmed numerous demanding shoots abroad for high-rating shows, but the latest assignment in his home patch will take him to the remotest corners of the country in search of wildlife most of us would never get to see – except on screen.

Lawry is working on a new television series that has the working title Endangered Species of Aotearoa. And finding those rare creatures, who will be the stars of the show, could be the biggest challenge of his programme-making career.

He may be used to wrangling celebrities, wannabe chefs and budding builders, but this time the talent will be much more elusive.

Capturing those great shots is the name of the game, grins Lawry, who was at home at the start of the year, fne-tuning the planning and logistics for his upcoming weekly flming forays.

Lawry and crew are flming – and trying to dodge Covid – from now, until mid-year.

The first trip to Pureora Forest, near Taupo, is in search of the short- and long-tail bats whose numbers have been have been steadily dropping due to predation by rats, possums, stoats and feral cats.

Lawry comes to this project not long after putting teams of assorted well-known Kiwis through their paces in Northland for the making of the latest Celebrity Treasure Island series. After long, tough days outdoors capturing the tears, victories and squabbles with a camera that never stops running on a reality TV series, Lawry was happy to get home to his wife Meredith Dawson Lawry and their two young children Sebastian and Madeleine.

“It was a great series and it was really good to be working in a beautiful local lo-

Going bush... Tim Lawry will visit a wide range of remote New Zealand locations in pursuit of shots of endangered species

cation with the support of iwi there instead of heading overseas again to flm the show. But it’s hard work day after day and very full-on for everyone involved.”

These days, Lawry and crew get to retreat to the relative comfort of regular accommodation at the end of each day of flming. But he laughs at memories of earlier shows, where it was “airbeds in tents in the middle of nowhere for us”. Previous seasons working on the making of Survivor New Zealand took him and the crew to locations in Nicaragua and Thailand. Lawry grew up with the influence of close family and friends who worked in flm and television. After university and post-graduate study at the South Seas Film

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School, he eventually found his way into the job he loves.

He started out as a junior camera operator with an Auckland production company.

In a London-based sojourn – when home and young kids were still a long way off – he was lucky enough to land work directing travel shows in so many exotic locations he can’t recall them all.

“I certainly saw a lot of places. It was an amazing job for getting to travel to places I would never have been to otherwise.”

Later, he headed for Australia and the world of high-rating shows such as the Real Housewives of Melbourne and Masterchef.

On the latter show, viewers were taken up close to the action, sharing the agonies and thrills of the battling contestants, every fail, fuster and grimace.

“We were just right across the other side of the bench with the cameras. Of course we knew already what was coming up as they worked through and we’d be right there to ask how they were feeling at the appropriate moments.”

Lawry has been home in Auckland for seven years, now with a young family.

Covid has kept programme locations in his home country, but Endangered Species of Aotearoa takes him and other crew right back to basics, sleeping in Department of Conservation (DoC) huts and often creeping around at night looking for the series’ hardto-spot nocturnal subjects.

For shots to be enjoyed in the comfort of our living rooms, the crew will endure long, arduous expeditions looking for spiders, birds, bats, tuatara and other species.

What if they search for days and nights and can’t fnd or get enough shots of what they’re looking for?

“Those who’ve made series like this before us have told us to have from three to fve different species on our list in each region. The idea is, if we can’t find one, we’d probably fnd the other on that part of our shoot,” says Lawry. He says they’ve had a lot of assistance from professionals working in conservation science, including DoC and the World Wildlife Fund. The series is being made by Warner Brothers and it follows a format the production company has used in other countries.

It’s scheduled to air at prime time and will be made in a style that’s accessible and easily understood, says Lawry

“There will be key conservation messages. But it will also be empowering and it will prompt the average New Zealander to

think about what they can do to be part of protecting our world.”

A tight flming schedule lies ahead.

When the crew get out to Little Barrier Island, where they’ll be aiming to catch many great shots of tuatara, they’ll also have an eye out for activity on the waters of the Hauraki Gulf and an ear on the work of a‘Manta Watch’ team who are spotting giant Manta rays in these waters with increasing frequency.

And if they get word of a ray sighting and it’s practicable, they’ll rush away from their observations of sleepy, shy Tuatara to grab a boat and head out for shots of the sea creatures feeding on the surface. At up to seven metres wide, they should be easy enough to spot. Once thought to be seasonal visitors, there have recently been so many sightings that it’s thought they may now be permanent residents in our waters.

Lawry is realistic about their chances, however. “Logistically we just might not be able to make it out off Little Barrier in time to get one on camera,” says Lawry.

Nothing will be left to chance when Lawry and the camera crew arrive at the pestfree sanctuary of Codfsh Island, off Stewart Island. There they’ll be installed in a DoC hut to flm the highly endangered kakapo and, hopefully, the big parrot’s chicks.

“We’re excited because they’ve had a good breeding season down there this year so we should be in luck and able to bring these chicks onto screens back home. It will be fabulous to get into their habitat and be able to watch them.”

The current kakapo population is just over 200 and these rare birds only breed in mast seasons, when the rimu have masses of fruit.

The remotest spot Lawry’s quest will take him to is Rangatira Island, off the Chatham Islands. The wind-swept predator-free location is the last refuge for some species, with visits by permit only.

The island has the giant Rangatira spider that can grow up to 12 centimetres across. While this is enough to put many Chatham Islanders off visiting, the spider is of great interest in wildlife circles.

Another nocturnal species, the spider comes out at night in search of a weta to prey on. When that happens, Lawry hopes he will be right there with cameras rolling.

“For sure, this has to be right up there as one of the best projects I’ve had the good fortune to be part of.

“To be honest, Omicron is probably our biggest threat just in terms of being able to keep everyone well and being able to keep going on schedule.”

“For sure, this has to be right up there as one of the best projects I’ve had the good fortune to be part of.”

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