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Are we having fun yet?
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Matt Whelan in The Most Fun You Can Have Dying 20 years of Shortland Street Jim Marbrook’s new doco Mental Notes Image capture and post – is 4K the new 2K?
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contents Views 4
march 2012
A private view
Onfilm columnist Doug Coutts and cartoonist Barry Linton on the freelance life.
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Editorial
Congratulations are in order, and cartoonist Andy Conlan brings us Adventures with Artistes.
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Short cuts
Philip Wakefield rounds up NZ box office and television news from the NZ screen industry.
14 Secrets to success Andy Conlan checks out a DVD master class on the art of
10 Photo: Matt Whelan as Michael in Kirstin Marcon’s debut feature The Most Fun You Can Have Dying, opening nationwide in April. Photo by Craig Wright. © Ten Cent Pictures Ltd.
independent film marketing and distributing.
Feature 10 If it’s Tuesday… Onfilm talks with producer Alex Cole-Baker about Kirstin Marcon’s debut feature The Most Fun You Can Have Dying.
12 Street talk It was 20 years ago today… well not quite, but long running drama Shortland Street turns 20 in May. Onfilm spoke with two of the show’s producers, Caterina De Nave and Steven Zanoski.
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Image capture & post 16 Tales from the Bin Jim Marbook discusses the making of his new doco Mental Notes, screening as part of the World Cinema Showcase.
20 Where’s the magic button? Cinematographer Waka Attewell discusses the pros and cons of shooting digitally.
23 Is 4K the new 2K? As camera makers strive to outdo each other in the digital market, Peter Parnham checks out the latest arrivals.
Regulars 9 Reviews Onfilm reviewer Helen Martin checks out new book New Zealand Film and Television: Institution, Industry and Cultural Change by Trisha Dunleavy and Hester Joyce, and reviews Annie Goldson’s extraordinary documentary Brother Number One.
26 Across the ditch James Bondi, our ex-pat spy based in Australia, rounds up industry news from the Lucky Country. 27
A legal view
Legal expert David McLaughlin explores the basics of option and purchase agreements.
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Production listings
Volume 29, Number 3
Est 1983
Editor: Steven Shaw (editor@onfilm.co.nz), 021-905-804 Contributors: Waka Attewell, Andy Conlan Doug Coutts, Helen Martin, Peter Parnham, Philip Wakefield Ad Manager: Kelly Lucas (admanager@onfilm.co.nz) 09-366 0443 Production Manager: Fran Marshall Designer: Cherie Tagaloa New Subscriptions: www.onfilm.co.nz/subscribe Subscriptions Enquiries: subs@mediaweb.co.nz, 09-529 3000 Pre-press and Printers: PMP Print Onfilm is published 11 times a year by Mediaweb Limited, which also publishes The Data Book. Mediaweb Limited, PO Box 5544, Wellesley Street, Auckland 1141 Phone 09-529 3000, Fax 09-529 3001 Website: www.onfilm.co.nz
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march 2012
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A private view
Diary of a freelancer Monday Woke at 3am with sudden realisation that with mortgage due by doug coutts in a week, would need to make early start on invoice writing. Woke again at 3.30 remembering that there was nothing to invoice in previous month. Or month before that. Made mental note to panic and went back to sleep. Woke at 4.30 panic-stricken and ready to face the day. Time for proactivity – had lengthy breakfast then attempted to call producer with killer idea for feature. Somehow got put through to catering dept instead. Kitchen staff impressed with pitch but suggested I should email it through as well, just in case producer got to read it. Knocked prop up in three minutes flat, including spellcheck. Next, had flash of inspiration. Acquiring fame and celebrity would lead to free meals and hefty sums for life story in women’s magazines. Decided quickest way would be to become NZer of year. Only problem – sure-fire method, organising protest march against evil horde threatening to destroy local industry, had already been done. Decided to scour DomPost to find similar but as yet untapped worthy cause. After coffee. Tuesday Braved wind and horizontal sleet (making mental note to in future avoid Wellington in summer months) to get DomPost
from letterbox. Tuesday’s DomPost is traditionally thinner than a TV3 weather presenter but there was bound to be something inspirational. Sadly, nothing apart from usual page 1 prime ministerial puff piece. That gave me an idea – decided to dust off giant Styrofoam statue of David Gapes left over from Onfilm Xmas party in 1993, tweak the nose a bit and put it on TradeMe as John Key. After dinner. Wednesday Disaster with Styrofoam. Took too much off nose and chin so it looked more like Russell Norman. Even with cheap suit from Sallies it wouldn’t sell. Back to drawing board. On way, checked answerphone. Discovered batteries were dead so plugged in AC adapter. One message, from editor demanding Onfilm column immediately. Remembered Sue no longer worked there so erased message and went back to scouring DomPost for ideas. Thursday Finally finished code cracker and cryptic. Put Sudoku page to best use – in chickens’ nesting box, and retreated with tablet to gazebo for quality creative session. Friday Tablet completely full of quality apps. Might have to remove word processor to make room for interactive air traffic control app though. Or delete CV – but at least still had that on desktop machine. Checked CV – needed complete revamp to make more relevant for 21st century while keeping within
recommended two-page maximum. Shame to see all those feature film credits go, even if they were made up. Strange that no one ever queried my claim to have co-written Battletruck. Or admitted to seeing it. Saturday Early start as needed to get online and check email for producer’s response on pitch. Nothing from producer but did get set of menus from catering dept and invitation to writers’ guild seminar. Remembered last time involved hours of speeches with only perc’d coffee and wine biscuits so gave up and checked bank balance. Went straight back to bed with covers pulled right up. Realised this was no way to cope with fiscal crisis so adopted John Key’s sure-fire vote-winning strategy and created bicycle park on lawn next to henhouse. That led to photo op in local
giveaway paper, which in turn led to several phone queries including one from local SPCA. Assured them that hens were eating better than agency suits on a commercial set, though not quite as ready to lay. SPCA appeased though keen for me to adopt three kittens and a budgie with hiccoughs to obviate need for any future action. Sunday Another early start as needed to get online and check either bank balance or procedures for declaring bankruptcy. Found email reply from producer as well so cancelled bankruptcy and ordered new suit from internet tailor in Vietnam. Then checked email – no interest in pitch but did order half dozen eggs for catering dept. Put on parka and went to feed chickens, with extra helping of cascara beans.
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Views
Andy Conlan’s view
Ed’s note Congratulations and jubilations
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e can’t really get into this issue without first congratulating Bret McKenzie on winning the Best Original Song Oscar for “Man or Muppetâ€? at last month’s Academy Awards. Bret has made a tremendous contribution to the arts through Flight of the Conchords and his musical endeavours (The Black Seeds, Wellington International Ukulele Orchestra) and now he’s got the tick of approval from The Academy and The Muppets themselves. Disney (yes, the mouse owns the frog) will no doubt be tapping his talent in the future‌ also deserving of congratulations is Outrageous Fortune and After the Waterfall actor Antony Starr, who has just been cast in the upcoming HBO series Banshee‌ and more congrats, this time to Ant Timpson, who in late February was awarded the inaugural ART Creative Entrepreneur award, recognising his tireless work through events including the 48Hours furious filmmaking event and the recent Make My Movie pitching competition. Congrats also go out to everyone who’s ever worked on Shortland Street, which celebrates its 20th birthday in May. For more on Shorty, head to page 12 where we talk with original producer Caterina De Nave and current producer Steven Zanoski. And our cover story this month (page 10) is on the shooting of Kirstin Marcon’s debut feature The Most Fun You Can Have Dying, starring Matt Whelan – congrats to Kirstin, producer Alex Cole-Baker, Matt Whelan and the rest of the crew for making it through a relentless filming tour of Europe – and for delivering an outstanding drama. Steven Shaw, editor
Get your shorts on
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oung filmmakers will get to rub shoulders with some of the New Zealand film industry’s leading figures when Australasia’s first international student film fest, Uni Shorts, opens in April. The Department of Performing and Screen Arts at Auckland’s Unitec Institute of Technology is hosting the inaugural Uni Shorts Film Festival, which has attracted entries from film schools and universities around New Zealand and overseas. Registration has opened for the festival, which is targeted at emerging and student filmmakers. A packed festival programme will see screenings of selected films and industry guests join panel discussions for several seminars organised for the weekend of April 21-22. The seminars will debate issues relevant to young filmmakers today such as making the transition from short to feature films, filmmaking on a budget and industry tips for budding producers. The Uni Shorts judges are familiar names in New Zealand’s screen community – director/ writer Roseanne Liang, director Florian Habicht and Unitec’s curriculum leader for screen, Caroline Grose, formerly head of development at the New Zealand Film Commission. Among the panellists confirmed thus far is South Pacific Pictures CEO John Barnett, producer Rachel Gardner and director/writer Robert Sarkies. Also joining the panel
line-up are award-winning producer Kristian Eek (Manurewa) and fellow Unitec screen graduate, filmmaker Cristobal Araus Lobos (Curry Munchers, Netherwood). Film entrants whose short films are selected will vie for four main prizes of NZ$1000. All entries will feature 100 percent student work as the films have had to be made as part of a course of study. “We realised that there was a gap in the Australasian region for the showcasing of tertiary student work. Given that the quality has increased tremendously and many of these films screen internationally, we felt they deserved to be seen by a wider New Zealand audience,� says Athina Tsoulis, Head of Unitec’s Performing and Screen Arts Department. “We anticipate that the festival will also provide a platform for discussion on the issues that affect all emerging filmmakers and the landscape they are entering.� Uni Shorts is open to all in the tertiary student film making community, screen industry representatives and educators. To register to attend or to see the festival programme, go to www.unishorts.unitec.ac.nz or UNI SHORTS on Facebook.
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Short cuts
By Philip Wakefield
Sione’s 2 finishes business
Oscar spurs The Artist’s box office
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ione’s 2: Unfinished Business posted a final gross of $1.85 million – less than half of what the original earned, despite opening 15 percent higher, on $772,371, over its first four days. The sequel’s fate was clear when box office plummeted 56.3 percent after the second weekend, dashing hopes that word of mouth would be enough to overcome poor reviews. Box office was down by nearly 60 percent after its third weekend, and by week four the number of screens had been slashed from 80 to 47. By its fifth and final week in the top 20, it was on just 20 screens and had slipped from 11th place to 17th. While the total gross didn’t meet expectations, Sione’s 2 was still one of the summer’s most popular attractions, having outgrossed Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, Hugo and The Descendants (which, at press time, had enjoyed seasons of five to seven weeks but were still running). Indeed, as of the week ending February 29, Sione’s 2 was the year’s fourth highest-grossing release, behind The Adventures of Tintin ($5.3 million), Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows ($3.2 million) and The Iron Lady ($1.9 million). “It’s one of the more successful films made in New Zealand,” says distributor Andrew Cornwell, of Sony Pictures Home Entertainment. Hence, it will be one of the few, new NZ movies to get a simultaneous DVD and Blu-ray release when it comes out on disc in late May.
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inning the best picture Oscar lifted The Artist’s box office by nearly 20 percent in its third week. Indeed, the weekend before the Academy Awards were presented, The Artist grossed $38,474. From Monday, the day of the Oscars, to Wednesday, it added another $27,346 to its coffers, for a total three-week take of $191,022. The 19.6 percent upsurge made it the week’s biggest mover whereas Oscar kudos for Hugo and The Iron Lady came too late to boost their business. As of the week ending February 29, 2012’s accumulated box office ($32.9 million) was up on 2011’s ($30.1 million) but down on 2010’s ($36.5 million). The Artist, filmed in black and white, is set in 1927 Hollywood as the advent of talking pictures threatens the career of silent movie star George Valentin, played by French actor Jean Dujardin. It’s made an international star of Dujardin, who was previously known outside France for the OSS 117 James Bond parodies.
Strong start for local slate
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ey Kiwi shows have launched strongly this year, and already TV One and TV3 have commissioned two more to try to catch TV2 in the ratings. Both of the older-skewing networks are resurrecting reality franchises familiar to viewers of Prime: TV One is reviving NZ’s Got Talent and TV3 wants to nail Aussie renovation blockbuster The Block. NZ’s Got Talent was a smash hit for Prime when South Pacific Pictures produced it but proved too costly to renew. NZ On Air is investing $1.6 million in TV One’s version, which the network is no doubt banking on being its crowd pleasing successor to Dancing With the Stars. But TVNZ says it will need “multiple funding sources” to mount a show of this scale with the requisite production values that it will demand post-X Factor and American Idol. Although TV3 has the X-Factor franchise for NZ, it’s opted to make its own version of The Block, Australian TV’s highest-rating series, with Eyeworks Television producing the nine-week shoot (for which casting auditions were held early this month). TV One and TV3 have had a mixed start to the new season, compared to
TV2’s extraordinary success, but commissions like The Politically Incorrect Guide to Grown-Ups, MasterChef NZ and The Almighty Johnsons have held up well. Season three of MasterChef NZ launched with higher ratings than its predecessors while Grown-Ups is proving twice as popular as TV3’s new panel show, Would I Lie to You? TV3’s also stumbled with The Secret Lives of Dancers, which has been kneecapped by screening opposite MasterChef and TV2’s The Middle (stablemate Missing Pieces has also struggled but not to the same degree). Shifting The Almighty Johnsons from 9.30pm Monday, where season one aired, to 8.30pm Wednesdays, meant the season two premiere scored a lower 25-54 rating than the season one average: 6.2 percent versus 9.8 percent. But it was probably as strong a result as TV3 could have hoped for opposite TV2’s comedy juggernaut. Meanwhile, TV2’s own local drama, Go Girls, launched with 16.2 percent of its target audience, 18-39 year-olds – which topped previous season premieres; by week three, it had slipped to only 14.3 percent.
Shortland Street’s 20th season also is proving robust while new series like Revenge and Once Upon a Time have cemented TV2’s fairytale start to the new season. “In a nutshell, TV2 has recovered well from a shocking December/January,” media buyer John Dee, of JDee Media, says. “Two and a Half Men, 2 Broke Girls, Big Bang Theory, Go Girls and, of course, Shortland Street are all performing strongly and anchoring the TV2 programme line-up. “One and TV3 have both been up and down but programmes like MasterChef and The Politically Incorrect Guide to Grown-Ups are helping to strengthen TV One’s ratings. “Frozen Planet has been a success, which proves that informative/quality programmes can still have a place on TV One.” At the same time, Dee points out “quality new series” like Person of Interest on TV One and Homeland on TV3 have failed to fire. “I believe some of this is due to the channels continuing to promote programmes in a traditional way which only
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works for a particular group of viewers.” Dee argues with online video proving to be effective for advertisers, networks should embrace social and digital media to promote their properties. Four already has been doing this, with 97,000 Facebooks fans – more than twice as many as its free-to-air rivals – and a promotional campaign in which it dubs itself NZ’s “most liked” channel on top of a 41 percent year-on-year growth in the 18-49 peak share in the three months ending January. Last month both it and TV3 previewed online the pilots of their brightest prospects: New Girl and Homeland. The strategy, as part of a wider campaign, helped New Girl to launch competitively, with 9.6 percent of 18-49 year-olds. But Homeland started disastrously. It only recovered with same-week repeats of the first and second episodes and TV3 boldly promoting the award-winner to an earlier slot, in the hope it would succeed with viewers wanting something fresher and sharper than TVNZ’s ageing staples, Criminal Minds and Desperate Housewives.
By Philip Wakefield
So-Ho-ho-ho Christmas came early for Sky
Universal Pictures NZ lands Hopscotch
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n its first three months, Sky TV’s new premium drama channel, SoHo, secured four times as many subscribers as chief executive John Fellet expected. “We’re running about three years ahead of where we thought we’d be,” he says. “Normally it’s the reverse – it takes three times as long to get where I thought we’d get. But this one’s been an amazing ride.” SoHo notched up 50,000 subscribers from October 31 to December 31, the fastest uptake of any of Sky’s premium tiers (although it started with a larger base than Arts or Rialto or Rugby, with Sky now being in nearly 50 percent of homes). Fellet says he can’t update SoHo subscriptions until the next stock announcement. “But it’s continuing to grow – it wasn’t just a couple of months’ trick.” While SoHo’s success hasn’t dented subscriptions to the Rialto or Arts channels, there has been “roll-off”, Fellet acknowledges. “It happens all the time. Whenever we add a channel it cannibalises viewing but overall the pie grows.” However, a high uptake doesn’t necessarily mean high ratings. Fellet says Game of Thrones is “head-and-shoulders” more popular than anything else on SoHo yet still doesn’t come close to matching a blockbuster on Sky Movies (which typically draws less than one percent of key demos). Another source says SoHo rates on a par with Rialto and Arts. “They’re great channels that I personally watch, but they don’t have significant audiences in the free-to-air sense. “SoHo did well during the introductory period, when it was free, but once you had to pay, the audience dropped hugely.” Nonetheless, while SoHo’s ratings won’t make the networks rethink their off-peak relegation of dramas like Justified, Damages, Big Love or Southland, it may already be having some impact on their programming. For instance, this month season one of The Killing went straight from pay-TV to DVD/ Blu-ray without a free-to-air run. The Fox Television Studios production normally would have aired first on TV3, with which Fox has an output deal (under the terms of which, Sky can choose one new Fox show a year to premiere on a premium channel). Fellet confirms The Killing was among SoHo’s more popular acquisitions and even though viewership would have been miniscule compared to its free-to-air audience, such was its profile that it appears to have dropped well down the list of TV3’s programming priorities – otherwise there would be
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a broadcaster holdback on its DVD/Blu-ray release, as happened with TV3’s Heroes. SoHo may also be pushing up the price of programmes that used to struggle to find buyers here, although there is free-to-air scepticism about this. But as Fellet puts it: “What I probably have greater success at than anything else I do is looking for what I consider price anomalies. “A couple of years ago it looked like traditional BBC shows that used to be on TV One for, whatever reason, were going for a cheap price – they were having trouble finding a market price – so we went after them. “Now, trust me, that anomaly has disappeared, especially after Frozen Planet and a couple of other BBC series. All of a sudden they’re hot again and they’ve priced us out of the market. “Shows on SoHo, like Game of Thrones and Camelot, wouldn’t have seen the time of day on free-to-air, so we were able to get them cheaper. “No doubt when they read my annual report and those contracts come up for renewal, suppliers will want more money. “We’re also starting to see renewed interest on some of these from the free-to-air broadcasters. “That’s what happens – we find a pricing anomaly, I exploit it, and the price you have to pay is when you do, typically you eliminate that anomaly and you have to go out and look for different things. “Suppliers are coming to us and saying, ‘Jeez, we’re not going to sell this show at the same price we did this other show to you because we’ve got interest by TV One or TV3.’”
niversal Pictures NZ, which also handles Paramount Pictures, DreamWorks and 20th Century Fox product, has picked up another label from Roadshow Entertainment, the arthouse-oriented Hopscotch. Roadshow retains some Hopscotch titles through its rentals business, including the Guillermo del Toro production Don’t be Afraid of the Dark, starring Guy Pearce and Katie Holmes. Hopscotch won’t be a major loss for Roadshow given it’s just acquired the ITV stable. Previously, ITV product had been spread across several distributors. The label’s consolidation makes Roadshow, which already handles BBC and ABC titles, the leading distributor of UK and Australian TV product (including the upcoming Torres Strait gangster drama, The Straits, starring Rena Owen). ITV is the UK’s biggest commercial TV network and although it has an output deal with TVNZ, much of the content is relegated to off-peak so its home video potential in this market is considerable. Roadshow will launch its first ITV titles next month with series one and two of Heartbeat, which has never been released here on DVD. As well as comedy classics (Jeeves and Wooster, The Royle Family, Auf Weidersehen Pet, Rising Damp) and detective franchises (Lewis, PD James, Prime Suspect, A Touch of Frost), ITV’s 50-year-old library includes a remastered version of A Night to Remember. The 1958 Titanic dramatisation is one of a host of DVDs that are being released to commemorate the ship’s sinking. In addition to BBC, History Channel and Discovery Channel documentary compilations, there will be standard and extended editions of the latest mini-series dramatisation, Titanic, while later in the year watch for the Blu-ray 3D re-release of James Cameron’s Titanic (which steams into cinemas next month).
A funny thing happened on the way to the video forum
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nonymous has just been released on DVD and Blu-ray but don’t expect to see any local reviews. Sony Pictures Home Entertainment has opted not to circulate reviewers’ copies or screeners of director Roland Emmerich’s take on who authored Shakespeare’s plays. It will do the same with Steven Spielberg’s War Horse in May and may hold back from reviewing other titles if it thinks the reaction will be negative. In the US, studios sometimes won’t preview to critics movies they fear will suffer from bad reviews. But the logic behind doing it on disc is hard to fathom given both Anonymous and War Horse had high-profile theatrical releases. It’s not as if they are direct-to-disc obscurities that aren’t worth media exposure – especially when home video could be their salvation after underperforming at the box office. Moreover, SPHE’s slate is so slim in March that you would think a costume drama with a cast that includes Vanessa Redgrave, Rafe Spall, David Thewlis and Rhys Ifans would be a promotional priority. Then again, given SPHE’s only other March release is the Twilight blockbuster Breaking Dawn, this is one month the studio doesn’t need to worry about breaking even.
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Short cuts
By Philip Wakefield
Brother Number One tops with indies
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nly one of the country’s independent exhibitors has opted not to screen Annie Goldson’s documentary, Brother Number One. This month it opened on more than 25 screens, with the filmmakers hopeful of adding more. “We had originally planned to release in September 2011 but postponed it due to the detrimental effects of the Rugby World Cup on the box office,” says Kate Stevenson of BNO Productions. “We had done a lot of the hard work, so pulling it together again in 2012 was a little easier, but all involved have been working hard since January.” The documentary follows rowing champ Rob Hamill’s quest to seek justice for his brother, Kerry, who, along with two sailing friends, died at the hands of the Khmer Rouge regime after they were
abducted in Cambodia in 1978. “After the success and critical acclaim the film received during the New Zealand International Film Festival, we knew there was interest from exhibitors,” Stevenson says. “As far as we know, of all of the independent theatres in New Zealand, only one has chosen not to take the film.” Goldson and Hamill are self-funding its all-digital distribution, in consultation with Metropolis Films’ Gordon Adam. “We targeted media across the board and have had a fantastic response,” Stevenson says. She cites a five-star review in the Sunday Star Times, a comprehensive article in the NZ Herald, reviews in regional papers, radio interviews, a segment on Close Up and even donated billboard space and skins. “We have a great support network
who believe in the film and have been invaluable in assisting us in spreading the word. “As well as traditional media, we are/have been growing our audience during production of the film via blogs, newsletters, the official website and social media. “We have also produced study guides for New Zealand schools, which we hope teachers will integrate into the curriculum.” Stevenson says Brother Number One was produced to highlight a period in modern history that is not widely known or understood in comparison to other
significant historical events. “For us, the focus hasn’t been about making significant money at the box office, but about giving as many people as possible the chance to see the film.”
were seen or heard in the doco, Smyth says this wasn’t a condition of the broadcaster’s commitment but rather a reflection of how “TV3 became Christchurch’s friend” with its coverage of the quakes and John Campbell’s frequent visits to the city. He adds it was “a gutsy call” by TV3 to air When a City Falls at 7.30pm on the anniversary of the February 22 quake. The two-hour special averaged 8.7 percent of TV3′s target audience, 25-54 year-olds, 8.1 percent of 18-49 year-olds and 8.5 percent of household shoppers, which was impressive in the face of extraordinarily tough competition from TV2’s top-rating sitcom block of Two and a Half Men, 2 Broke Girls, The Big Bang Theory and Happy Endings. Although it aired in HD, When a City Falls has not been released on Blu-ray, largely because of timing. Roadshow was under pressure to get it out as close as possible to the broadcast
and because Blu-ray sales are small, the extra cost and logistics of Blu-ray mastering are hard for NZ producers to justify. “We didn’t have time to do a Blu-ray,” says Smyth, who points out he’s received only a handful of inquiries about a Blu-ray release. “We only had 10 requests on the website compared to 2000 DVD requests.”
Quake doco rocks on DVD
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t press time, Roadshow Entertainment was already onto its third pressing of the Canterbury earthquake documentary, When a City Falls. The DVD went on sale the morning after TV3’s February 22 broadcast but featured the longer, 106-minute theatrical cut. Roadshow publicist Carmel Bennett said the DVDs were “romping” out the door to retailers. “We’ve just had to do a third pressing. That’s rare for a New Zealand documentary.” Bennett said sales were well above already-high expectations for the Frank Film release. As well as Roadshow’s distribution circuit, Christchurch-based filmmaker Gerard Smyth is selling the DVDs direct from his website, www.whenacityfalls.co.nz. Smyth is grateful to Roadshow for agreeing to the unusual arrangement, which he negotiated because he felt it was
important South Island buyers had a local outlet in light of how close the project was to the hearts of Cantabrians. It’s also one that ex-pats around the world have embraced, with a number of special screenings being staged and Smyth is in talks with two independent theatrical distributors in Australia. Last month When a City Falls sold out two days before its screening in a 550seat arts centre auditorium in Surfers Paradise, and Smyth has been invited to submit it to the Sydney and Melbourne film festivals. The movie’s NZ gross is expected to reach $400,000, most of this being generated south of the Bombay Hills. Smyth says Auckland multiplex business was minimal but strong in Wellington and North Island towns. “Every cinema Christchurch had left was running it. Each played it multiple times a day and people were queuing for it.” Although only TV3’s news presenters
Fracking Whatatutu
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hen award-winning documentary makers Tom and Sumner Burstyn talk about “going the public funding route” for the initial financing of their next film, they don’t mean beating a path to the door of the Film Commission. Instead they’re reaching out directly to members of the New Zealand public via recently launched ‘crowdfunding’ website, PledgeMe. The Burstyns’ aim is to raise NZ$150,000 via the site by May 27, which will enable them to pull together enough compelling material to secure the rest of the production budget and have the doco in NZ cinemas by early 2013. The reason for this tight schedule is the increasing use of the mining technique known as hydraulic fracturing – or ‘fracking’ – in NZ. Mining advocates claim the practice, which involves injecting millions of litres of a high-pressure cocktail of water, sand and chemicals into fuel-rich subterranean rock, is safe; others insist it leaves a toxic legacy. “What most alarms us is the lack of informed debate about the issue in this country,” says Sumner. “As a result we feel compelled to make a feature documentary to fill that vacuum, one that puts the claims of both energy companies and environmentalists under the microscope. “With our latest film, Some Kind of Love, almost finished post production, we had intended to take the rest of the year off filmmaking. But what are you gonna do?” she shrugs philosophically.
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“It’d be fair to say our natural inclination is to be suspicious of the assurances made by the mining companies and the Nationalled government about how safe fracking is,” says Tom. “That said, we’d dearly love those suspicions to be proved groundless, and we’ll be giving the mining advocates every opportunity to front up and present their evidence. “It’s certainly not our intention to make a one-sided piece of propaganda.” The film, with the working title Fracking Whatatutu, will personalise the potential economic and environmental impacts of hydraulic fracturing by focusing on the tiny East Coast town of Whatatutu. Comprising just five streets and 300 residents, it’s surrounded by forestry and family farms – and reserves of fuel-rich subterranean rock so vast the area is “literally leaking oil and gas”, according to the Canadian mining company that’d been issued extensive exploration licences to the area. The Burstyns are dividing filmmaking duties in the same way they did on Oscar-shortlisted This Way of Life – Tom taking on directing and cinematography, and Sumner writing and producing. Currently, however, they’re concentrating on research – and watching the running total of donations climb on their www.pledgeme. co.nz/fracking page. “By crowdfunding the first phase of this film,” says Sumner, “we’re hoping to not only produce a documentary that plays an important role in the way future mining policy is shaped, but also prove this is a viable alternative source of film financing.”
Documentary filmmakers Tom and Sumner Burstyn. Image: supplied.
Reviews
New Zealand Film and Television New Zealand Film and Television: Institution, Industry and Cultural Change • Intellect, UK, 2011 • Trisha Dunleavy and Hester Joyce
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his fascinating text draws on the PhD findings of tertiary sector academics Trisha Dunleavy, who established Victoria University’s Media Studies programme in 2001, and coauthor Hester Joyce, who was an actor and scriptwriter before she became an academic. Writing about New Zealand media has become something of an industry (and for teachers of media this book shows just how far we’ve come since the bad old days when treating media as a subject worthy of critique was regarded by many as a sign education standards were going down the gurgler) but of key importance here is that this book spans both film and television, with Dunleavy providing the chapters on NZ television and Joyce the chapters on NZ film. Happily, while there are two authors writing on different media, with some chapters covering both film and television, the arrangement and flow of the material is seamless – New Zealand Film and Television: Institution, Industry and Cultural Change is a very smooth, absorbing read. Coming from a culture in constant anxious dialogue with itself about who and what we are, in discussions about
our screen productions we tend to focus much more on text than context. We accept, on the whole, the ridiculous system of reviewers giving qualitative star ratings to films and television productions, as if they can be neatly summarised in a single notation. For those who would like to better understand film and television ‘in the round’, a real value of this book is in its wealth of quantitative data and the discussions generated. Grounded in comparing and contrasting developments around issues of political economy and culture, the narrative spans five decades (1960 to the present), with case studies of the fiction feature film and long-form television drama providing clear insights into the difficulties and value of telling our own stories on screen. For their conceptual framework, the authors use the ‘critical political economy’ theory propounded by eminent British sociologists Peter Golding and Graham Murdock, both prolific writers who for decades have been probing ways in which institutions and their practices impact on media productions and the culture producing them. Dunleavy and Joyce lay out a kaleidoscopic perspective, focusing on domestic productions while including a thorough examination of international contexts. Expert opinions sit alongside hard evidence. Material from interviews with producers, writers, com-
missioning editors, NZFC executives, programmers and managers gives vital insider close-ups. Examination of documents – broadcasting reports, policy papers, legislation, charters – shows institutional imperatives. References to a wide range of critiques – articles, books, reviews, columns – provide a context from which to examine issues of reception and audience. A revealing section in the Introduction on Institutional Ecology, for example, links public institutions, exhibition and distribution systems, the screen production industries and the audiences for whom the work has been made into a clearly connected whole and provides the groundwork for detailed examination of those elements as the book progresses. The many succinct case studies (Boy, Whale Rider, Shortland Street and Outrageous Fortune, for example) are illuminating examples, set as they are against a thoroughly researched argument for the notion that our film and television wields a ‘profound cultural influence’ and must be valued as such by everyone with the power to ensure their continuance.
This book is a welcome companion to Dunleavy’s Ourselves in Primetime: A History of New Zealand Television Drama (AUP, 2005). It will be an invaluable addition to the bookshelves of all media teachers, secondary and tertiary, and their students. It will also find keen readers among industry insiders, industry watchers and, hopefully, policy makers, as the battle to make our own screen stories continues in an increasingly challenging climate. – Reviewed by Helen Martin
Brother Number One NZ 2011, Documentary, BNO & Pan Pacific Films in association with TV3, NZ On Air and NZFC dir/co-prod/co-editor Annie Goldson co-dir Peter Gilbert co-prods Rob Hamill, James Bellamy DPs Peter Gilbert, Jake Bryant ed James Brown sound design Dick Reade music The Sound Room, David Long, Jack Body, Gillian Whitehead with Rob Hamill 97 minutes
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rom conception to direction to cinematography to sound design to musical score to editing to participation of its subjects, this brilliant, artful documentary is the result of the combined efforts of many extremely talented and creative people. It is also, unmistakably, a film to ensure Annie Goldson (Georgie Girl, Sheilas: 28 Years On, An Island Calling, Punitive Damage) remains among the roll call of the world’s most consummate documentary filmmakers. Brother Number One unfolds as a compelling, multi-layered narrative with all the qualities of a deeply moving and intimate drama – a finely-wrought dramatic arc, complex, suffering characters, extraordinary
situations, edge-of-theseat tension and searing conflict – which only the most hardened cynic could watch dry-eyed. The incitement is the gruelling, retrospective story of Kerry Hamill, the eldest son in a tightknit Whakatane family who, sailing the world in the Foxy Lady in 1978, was blown off course into Kampuchean waters. When the yacht was spotted by Khmer Rouge soldiers, Stuart, the Canadian on board the double-ended sloop, was shot on sight. HorRob Hamill. Image: supplied. ribly, Kerry and co-sailor John, an English friend, were captured, tortured for two months in S21, “the mother of that information over the years, most all torture centres in Cambodia” until devastatingly in the suicide of Kerry’s they ‘confessed’ and were executed. brother John. Wrapped around this A second narrative thread traces how central event is the story of war-torn Kerry’s distraught family processed Cambodia, with perspectives offered
by survivors of Pol Pot’s murderous regime which saw the genocide of some two million citizens.
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Actors Matt Whelan and Roxane Mesquida on location in Paris. Photo: Laurent Clauwaert Images: © Ten Cent Pictures Ltd.
If it’s Tuesday… The production crew for Kirstin Marcon’s debut feature The Most Fun You Can Have Dying didn’t shoot in Belgium, and certainly not on a Tuesday. Onfilm talks with producer Alex Cole-Baker about the project, which took seven years to make it to the big screen.
Producer Alex Cole-Baker. Photo: Theodora Valentis-Pikrou.
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t’s Matt Whelan, but not as you’ve seen him before. The young star of Go Girls and Roseanne Liang’s My Wedding and Other Secrets has taken on a role that may change the way fans look at him. Whelan stars as lead character Michael in the film adaptation of Steven Gannaway’s novel Seraphim Blues. Michael finds out early in the story that he has a terminal illness and makes some radical decisions, turning 10
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his back on his family and friends in favour of a whirlwind bucket list tour of Europe. The film took seven years from when director Kirstin Marcon first fell in love with the novel, to finishing and delivering the film, which will be released nationwide in April. “It’s my first feature film as producer,” says Alex Cole-Baker. “When Kirstin brought the novel to me I read it in a weekend, which in itself is a miracle. Books always sit for months on my nightstand. I loved the moral dilemma and the high energy ride that the book took you through. I put it down and thought, ‘Right, how the hell are we going to make it?’ “It was just such a story. I knew it wasn’t really about the topic; that was just a metaphor. It’s really a film about living, about being put in a situation where there are a lot of expectations of you. And what are you going to do? What if you don’t do what’s expected of you?” By 2008 they were ready, with an offer made at a film finance market in New York. Yes, that’s right, good old 2008. “That was the week the
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I knew it wasn’t really about the topic; that was just a metaphor. It’s really a film about living. global financial crisis began,” says Cole-Baker. “To me Lehman Brothers sounded like a department store. I got a call very early one morning with someone saying ‘Alex, we’re really sorry, everything’s frozen’.” In the end the film was 100 percent financed in NZ. “It’s not a co-production,” says Cole-Baker, “we would have increased the budget for nothing more on the screen.” She says The Most Fun You Can Have Dying “looks like a seven or eight million dollar film”, although they made it for “a smidge over three”, with the majority of funding coming from the NZFC. “The production value is incredible. Great direction, great locations, 35mm cinematography, production
design, costume and makeup, and a kick-ass soundtrack. Ten European locations from London to Venice, Hong Kong, and four cities or towns in NZ. We had to be very specific about how we made decisions, in order to fit this model. Everything had to fit to this, and everyone who joined the team had to buy into that too.” Shooting the film involved taking a crew through five countries in Europe on a small budget, an exceptional achievement for a small New Zealand film. “We shot in five different countries in Europe; sometimes in two or three cities across each of those. It was crazy, we shot in London for a day, and the next morning we caught the Eurostar to Paris, got off at Gare du Nord, took the camera across the
Cover story
Focus puller Jason White and director Kirstin Marcon. Photo: Craig Wright.
Pana Hema-Taylor and Matt Whelan on location in Raglan. Photo: Craig Wright.
Matt Whelan, Roxane Mesquida and crew shoot a scene on location in Berlin. Photo: Jens Winter.
road, set it up and then shot the two characters arriving. There was no getting settled and then have a shooting day, it was all instant. Even going between the cities, we shot on the trains, it was a continuous shoot just getting everything we could and making the most of it.” The mad dash that the film crew was making also provided ample momentum and parallels the story, in that the order of cities the crew visited was the same as Michael’s journey. “That was for two reasons,” says Cole-Baker, “one, because it made sense geographically for filming, We all had Eurail passes, we literally did it that way. It made sense to go in the same direction, but it meant for Matt Whelan, he was able to really bring some of that journey in his head.” Whelan’s performance was very physical and he promised he wouldn’t lose weight for the role. “It was really important to Kirstin and me not to starve a young person who’s still in their formative years. He got a bit skinnier but we’re lucky that Matt is naturally pretty lean. “It’s certainly a brave performance from a hot young talent,” she says. “He’s in every scene; he worked so hard to be there. The character’s not doing things that are all good, but we’re always drawn to the anti-hero, people who do the things we wish we could. “In My Wedding and Other Secrets he even changed the register of his voice. That’s the extent to which as an actor he will take a role. As different as he
The sun rises in Monaco. Photo: George Nonnenmacher.
was there, we’re totally the other side. He really had to become a different person to be Michael, this is a new Matt Whelan that you’ll see. You’re drawn to him and you come to love him in a different way, you know this is what he has to do.” Cole-Baker describes the filming as “guerrilla” but is careful to clarify what she means by that. “When we brought people on board we were clear that that was going to be the style of shooting, across Europe, with fewer resources and less general flashiness than they were used to. When I started to work out how to make this, I figured I needed to find a local producer in each of those places. “I’d been sent to the Rotterdam Producers Lab by the Film Commission in 2007. That was great because it started my international networking. I spoke to an EAVE (European Audiovisual Entrepreneurs) graduate who said they could ‘hook me up’. I met producers who were on a similar level to me, and met more experienced producers. My thinking was, if we’re only in their town for a day, they’ll look after us for a day and it’s not going to be a huge burden. I had it down as a kind of relay race. “Ultimately I teamed up with someone I’d met at the Rotterdam Lab, who turned out was also EAVE alumni. Together we put the team together of five other line producers, using four EAVE graduates in total, all from the same year. I thought it was
On location in Venice at dawn. Photo: George Nonnenmacher.
If It’s Tuesday, This Must Be Belgium. Although we didn’t shoot in Belgium. We just rode the train through it. a really good thing that they all knew each other; it brought some cohesion to what was otherwise a conveyor belt of hotel rooms. If It’s Tuesday, This Must Be Belgium. Although we didn’t shoot in Belgium. We just rode the train through it. “With those people, we could work out how permitted we could be. I went into it with the proviso that as long as they were happy with what we were doing and we were guided by what grey areas there might be that was fine. It worked out far better than that. We were able to get really reasonable location fees for places and locals in each city helped with setting up. “Paris was really interesting because anywhere you look there’s a piece of artwork that you have to get all sorts of copyright clearance on. We ended up shooting somewhere where the artist was well out of copyright. But we had to check at every turn. Where we were truly guerrilla was shooting on trains. That was just going to be a bureaucratic nightmare.” Cole-Baker attended an EAVE short course on film marketing in November 2011 and says the timing was fantastic.
“We’d just delivered the film and we were building the strategy for the film. This is my first film, I knew the stuff I was supposed to know, but didn’t really understand what my job as producer was in all of that. It’s like you’re handing over your baby when you’ve made the film, but are you handing it over or guiding it, driving it?” The course offered five days of fantastic speakers and opportunities – and sharing the experiences of other people on the course. “I learnt that bigger films have a Producer of Marketing and Distribution (PMD) person, they stand between the producer and distribution and make sure all that stuff happens. Whereas here we’re so used to having to do everything ourselves. They were saying, ‘A producer is not an expert, get people in, don’t try and do it all yourself’.” Given the storyline, Cole-Baker says she’s particularly grateful that the NZFC were able to see the value in shooting this method. “Access to a bunch of cash and taking off overseas? They really must have trusted me.” • The Most Fun You Can Have Dying releases nationwide April 26.
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Image Š South Pacific Pictures.
Street talk NZ’s longest running drama Shortland Street turns 20 years old in May. Onfilm spoke with two of the show’s producers – original producer Caterina De Nave and current producer Steven Zanoski, to find out why this show has stood the test of time.
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Shortland Street’s first producer, Caterina De Nave.
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fast-paced TV soap, playing five nights a week in New Zealand? It’ll never fly. Shortland Street always had its critics, and it probably still does. But there’s no denying the longevity and enduring popularity of the show that has launched so many careers both in front of and behind the camera. Actors have headed for Hollywood and Wellywood, crew members have trained and stepped up to feature film production. Yet the show trucks on, with high drama, comedy and nods to social issues all getting a turn. Caterina De Nave was there at the start back in 1992 as the show’s first producer and was part of the team lobbying to get the show onscreen. These days she works at SBS Australia, where she commissions comedy and drama. She still sneaks back to NZ for a visit every few months. “The great Bettina Hollings,� says De Nave, “who was a programmer at TVNZ at the time and who is really the instigator of the notion of a fiveday-a-week soap serial, she said to me, ‘If it lasts a couple of years, it’ll last forever’. So once we hit a couple of years, to my mind it’ll go on forever and a day really.� De Nave says the show was always designed to have three story strands. “The first one was the relationship strand, usually a love affair but occasionally a parent-child. The second strand was comedy, which hadn’t been done very much in five-day-aweek serials before. The third strand was the social story, which gives it topicality. “We’d made Close To Home, from 1975 to 1983,� says De Nave. The
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audience was attuned to the notion of a serial, although that only played two days a week, and later on three days a week. Going to five days a week is a big ask of the audience, you’re saying we want your commitment at seven o’clock every night, and that was a big change. But we also pitched it much more towards younger people. We thought if we could hook in younger people we’d be okay.� Bettina Hollings really pushed the idea of a five-day-a-week soap, says De Nave, and she spoke to Ruth Harley at NZ On Air and got her on board. “In the end South Pacific Pictures
One of the show’s enormous strengths is its multiculturalism, something that’s perhaps easy to take for granted these days. In 2008, the traditional Indian four-day wedding of Scotty (Kiel McNaughton) and Shanti (Nisha Madhan) was an elaborate affair that took over six full production days. “I can tell you now,� says De Nave, “living in Australia, we’ve never seen a Bollywood wedding on Home & Away or Neighbours and we won’t for many years to come.� De Nave says it gives the show an inclusive quality. “It’s not just for white people, it’s for Maori, Pacific
If it lasts a couple of years, it’ll last forever. pitched for TVNZ and somebody else pitched for TV3. We got it and TV3 got a short run with another show. “Once we knew NZ On Air would support the idea it was all go,� she says. “We went to a meeting – it wasn’t just me, Don Reynolds was there, there were lots of great people around – and it was like being on trial for murder. We were grilled like nobody’s business. But once they said go, we started writing in November and were on air by the following May. Let me tell you, doing two and a half hours of television every week, it’s relentless. I tell you, I nearly took up smoking again.�
Islander, all the different cultural and ethnic groups are welcome. That’s the real strength.� There was an enormous amount of negative feedback in the early days of the show. “We knew there would be,� she says, “not because the show was bad, that’s just the way Kiwis were in those days. There was a lot of knocking, a feeling that this was too ambitious for New Zealand, that we didn’t have the actors and crew. That we were a bit cheeky to try it. If you were starting a new drama initiative now, I don’t think there would be the same knocking. “We also knew that – I’m talking
Publicity photo of the original cast from Shortland Street in 1992. Image Š South Pacific Pictures.
You start looking at your life in terms of ‘what year was that? What cliffhanger did we do?’ – Steven Zanoski about any television programme here – people will often say ‘I really like that, but you know I watched the second episode and it got a lot better.’ What they’re saying is they needed the first episode to get used to the characters and by the second episode they were settled. Ironically, we shot weeks three and four first and then weeks one and two after that. It’s common in drama, to allow the crew to make mistakes, and the audience sees stronger opening episodes. It made me laugh that four weeks in people were saying ‘it’s got a lot better, good on you’.� Fast turnaround TV gives the actors a tremendous set of technical skills, says De Nave. “You learn to hit your spot using sight lines, how to work fast, how to take direction immediately. You learn how to read your fellow actors very quickly. You get between 20 and 25 minutes to shoot a scene so you’ve got to be on the ball. And they learn lines very quickly. Michael Galvin (Chris Warner), you give him a script now, he appears to skim it and he’s word perfect. How does he do that? I don’t know, he’s a freak.� She says production company South Pacific Pictures has done a very good job over the years of bringing in fresh producer talent, with different ideas. “It’s kept the show pretty much on an even keel creatively. “If somebody said would you go back and produce it, I would – if I still had the stamina for it. It’s a gruelling job for a producer; it’s seven days a week. On the weekends you’re reading scripts and outlines. It’s a hard gig for a producer.�
Of current producer Steven Zanoski, De Nave says he came in as a “smart but untried writer. He worked at the table of pain for many years, moved to London, wrote serials there, became producer of a show in Croatia and came home to produce Shortland Street. Fantastic.� Zanoski started as a writer in Shortland Street’s third year. “In fact it was for the end of year cliffhanger,� he says, “when the truck came smashing through the clinic walls and Carmen died. It was my very first week as a storyliner that we wrote that material. You start looking at your life in terms of ‘what year was that? What cliffhanger did we do?’ “One of the things I’ve come to realise having had a long relationship with the show,� says Zanoski, “is that every couple of years it does need to reinvent itself. Not just in terms of cast and writers and crew behind the scenes, but your audience is also changing. Shortland Street has been around for so long that some viewers don’t remember a time without it. You have to keep giving to those viewers. Some long-time viewers drop off the radar – but that’s okay, it needs to keep reinventing, to grow a new audience and be something for them. Allow them to take ownership of the show at the same time.� He took over the reins just after the infamous Johnny Barker/ serial killer storyline. “It was hugely successful for Shortland Street,� says Zanoski, “it rated very well. Upping the stakes on a serial killer storyline is pretty hard, it’s a great ratings winner but how do you top that? So one of the things I’ve done with Shortland
Street is take it right back to its roots, to its soapy roots. We turned it on its head and did the opposite. Now it’s akin to the show it was 20 years ago. “We have the joke that it’s like Hotel California – you can check out but you can never leave. And I’m certainly an example of that, over the last 17 years I’ve worked and left Shortland Street, worked there and left again‌ in my case, I love it. I think it’s true for many of the cast and crew. “There will come a time when somebody else needs to take the show and make it something different again,â€? says Zanoski. “But at the moment, I’m loving it, especially with the 20 years excitement.â€? So what does the clinic have in store for the rest of the year? “At the moment we’re prepping the 20th anniversary and a special 90-minute episode is coming up in the week of the birthday. We have to do something with a bit of a bang, so there’s quite a big production number going
Shortland Street producer Steven Zanoski. Š South Pacific Pictures.
on, we’re bringing back a couple of old characters. But we don’t want to look backwards, some characters are moving on, it’s all par for the course with Shortland Street. Our focus is on celebration this year and stories where characters have wins; they won’t have the rug pulled from under them so much.�
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Secrets to success A new master class presented as a nine DVD pack, outlines the do’s and don’ts of independent film marketing and distribution in the US and other markets. Onfilm contributor and indie filmmaker Andy Conlan was impressed enough to share his thoughts.
Jerome Courshon.
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e seem to have an exceptionally large number of filmmakers per capita in New Zealand, and our number 8 wire DIY mentality has spilled over into this craft, resulting in a decent amount of independent films being made with little or no funding. A large percentage of these are made with a lot of love and even more lofty expectations (Sundance, the three picture deal, jacuzzis, a suite at the Chateau). When the film is completed, often after an arduous process, a lack of knowledge about what to do next can make these ambitions start to unravel. So about that suite at the Chateau? Can we get an indie film from New Zealand into the US market? The good news? The fact that the movie is in English. The bad news? You’re up against the 4000 to 5000 American indie films made every year. And they have American accented actors in them. Indie movies from New Zealand of the same quality and content as American equivalents are handicapped from the start, so they absolutely have to stand out from the films that contain American voices to achieve a deal. So once we’ve made our standout films, a little guidance on navigating the deep waters of dis14
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tribution wouldn’t go amiss. Los Angeles based producer Jerome Courshon found himself navigating these waters when nearing completion of his first low-budget feature film. At the time, the lifeboats of advice about “what to do” were rare – and there were plenty of fins circling. After numerous film festival rejections, he leveraged off one acceptance, following it up with months of being on the film festival circuit in the US. He then approached cinemas directly, getting the film programmed for a limited theatrical run in main cities. Around four years after this process began he got a home video deal with Warner Bros, a large part of the long delay having been caused by lack of knowledge on exactly how to get that deal without the preceding years of trial and error. His story then appeared in several film-related publications in the US, after which his phone began to ring. Courshon responded to three “We’d like to do what you did” requests from indie filmmakers by sitting down with them and passing on what he’d learned over those four years. Two of those filmmakers found distribution in four months, the third
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in a year – a significantly shorter timespan that Courshon himself had taken to get the same result. The information was formalised, which led to the seminars. As a filmmaker who wants to keep making more movies, not spend his life on the seminar circuit, Courshon has adopted a “teach a producer to fish” approach with this information. Hence his programme, called The Secrets of Distribution: Get Your Movie Distributed Now! The programme is presented over nine DVDs, with over 18 hours of content, and no time is wasted over these 18 hours. The format is a live taping of his master class, which Courshon presented in front of a group of filmmakers. As a presenter, he’s charismatic and open – we know he’s “one of us who’s been where we are now” as opposed to just a theory guy, or somebody who hadn’t trudged through the trenches to the extent that he has. As an educator, the advice he gets across is nothing short of comprehensive. The advice is practical from the start. Watching the first DVD, I learned what I did wrong after completing my own feature, with issues from presentation to artwork to the format and layout of a press kit being covered. You’re not only told what and how, but time is spent on why, including the psychological aspects of how your package is perceived by the all-important programmer or buyer. The generous time frame allows Courshon to go into great detail to hammer points home. An example is the section on the key issue of artwork, where he dissects various movie posters and analyses what is wrong with elements of the ones that don’t work, pointing out what works
on those that do. This might be elementary to a number of marketers who know this, but it’s a eureka moment to the average filmmaker who doesn’t. And there are a lot of eureka moments. The viewer is walked through festival strategy, what to do if you’re accepted to a major one, what to do if you’re not, and how to build a film’s pedigree once you’ve started down this road (“pedigree” being a key factor that is emphasised throughout the programme). Beyond festivals and regarding distribution, the maze of delivery formats and platforms is dealt with case by case, from the value of limited theatrical runs and when these are relevant, to the vast wilderness of online streaming and distribution, as well as how to leverage press and marketing both on and offline. In some cases, guest experts such as product buyers are brought on to speak about their respective fields when specialisation is required. While the emphasis is on selling your film into the US market, other international distribution is also well covered, as well as the key differences of each and the unique approach one must take when selling a film outside the US. Beyond the programme content, Courshon warns against fatigue stopping filmmakers from continuing the process he outlines, saying that most filmmakers give up after a year of not getting distribution – but that they must not. From his experience, both knowledge and perseverance are key. As the old saying goes, he did it so we don’t have to. • For more information, visit www.Distribution.LA.
Main doco subject Roy Brown looks through a window at a decommissioned “Bin”, where he was once a patient. Images: supplied.
Tales from the Bin Jim Marbook discusses the making of his new doco, Mental Notes, which screens as part of the World Cinema Showcase, this month and next.
When did it occur to you that this was a film you wanted to make, and why? I’d previously done some work with people who’d experienced mental health difficulties and a lot of this coalesced in my documentary Dark Horse, which featured at the first Documentary Edge festival in 2005. As I developed more contacts I realised there was a kind of hidden social history in the memories of those who went through our old mental institutions, colloquially called ‘the Bins’. These stories were so strong I realised I needed to find a way of telling them.
Were there any strictures you agreed to in terms of what you would and wouldn’t include in the film in order to secure the participation of your various subjects? I knew from the start it would be a contentious subject that would expose the subjects to public scrutiny. But I also knew I had editorial control, which added a level of comfort to the process. I didn’t set any boundaries but I didn’t want any off-the-cuff confessions to have negative effects either. So after some interviews I asked my
subjects to consider what they said and whether the stories they told might have repercussions in their professional, personal and/or family lives. And because this project has taken several years to make, I’ve been able to go back and check on things. Roy, one of the main subjects, is a close friend and was open to anything. That helped. And during the production Roy had his first child and got married, which was great – and that formed a part of the film. I think of Anne Helm as one of the key thinkers around the subject of
institutionalisation in New Zealand, and in many ways she is the heart and conscience of the film. It took me about five years of talking to get her on camera. After her interview there were some things she wasn’t sure about and I let her decide if they should be left in the cut. What was your budget? We received a $90,000 grant from the Frozen Funds Trust to make the film, which we made over three years. It felt like enough at the very beginning of the process but, after crisscrossing both
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Image capture and post Sean’s really resourceful and very erudite, and I like and value his approach. I’ve done lots of work with him, some of it in quite extreme situations, like a waka trip down the Whanganui in winter, for example. With Mental Notes we were able to talk through all sorts of approaches prior to the shoot. We worked very hard to establish a coherent shooting style that would work with the subject matter; that planning gives the film a certain unity. We wanted to not only examine these old structures but to mark that sense of time passing. Sean suggested we look at Rumblefish – the very off-key time lapse stuff Coppola uses in that film seemed perfect to illustrate the sense of stasis we felt inside the old Bins. We knew that we needed to explore the spaces as well so we tested a Steadicam but eventually settled for a small pipe dolly. It just seemed more subtle.
islands so often and doing a tiki tour of every Bin ever built, I soon became aware of the budgetary limitations. You were a one-man band for part of the shoot. How did this affect your approach? Well, I love shooting alone but it is physically, mentally and emotionally draining – even more so when you are recording stories that test you emotionally. I’d recently set myself up for some shooting in the Pacific. I’d been island hopping, being quite low key and travelling with all my gear wrapped up in a suitcase and carry-on luggage. I think it suited the more personal approach I took with Mental Notes. So what gear did you use? I shot with an EX3, a camera I bought specifically for an observational-style film I was shooting – and am currently still editing – in New Caledonia [covered in Onfilm’s April 2008 issue]. I’d mount a shotgun mic on the camera and I’d have wireless lapel mics for my interviews. When I could I’d use a Diva and some Fresnels to light the interviews. I talked quite extensively with Sean O’Donnell, who was DP for the first stage of the shoot, about lighting
interviews – we wanted to keep lighting to a minimum because there was a risk too much would make the whole process seem too daunting to the subjects. If you’d had the freedom to choose any camera, would you go with the EX3 or something else? Interesting question. I love the pictures I get from the EX3 but I hate the viewfinder setup. I work really hard to create a relationship with the subject I am filming and that strange hybrid viewfinder hinders eye contact with the subjects. An EX1 might even have been better. Conversely, in New Caledonia I appreciated the semi-shoulder mount and the rigs that can make it a surer bet than handheld… I guess every camera has its drawbacks. If I had the choice I’d have shot with a larger sensor camera – at least 2/3"; something like the F3. It would have been ideal in the fixed interview set-ups and the more formal examinations of the old psych hospital sites. The F3, however, wasn’t around when we started this project. How did you ensure your and Sean’s shooting styles would match?
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process of institutionalisation? A couple of colleagues I work with at AUT – Julian McCarthy and James Nicholson – acted as sounding boards for story structure, which helped clarify things. And from the beginning I knew there were common threads in all the stories of all the people in the film: seclusion, medication, life inside, recovery, relapse; these things formed a narrative arc in themselves. It was a case of collecting enough stories for the themes to emerge as they should. Every ex-patient in the film tells a specific aspect of the historical story. In a way the most important thing was finding subjects who could tell broad stories we could anchor in history. Without a tight broadcast schedule to meet it was a luxury to be able to work on this project for an extended period of time. I’d spend days and days in archives, reading texts and looking at memorabilia. It was fascinating looking up little gems hidden in the archives. One day I found a shipping note for malarial blood that was air-freighted from Porirua Hospital to Seaview in Hokitika. Apparently, back in the day, the only effective way to treat GPI/tertiary syphilis was to infect the patient with malaria, which would raise the body temperature and kill the syphilis bugs. I was constantly discovering gems like that.
Did you have a pretty clear idea of the general shape of the film you wanted to make from the outset, or did you discover that once you were in the edit? I’d made quite a detailed proposal but the final form the film took was always going to be difficult – a marriage of history and personal testimony. How would they interact? Would the historical truth of the old psych hospitals clash with the more personal and subjective experience of the whole
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Image capture and post I imagine one result of that is you ended up with a huge amount of footage to sort through in the edit? I think at last count we had about 200 hours of footage. If it weren’t for our transcripts this would have been a very unwieldy amount. Seeing the interviews actually written down on paper helped concentrate the idea of the edit but there was lots of finessing to do. I did a preliminary cut with Margaret Kelly and then she disappeared back to Screentime for a real paying job. I then twisted Prisca Bouchet’s arm to come on board to cut Mental Notes. On the strength of what I’d seen of her work on Briar March’s climate change doco, There Once Was an Island, I’d approached Prisca to cut the New Caledonian French language project I am still working on. In that instance I felt extremely lucky to find someone who was not only a French speaker but who had some very creative ideas about putting together a theatrical documentary. We edited Mental Notes on Final Cut and I guess you could say we were slightly nomadic. I had a Mac Pro machine and a box of hard drives that I’d move around depending on what was happening. Sometimes I’d have it set up at AUT, Zoomslide provided a wee room for a while and then we spent a time in a studio off Wiri Station Road in Manukau. We were cutting during a lot of the shooting time – maybe two years – so it’s been a big process. The music you use is very effective – who’s it by and how did you secure the rights? Some of it is just very judicially used production music but the real heart of the music comes from several key sources. We were lucky to get the rights to use Flip Grater’s fantastic single I Am Gone. An old mate of mine, Johnny Matteson, had already written some
songs specifically about the old psych hospitals and so his music was gladly accepted. And lastly, there were the piano compositions from Roy Brown, the main subject. He’s a great muso and I love his work. In Mental Notes some of your subjects are presumably pretty vulnerable. Yeah, some more than others. Did this affect your decision-making in terms of what did and didn’t make the final cut? I’m extremely aware of the pressure broadcast/exhibition can have on those who share delicate and personal stories. There were certainly many stories so close to the bone that we couldn’t use them. We were also very aware we were making a doco that had to be ‘watchable’, with the horrors balanced with some more even-handed stuff. The bottom line for us is we had to make a film that a general audience could not only watch but engage with. I was also very conscious of not falling into some of the sensationalistic traps that many current affairs items seem to rely on. Have any of your ex-psychiatric patient subjects seen the film yet? At time of writing, all except one – and by the time you read this she will have seen it. It’s a very humbling (and nerve-racking) process bringing your film back to those you have filmed but it has actually helped our fine cut and, from what I’ve heard, been helpful for them and their families. What’s your pitch as to why people should see it at the World Cinema Showcase? There are so many people in New Zealand who have had a family mem-
Filmmaker Jim Marbrook shooting at the former Carrington Hospital. Image: supplied.
ber who has been affected by time in the Bins. For these people I hope Mental Notes will help give context to a system of care that often resulted in neglect and abuse. It’s also a film for those who are moved and inspired by stories of survival, for those who may crave a less tabloid approach to our recent past, and for history buffs. I firmly believe Kiwis have an innate sense of what is right and wrong and that Mental Notes will challenge, in a positive way, some of our ideas about the rights and wrongs of treatment and about human rights. Ultimately the goal was to make a film that didn’t just appeal to a specialised audience, such as those in the mental health field. We hope it has universal appeal but, realistically, its themes are far from flippant and I believe a more mature audience will appreciate it. Beyond the WCS, what are your goals for the film?
It’s a specifically Kiwi film and we want it to play as widely in NZ as possible. The important thing for us is that it gets seen, so we are working through some distribution options. We also share a common history of institutional care (and deinstitutionalisation) with many Commonwealth countries and the USA, and have already had some interest from distributors in the States. Anything else you’d like to mention? Well, I do hope one of the key messages of the film resonates with the audience – that we can’t go back to the days of factory-style care for those with mental illnesses, and that any spending cuts that may adversely impact on effective community care must be fought all the way. • The World Cinema Showcase plays in Auckland March 29-April 11, Wellington April 5-22, Dunedin April 19-May 2, and Christchurch April 26-May 9 (www.worldcinemashowcase.co.nz).
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Where’s the magic button? Cinematographer Waka Attewell discusses the pros and cons of shooting digitally.
M
y film classes are mainly about old-fashioned knowledge, while leaving enough unsaid so that the moment of discovery is still vaguely possible – and I sprinkle in the odd bon mots on the craft for good measure. Though instant knowledge and once-over-lightly will often do in this user-pays environment, you still have to be patient around these classes – the immediate and instant gratification of making it happen before you know why has never really interested me. The students are sitting in even rows; they’re leaning forward, hanging on my every word. I’m getting through and then it’s question time. Down the back a hand goes up. It’s the nerdy kid from Grey Lynn again – “Do you think you could show us the button that makes it all good?” – and for the second time that morning I’m dumbstruck. The previous time was the same kid asking if I could give them a quick rundown on how to shoot with that “film stuff”. When I answered “How long have you got?” no one laughed and I realised he was serious, so I made a pathetic joke about getting our pictures back the next day and explained a bit about the chemical and physical process. I made a not-too-complex link between the film gate and the sensor while explaining that the lenses are still the same and what happens in front of the camera is still the same. I concluded with “Now a lot more people can pick up a camera, hit the auto button and shoot pictures that look amazing straight away.” This is
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good and er, bad, and maybe there is in fact a button somewhere that makes everything good. 5D, 7D, XF, F3, Sony this and Canon that, Panasonic, RED and now the ARRIFLEX Alexa. The expression is “image capture”. The cameras we are now shooting our movies on are computers that double as cameras. They have buttons and 14 stops of latitude. Exact exposure is a thing of the past – RAW is the new buzz. Set the sensor on the “sweet spot” and shoot away. Digital – fix it in post, it’s been a long time coming, the death of film is nigh; the manufacturers and corporations run this show. First there was HD looming on the horizon, just around the corner and coming next week. It finally did arrive – and for 20 years we were “future proofing” our TV dramas with super16, shooting 16:9 format while broadcasting 4:3. I’ve always wondered what the real cost of those never-to-be-seen bits on either side is? All those extra extras, wardrobe and set builds, all that extra CGI… But I digress. The digital age arrived with a hiss and a roar – RED was the first serious cab off the rank with its sunglasses and flashy launch at NAB. It looked great, and that’s the whole point, create the buzz, the camera arrives in its own good time. Its ability as a camera? Well, have you used one yet? Enough said – but within a breath “image capture” became the Continued on page 26
Image capture & post
Leap pays off Taking on the role of NZ distributor for Panasonic’s broadcast range has worked out well for Pro Video Systems.
H
e had 24 years to get to know the business, is well known to customers, and still has an office in the same building, at least for now. All the same, going out on his own as Pro Video Systems and becoming the New Zealand distributor for Panasonic’s broadcast range was still a leap of faith for Rick Haywood, until then the divisional manager for broadcast and display systems for Panasonic New Zealand itself. Now four months later, he can afford to relax: “One of my fears was that there would be customers out there who would rather deal with the ‘mother ship’ – particularly some of the large accounts,” says Haywood. “But the reaction has been fantastic. People have told me it’s not the company; it’s the people you deal with that are more important. And because I am now free to concentrate exclusively on this range I have a renewed focus and can be far more responsive.” Haywood says it is the best of both
worlds because he has more flexibility than was possible working in a large company with many consumer product lines, yet the logistics and technical support of the larger company is still there. “Service and support is incredibly important, so Panasonic New Zealand provides both service and warranty support exactly as it did before. They have factory trained technicians, cover all warranties, and hold spare parts,” he says. Haywood is confident about the prospects of the New Zealand industry and foresees big growth from small crews producing content for new platforms like marketing campaigns on YouTube. “The hot products are the new handheld cameras,” says Haywood. “The Panasonic AG-HPX250 replaced the popular ‘202’ camera. It is a P2 handheld camera with a 22 x zoom and a 100 Mbit AVC intra codec and 10-bit recording [translation: very good – even better than before].”
Rick Haywood of Pro Video Systems, NZ distributor for Panasonic’s broadcast range. Image: supplied.
Two new little brothers, the AGAC160 and AG-AC130, complete the new professional handheld range, sold through a network of dealers. But after you’ve shot the pictures you need to see them, and Haywood says that over the years he has also sold hundreds of Panasonic plasma display monitors into the industry. “They have better blacks than
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Image capture and post
It’s Chapter 11, not the end of the book It’s business as usual over at Kodak New Zealand despite parent company Eastman Kodak and US subsidiaries filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in January.
T
h e y haven’t actually gone bust. Under the United States’ bankruptcy code Kodak has sought protection from creditors while they reorganise the company in the US. “Non-US subsidiaries are not part of the filings, are not subject to the court proceedings, and are operating as usual,” the company said in a statement. The causes of troubles at head office are not as simple as shrugging and laying the blame with digital cameras taking over from film. As it happens Kodak had a head start in digital imaging technology. It was Kodak research engineer Steven Sasson who invented the first digital camera back in December 1975. According to published interviews with Sasson, it doesn’t matter which digital camera you use today – the camera uses a lot of intellectual property that Kodak first created. In fact, Kodak digital consumer cameras sold in great numbers in the mid-2000s, especially in the US.
Selling patents outright could help Kodak over the hump. In any case, a key objective of the reorganisation will be enforcing IP rights against industry players that have infringed Kodak’s digital imaging patents, says chairman and CEO Antonio Perez. He also says legacy costs relating to the company’s transformation will be fairly apportioned and scaled to the size of the company Kodak is today. US financial papers interpret this to mean cutting employee benefits and pension plans, which have apparently become an onerous burden to a company that has declining revenues. The motion picture film stock business is only a small part of Kodak’s US$5 billion business and may well still be profitable, although an irony has surfaced as it turns out Kodak owes the major studios money, not the other way around. According to The Hollywood Reporter, US$50 million is
owed to the studios for unpaid rebates for using film. If the rebates are that big, this suggests the major studios might be having
The motion picture film stock business is only a small part of Kodak’s US$5 billion business and may well still be profitable, although an irony has surfaced as it turns out Kodak owes the major studios money, not the other way around.
Let us take care of your stuff Call Grant Baker or Steve Finnigan on (09) 309 8026 or visit imagesandsound.co.nz
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an affair with digital but are yet to fall out of love with film. If you happen to feel the same way, just ring up Kodak NZ right now and get it sent over.
Image capture and post
Is 4K the new 2K? As camera manufacturers strive to outdo each other, Peter Parnham looks at what the latest arrivals mean.
I
n the ongoing battle for supremacy in the digital cinematography market, Sony has released the F65. It’s a beauty of a camera, which at least for now, sets the bar for others to beat. Their new 8K cameras have just been unpacked in this country. Dean Thomas, founder of Imagezone, a company originally known for video assist and more recently known for on-set digital imaging services and facilities, is the one going for it. But listen to Thomas talk about it and you realise he is not just purchasing a couple of cameras; he is buying a new digital workflow. Of course, even if you rent a film camera, you are buying into workflow. Whether you use Fujifilm or Kodak film stock you are buying into a standardised laboratory negative processing workflow, which requires complex chemical management and even better, it doesn’t require any active decisions from the cinematographer or producers, because it all takes place in the lab behind the scenes. But buy or rent a digital cinematography camera and like it or not, someone in your production needs to become intimately acquainted with all the ways you can streamline the workflow plus the ways you can stuff it up. If you are smart, you sit down early in the piece with everyone involved and thrash it all out with flow charts. Through all this, as a producer, you need to take care inadvertently not to ask the workflow to do something it is incapable of even when helped by the clever software in today’s post houses
– making a silk purse out of what is technically a sow’s ear. The best idea is to use the opposite approach. Shoot the best image quality you can afford, do whatever post and image manipulation you need in the best quality you can manage and, if you need to, dumb it down to distribution quality at the last possible stage. There’s nothing new in this principle, just ask one of those old fellas who shot commercials in the 1980s on 35mm film for broadcast on standard definition analogue PAL television sets. On paper it looked like overkill, but they sure looked better. Today, Thomas is buying into the new SRMASTER format, which Sony promises can handle vast amounts of data to the point where it will be a practical format for recording 4K images up to 120 frames per second with only the mildest compression applied. (Compressing images means squeezing the data to make it fit the available space. Like a JPEG photo you don’t notice a little compression but the more you squeeze it the ickier it gets.) The new format is a step up from the nine-year-old Sony HDCAMSR video tape format that boasts thousands of video tape decks that form a de-facto standard around the world for mastering, deliverables and archiving format for high-end TV programmes and movies. There is no video tape in the new SRMASTER format. Instead, it
Imagezone’s Dean Thomas unpacks the Sony F65. Photos: Peter Parnham.
employs new SRMemory cards with up to one terabyte in capacity. But for now SR tape does exactly the same jobs it has always done, like mastering a movie for 2K digital cinema projection (2K means 2048 pixels making up one line across the picture). Nothing wrong with that; currently in New Zealand if you go to the cinema and see a steady, clean movie, where the titles don’t bleed out, the chances are you are watching a 2K digital projector. Nevertheless, Sony has been
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Image capture and post
Good cameras – and there are plenty of them – are doing just the same job as they were doing before.
“Where does this go?” – Dean Thomas inserts a memory card into the F65.
selling 4K digital cinema projectors since 2009, (4K is 4096 pixels per line across the picture). Even on last year’s numbers they sold a cool 5700 4K projectors in the US with global orders for 13,000 more. Recently they announced domestic 4K projectors, and 4K TVs from a number of manufacturers are not far away. Join the dots. This is not about selling a few hundred or even a few thousand cameras, this is part of a push to make 4K the new, normal,
high-end production format, first for films and then for high-end television, including commercials. To achieve an end-to-end 4K production and distribution chain is partly a process of filling in the gaps; the internal systems of decent sized post production and VFX houses have been 4K capable for some time. Sony are not the only ones playing in the 4K projector or 4K camera sandpit, so there is lots of opportunity to slip in and out of the end-to end-workflow that Sony would like you to use. For example, Christie is installing 4K cinema projectors throughout Hoyts Australasia, and at the acquisition stage you can already shoot 4K on a RED camera, or stick with 35mm film and scan it into the digital realm at 4K. For Dean Thomas, unpacking his new cameras at Panavision where lenses and accessories abound, the Sony F65 camera is best placed to be at the sharp end of the 4K workflow. But as a standalone camera the F65 is bumping up against ARRI’s Alexa
cameras, and even over beer and pizzas you won’t hear cinematographers say anything negative about Alexas. Meanwhile, RED has been making ‘4K’ cameras for some years and recently introduced ‘5K’ cameras. This is where the numbers turn into a marketing contest. For example the ‘8K’ of the F65 refers to the number of photosites (equivalent to pixels) per line across the sensor, for all colours together. But when we talk about an ordinary uncompressed image file the ‘K’ number refers to each colour – 4K of red 4K of green and 4K of blue (an RGB image). That’s why an 8K camera only produces a 4K image. Even then, the camera’s on-board computers need to fill in some of the gaps in colour to produce RGB at each pixel. On the other hand, when it comes to a contest – 8K is more than rival camera sensors. And on paper at least, the more you start off with, the better resolution of the picture. Even if you don’t see a huge difference by eye, the VFX guys will thank you when they try to key some hair against a green screen. Thomas adds that the F65 camera reproduces a finer accuracy of colour than most rivals (technically, bigger bit depth) and because of the faster data handling of the new SRMASTER format the image doesn’t need to be compressed anywhere as much as rival systems. Not all cameras use the same marketing ‘K’s. The Panavision Genesis, and close relative Sony’s own F35, together with most ordinary 2/3” professional HD video cameras have a photosite in each colour for each HD pixel that an HDTV image needs.
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But where Thomas sees an opportunity for Imagezone’s on-set offering is in the ability to access F65Raw images directly from the camera. Since a computer has to make up the missing colour pixels from the information that the sensors provide, it makes sense that big post house computer systems can do that better than on-the-fly processors crammed into the camera bodies, and as a result in recent times camera manufacturers have allowed users to take image data more or less straight from the sensor even though it may mean more data to store. Each manufacturer has its own proprietary format and workflow. Hence ArriRaw, RedRaw, and now Sony’s F65Raw, none of which are viewable without processing. Access is granted to the inner sanctum and even allowing for some marketing that is where all those sensor Ks and the least amount of compression, and the fastest data capacity of the workflow count. What does all this really mean? Good cameras – and there are plenty of them – are doing just the same job as they were doing before, so no need to worry. Sony itself is busy selling lower end cameras that are proving successful in improving the look of low budget features. At the same time, at the high end some companies are aiming higher – Sony for one. It might not happen overnight, but history is littered with examples of things that did a perfectly fine job but somehow lost their allure when something fancier came along. The top end is about to heat up again. I, for one, can’t wait to see the pictures.
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Across the ditch
I love the rainy nights Our expat spy provides his idiosyncratic take on the Aussie film and television industry.
L
ate Januar y, on a wet night in Sydney (a common occurrence this summer), the by JAMES BONDI inaugural Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts (AACTA) awards ceremony took place at the Sydney Opera House. Bodies in the barrel flick Snowtown took most of the film awards, including best director for Justin Kurzel, best adapted screenplay for Shaun Grant, best actor for Daniel Henshall and best supporting actress for newcomer Louise Harris. Best actress award went to veteran Judy Davis for her performance in Eye of the Storm. Best film went to the Australian box office success of the year, Red Dog. Bondi girl and I were in one of the seating blocks along the side of the stage, giving us a view of not only the ceremony but the audience as well – and the autocue. It was fascinating to see how each of the various presenters and luminaries used this device. Some read from it verbatim, others – mainly actors – used it as a guide and threw in their own bon mots, and others ignored it completely. Like director Stephan Elliott (The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert) who presented the Best
Adapted Screenplay Award. Organisers must have wondered where he was heading as he launched into a vicious attack on unpopular film critic Jim Schembri, who had given Elliott’s latest film A Few Best Men a scathing review … which had no effect on its healthy box office return. “Enough of the poison pie mate, enough of the hate!” he said to rapturous applause from the assembled Australian film industry. Elliott got more personal when he announced he was gay and said “Tonight I’m coming out!” That led to some scattered applause, but most were a bit puzzled. If Stephan has been in the closet for all these years it surely has a glass door. Guests were shuttled up to Hyde Park Barracks, where early convicts were housed, in buses for the aftermatch function, which proved to be the usual debacle. The only escape from the rain was in a large covered area where the ubiquitous, loud, mediocre band played, preventing all but shouted conversations. We all go to these functions to catch up with friends and colleagues and schmooze so why the organisers of such events think we want our eardrums shattered by bad music is something beyond me. Actress Cate Blanchett was spotted handing a $50
note across the bar to shout some mates, not realising that the booze was free. ***
F
ebruary’s short film Tropfest final in Sydney’s Domain was a different affair. Those of us lucky enough to be invited to the undercover VIP area were plied with food and drink and were free to talk our little heads off. Unfortunately those who had imbibed too much of the free goodies thought it was okay to keep up the chatter during the screening of the 16 final films. You’d think some of them would know better. Wouldn’t want someone yakking during my film! Celebrity judges, including Nicole Kidman, Geoffrey Rush, Cate Blanchett, Toni Collette, Alex Proyas and last year’s winner, actor Damon Gameau, attracted as much attention as the films. During the free screenings there were “oohs” and “aahs” as forked lightning and thunderclaps rent the sky. During the second half of the evening these cries changed to “shit”, “bugger” and “f..k” as thousands fled torrential downpours. Never mind, the films are available on Tropfest’s website and a free
DVD came with the one of the next Sunday papers. This is not the first time there was rain at Tropfest and director John Polson is considering changing the date to avoid Sydney’s notoriously wet February. Tropfest has grown from small beginnings, when founder Polson screened his short film at the Tropicana Café in Darlinghurst 20 years ago, to become the biggest short film festival in the world. Over 150,000 people in Australia turn out for the event and international screenings include New York, Paris, China and Malaysia. New Zealand is next so if any budding filmmakers want the chance to bask in the international spotlight here’s your chance (http:// tropfest.com/au/new-zealand/) Winner on the night was the comedy Lemonade Stand from filmmaker Alethea Jones. As well as taking home her share of more than $100,000 in prize money, Jones gets a round trip to LA to meet with top industry film and TV execs, producers and LA based film organisations, sponsored by the Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft and the Motion Picture Association. Not a bad start for a young short filmmaker looking for bigger things.
Where’s the magic button? Continued from page 20
new phrase and data wranglers became the new guy on the crew – the geek who you love to hate when the RED crashes for the third time that morning, or the guy who announces that the file of the sunset shot is corrupt and won’t read. So far there hasn’t been a shoot where the collecting of the binary system hasn’t let us down. It’s become the new negative scratch. Although it’s fairly instant these days, not like finding out 12 hours after the shoot that the lab had a power cut and half your rushes are missing in action. You never get used to it – paperwork is still really 26
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important because it makes the reshoot much easier. But somehow finding out that shot 6 is missing half an hour after you’ve shot it is not that helpful and actually more disrupting on the day. Do you reshoot it straight away or carry on with what you are doing and then reschedule? The immediate disappointment can be a real bugger. So here I am on the side of Mount Everest with a new, lightweight digital camera and a pocket full of cards – SxS, P2, C4, etc. Camp 6 is extreme cold, extreme altitude, high in the danger zone, with brilliant footage. Now
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where’s that laptop to download the cards? It’s not all perfect yet but I’m sure the boffins are working on a drive that burns underwater! With all of the small hiccups aside, I love this digital stuff. It’s instant; it’s there in your face. If you’re lucky enough to have the full grading rig on location you can shoot a test and go grade it there and then. Brilliant. And just to make the world of digital shooting a pleasure, the Germans have come out with the Alexa. I’m in love! It looks like a camera and the first time I got it out of the box we were shooting in less
than three minutes. The RED took me most of the day to get started and by the end of a weekend shooting a short drama I was wound up as tight as a drum. With the Alexa, ARRIFLEX has given the frontline back to the cinematographers. It does have buttons on the off side of the camera, six of them to be exact. They’re intuitive and if used in a creative manner they make stuff good! Maybe that’s what that nerdy kid from Grey Lynn was talking about. But actually, it’s not about that magic button, it’s still all about doing the hard thinking before the camera comes out of the box.
A legal view
The basics of Option and Purchase Agreements Option and Purchase Agreements often appear to be complex legal documents. But as David McLaughlin explains, the key concepts underlying these agreements are generally quite straightforward.
O
ption and Purchase Agreements are probably the most common agreement encountered in the film and TV industries. In most cases they are the starting point for the subsequent development and (hopefully!) production of a project. From a purely legal perspective these agreements also provide the foundations on which a production will be based. Despite the simplicity in what Option and Purchase Agreements are designed to achieve, for most people the legal detail included in them often obscures their true intent. At their most basic level these agreements are really about a producer obtaining the right to develop a concept or material owned by someone else in the hope that it will then subsequently become possible to move this project from development into actual production. An Option and Purchase Agreement will provide for a specified option period for the duration of which the producer is granted the exclusive option to purchase from the owner the underlying rights in question for the purposes of making a production. The producer will also have to pay an initial option fee at the outset of the agreement to secure the exclusive option period. Although a producer can’t commence production of a project during the option period they will be able to undertake certain development and pre-production activities. During the option period
the producer will be entitled to do all those standard things, such as creating proposals, treatments, and even screenplays, that we would normally associate with getting a project developed to the point that it could actually go into production. Although the option periods in New Zealand Option and Purchase Agreements are typically only 12 months, a producer will normally have the ability under the agreement to extend the option period for a set number of subsequent 12 month periods. Any extension of the option period will also usually involve the payment of further option fees. Just like any commercial deal, the final terms of an Option and Purchase Agreement will be shaped by the parties involved and their bargaining power. All of this will take place against a backdrop of certain industry norms. The producer optioning a work will usually want different commercial terms to those of the owner of the work. Similarly, advocates for writers and producers will have different perspectives on where the key commercial terms should be set, and indeed even what commercial terms should apply. At the point in time that the producer decides they do wish to proceed to production they will look to exercise their option to purchase the rights required to produce the project. Although you could conceiv-
ably deal with both the option and purchase elements to the deal in two completely separate contracts, the benefit of covering both in one contract (or at least two linked contracts) is that both parties have certainty that if the producer wishes to acquire the rights in the work in order to proceed, the applicable rights to be acquired as well as the fees to be paid are already clearly set out. This prevents potential delays that could occur at a crucial point of the project if the parties had to sit down and negotiate the applicable terms. On exercising their option to purchase the underlying rights the producer will have to pay a purchase price. The precise timing of this payment will vary depending on what is negotiated between the parties. Although there are some fairly standard industry norms around when the purchase price is usually paid, from a rights owner’s perspective payment as soon as possible is obviously best – while from a producer’s perspective the more leeway that can be achieved on the payment date, the better. The actual amount of the purchase price is once again open to commercial negotiation but as an alternative to a set figure it is not unusual to see the price being determined by reference to a percentage of the production budget. The precise definition of budget here is obviously key as there can
be significant differences between above and below the line costs that either party may want to see included or excluded from the calculation. Specified minimums and maximums that the purchase price will meet are also often provided for. Along with the payment of a purchase price, a separate right is also often granted to the rights owner to share in a very small percentage of the producer’s subsequent net profit from the production. In the next issue of Onfilm we’ll continue our discussion of Option and Purchase Agreements by looking more closely at the precise nature of the rights that are often acquired via an Option and Purchase Agreement. • David McLaughlin (david@mclaughlinlaw.co.nz) is the principal of McLaughlin Law (www.mclaughlinlaw.co.nz). • Disclaimer: This article is intended to provide a general outline of the law on the subject matter. Further professional advice should be sought before any action is taken in relation to the matters described in the article.
Got a legal issue you’d like examined in an upcoming column? Then email David McLaughlin (david@mclaughlinlaw. co.nz).
Brother Number One Continued from page 9
The narrative driver is the presentday story of Kerry’s brother Rob, well known locally and internationally as a New Zealand Olympic and TransAtlantic rowing champion, who goes to Cambodia to make a Victim’s Statement at the War Crimes Tribunal trial of Comrade Duch (also known as Brother Number One), the prison commander who ordered the torture and killings. Rob made the journey out of respect and love, wanting to honour his brother’s memory, but he also hoped Duch might acknowledge the suffering he had caused. It
is a small triumph then when, in the courtroom, he catches Duch’s eye, “I held his eye. He looked away.” It’s typical of Hamill that he then laughs at himself for seeing this as a triumph and one of the pleasures of the film is getting to know this humble man. He is amazing to watch – articulate, unafraid of showing his vulnerability, often in tears, sometimes angry, but always gracious. He is determined to discover what happened to his brother, however painful that discovery might be, and it is through his journey, during which he meets
many of those involved in and affected by the work of the Khmer Rouge, including his lovely interpreter Kulikar Sotho, that we come face to face with the capacity of human strength to overcome the banality of evil. Finally able to read Kerry’s ‘confession’ which, while absurd, contains flashes of dry Kiwi wit (with Kerry maintaining that he worked for Colonel Sanders, for example), Rob celebrates that his brother was able to hold onto his humanity. In his determination to get to the truth and to hold someone account-
able, Rob gives a vicarious voice to all the victims and their families. To date Duch is the only Khmer Rouge ‘brother’ who has admitted any guilt, although he steadily maintains he was only following orders. With no other Khmer Rouge yet convicted of the crime of genocide he has become something of a scapegoat, but it’s doubtful whether too many people will be upset when they hear his initial sentence of 19 years, on his appeal, has been changed to life imprisonment. • http://brothernumberone.co.nz/film
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27
Production listings
How to get your production listed Because all listing information is voluntarily supplied by the production companies concerned, these pages are indicative of production activity rather than being an exhaustive record.
Film pre PRODUCTION MEDICINE WOMAN prod co SPP (09 839 0999) exec prods John Barnett, Chris Hampson line prod Catherine Madigan prod coord Michelle Leaity prod sec Sarah Banasiak prod run Aimee Russell acct Susie Butler writer/dir Dana Rotberg 1AD Hamish Gough 2AD Katie Tate script sup Hayley Abbott loc mgr Charlotte Gardner loc asst Nina Bartlett DP Al Bollinger f/puller Bradley Willemse gaffer Gilly Lawrence snd rec Adam Martin prod des Tracey Collins art coord Kate Olive art dirs Davin Voot, Milton Candish set dsrs Anita Dempsey, Setu Lio constr mgr Nik Novis scenic art Paul Ny art asst Leah Mizrahi stby props Nick Williams cost des Tracey Collins asst cost des Kiri Rainey cost s/by Carmel Rata asst dresser Emma Ransley m/up sup Jane Petersen-Foret grip Terry Joosten unit mgr Ben Dun cast dir Christina Asher coach Stephanie Wilkin saftey Robert Gibson ed Paul Sutorius asst pub Tamar Munch pub asst Lucy Ewen stills p/grphr John McDermott adv Ngamaru Raerino, Kararaina Rangihau
POST PRODUCTION COMPOUND Feature prod co D S Prods prod/dir/writer Dale Stewart exec prods Dale Stewart, Graeme Gilby prod Jacqui Gilbert DP Mathew Harte 1st cam asst Roko Babich 2nd cam asst Dale Stewart 1st ad Candice Crow boom op Chanel Simpson prod mgr Jacqui Gilbert prod assts Jono Bevin, John Gilbert, Joseph Gilbert gaffer Mathew Harte gaffer asst Roko Babich adv John Gilbert m/up Sarah Taylor, Zoe Boyle, Anna Brock, Simone Faets ed Dale Stewart ed assts Ben Fowler, Chris Tarpey colourist Allan George cmpsr/ mus Gabrielle Gilbert snd/foley/snd post prods Nadav Tabak, Alex Ward loc Spookers cast Te Kaea Beri, Richard Lambeth, Nikki Christensen, Russell Wills, Debbie Foster, Omar Al-Sobky, Tim Hammersley, Tonci Pivac, Campbell Cooley, Mike O’Sullivan, Jacqui Gilbert, Tim Schijf, Jennifer Lopsi, Dale Stewart, Andires Mentz, Chad Mills, Gareth Paget, Andy Sophocleous, Breigh Fouhy, Andrea Bates, Alex Way, David Coggington, Amy Malloy, Eppie Bowler, Mike Tilton, Chantal Renee Samuela, David McCartney, Dan Coddington, David Austin, Jimmy James, Sean O’Connor, Jonathan Gilbert, Rachel King, Gabriel Henry
ETERNITY Feature prod co Eternity Prods prod/dir/writer Alex Galvin exec prod Michael Stephens DP Matthew Sharp prod mgrs Catherine Juniot, Sophie Gregory prod asst Amanda Berryman 1st ADs Kendall Finlayson, Lisa Fraser-Clark 2nd AD Anne Jaeger cont Marian Angeles f/puller Bryson Rooney cam assts Kim Thomas, Graham Smout gaffer Lee Scott b/boy Daniela Conforte lx assts Jan Kleinheins, Sally Cunningham, Royce Goddard, Sam Wynn key grip Will Matthews dolly grip Brett Saunders grip asst William Flanagan snd rec Aaron Davis boom Lance O’Riley w/robe Larissa McMillan w/robe asst Daria Malesic art dept Anna Brown art assts Fern Karun, Ryan Roche m/up Julia O’Neil, Lucy Gargiulo sfx Bill Hunt prod des Robert Flynn loc mgr John Patrick data
wrangler Symon Choveaux unit Cameron McCulloch stills Robert Johnson runners Mike Potton, Ryall Burden eds Patrick Canam, Nick Swinglehurst asst ed Kevin Dubertrand ADR Darren Maynard vfx Tony St George, Brett Johansen, Kenny Smith, Marty Chung composer Michelle Scullion cast Elliot Travers, Geraldine Brophy, Dean Knowsley, Alan Brunton, Liz Kirkman, Simon Vincent, Kirsty Peters, Rachel Clentworth, Renee Sheridan, Amy Usherwood, Ralph Johnson, Jessica Manins, April Phillips, Ben Fransham, Nigel Harbrow, Tom Rainbird, Raquel Sims, Lucy Smith, Alana Henderson, Laurence Walls, Luke Hawker, Amy Tsang
Jed Thian, Tim Mansell, Brad Harding, Spencer Greenham, Pete Doile, Acushla-Tara Sutton, Flo Wilson
EXISTENCE
GHOST SHARK 2: URBAN JAWS
NZFC Escalator salvage punk Western prod co Existence dir Juliet Bergh prods Mhairead Connor, Melissa Dodds writers Juliet Bergh, Jessica Charlton based on concept by Juliet Bergh, Jessica Charlton, Philip Thomas script adv Graeme Tetley 1AD/asso prod David Norris prod asst/trainee Jess McNamara prod acct Lyndsay Wilcox casting dir Tina Cleary, The Casting Company DP Jessica Charlton DP/1ac cam Aline Tran 1ac cams Kirk Pflaum, Matt Tuffin 2ac cams Marty Lang, Josh Obrien vid asst Laetitia Belen, Shane Catherall 3AD Dan Lynch chaprns Miranda Harcourt, Stuart McKenzie, Julie Roberts prod des Philip Thomas lead hand Geoff Goss stby prps Ryan Roche set drssr Ryle Burden prop byrs Ryan Roche, Ryle Burden prpmkrs Izzat Design prpmkrs asst Yohann Viseur r/player prp mkr Nick McGowan art dept assts Shane Catherall, Ian Middleton, Tom Mchattie, Amohia Dudding, Ivan Rooda art dept mentor Joe Bleakley thanks to Chris Streeter, Russell Murray gfx des Nick Keller armourer Hamish Bruce livestock wrangler Hero Animals, Caroline Girdlestone asst horse wrangler Monique Drake rider dble Mark Kinaston-Smith cos des Kate Trafford asst des Kristiina Ago m/up art Tess Clarke m/up asst Chrystal script sup Karen Alexander snd rec Nic McGowan boom op Dylan Jauslin onset PA/trainee Nick Tapp gaffer/grip Andy Rennie grip Graeme Tuckett grip/lx asst Ray Eagle, Buddy Rennie Ben stunt coord Augie Davis, Shane Rangi safety Scene Safe Rob Fullerton vfx Frank Reuter unit mgr Hamish McDonald-Bates unit asst Zoe Studd catering Blue Carrott EPK/stills Nick Swinglehurst assembly ed Paul Wadel, Gretchen Peterson ed Simon Price snd des Nick McGowan comp Grayson Gilmour adr/foley facility Underground Sound/Production Shed post fac Park Road Post cam Rocket Rentals grip/lx Brightlights insure Crombie Lockwood mentors prods Leanne Saunders, Vicky Pope dir Mike Smith DP/cam ops Phil Burchell, Rob Marsh, John Chrisstoffels prod des Joe Bleakley thanks to Museum Hotel, Gail Cowen Management, Johnson & Laird, MAC Cosmetics, Celsius Coffee, Meridian, Wgtn Regional Council, Toi Poneke Wellington Art Centre, Loose Unit/Gabe Page Chris Streeter, Russell Murray & Film Wellington Nicci Lock cast Loren Taylor, Gareth Reeves, Peter McCauley, Matt Sunderland, Thomasin McKenzie, Peter McKenzie, Aaron Jackson, Rachel Roberts, Gentiane Lupi, Richard Freeman
Feature prod co Mad Fox Films writers/prods/dirs Andrew Todd, Johnny Hall line prod Alastair Tye Samson DP Andrew Todd art dir Jasmine Rogers-Scott m/up Kirsten Taiapa sfx Bailey Palmer, Kylie Nixon snd recs Alastair Tye Samson, Joh Bloomberg, Kirk Pflaum stills Adam Baines PA Ellie Callahan 2 unit dir Doug Dillaman eds Andrew Todd, Johnny Hall cmpsr Luke Di Somma cast Campbell Cooley, Johnny Hall, Steve Austin, Kathleen Burns, Roberto Nascimento, Isabella Burt, George Hardy, Juliette Danielle, Alan Bagh, David Farrier, Lizzie Tollemache, Stig Eldred, Timothy Bartlett, Helen Moran, Jeff Clark, Anoushka Klaus, Leighton Cardno
FRESH MEAT Feature NZFC prod co Gibson Group prod Dave Gibson dir Danny Mulheron writer Briar Grace Smith line prod Chris Tyson ed Paul Sutorius CGI sup John Strang online ed/colourist Adam Sondej fac mgr Rex Potier snd post prod Mike Hopkins post prod fac Park Road pub Anna Dean EPK Mischa Malane p/grphr Helen Mitchell cast Temuera Morrison, Nicola Kawana, Hanna Tevita, Kate Elliott, Jack Shadbolt, Leand Macadaan Ralph Hilaga, Kahn West, Will Robertson, James Ashcroft, Richard Knowles, Andrew Foster, Phil Grieve, Thomas Rimmer,
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Please see www.onfilm.co.nz or contact crewlists@onfilm.co.nz for everything you need to know about getting your production listing/s in Onfilm, including deadlines, submitting new entries and updates, and abbreviations.
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FRIDAY TIGERS 12min RED Cam prod co Notable Pictures prod Julia Parnell dir Aidee Walker scrnply Aidee Walker DP Roko Antonio Babich ed Dan Jarman 1AD Alexander Gandar f/puller Ayrton Winitana snd rec Cameron Lenart gaffer Matt Harte lx asst James Dudley prod des Laura Smith art Spencer Harrington m/up Jacinta Driver prod mgr Zanna Gillespie dir asst Vicky Yiannoutsos cast Aidee Walker, Matariki Whatarau, Simon Wolfgram, Anysia Davies, John Davies, Kahurangi Carter
JAKE Feature (RED) prod co Hybrid Motion Pictures prods Alastair Tye Samson, Anoushka Klaus, Doug Dillaman writer/dir Doug Dillaman 1AD Ellie Callahan prod mgr Amanda Cairns-Cowen DP Ross Turley f/pullers Garth Merrylees, David Steel, Meg Perrott, Ayrton Winitana key grip Heath King 2nd asst cam Fiona Janet Young lx assts John Young, Ewan Hall snd rec Alex Bird art dir Jasmine RogersScott cost Jasmin Gibson, Barbara Pinn m/up art Anna Hewlett stby w/robe Shannon Winn conty Oliver Rose catering Concierge NZ stills Adam Baines ed Peter Evans 1st asst ed Katie Ross 2nd asst ed Gideon Smit colourist Alana Cotton snd des Jason Fox music Paul Velat cast Jason Fitch, Leighton Cardno, Greg Johnson, Martyn Wood, Tainui Tukiwaho, Campbell Cooley, Anoushka Klaus, Narelle Ahrens, Toby Sharpe, Deborah Rea, Julie Collis, Mick Innes, Jodie Hillock, Renee Lyons, Sam Berkley, Julian Wilson, Anna Davies
KIWI FLYER Feature NZFC, NZ on Air, Kiwi Flyer Productions prod Tim Sanders dir/writer Tony Simpson writer Andrew Gunn line prod Maile Daugherty prod coord Angela da Silva asst prod coord Jimmy Hayes 2nd prod coord Louise Allan runr Sam Booth acct Ian Nobin 1AD Fraser Ross 2AD Reuben van Dorsten 3AD Rachel Bristow prod des Ken Turner art coord Kim Turner onset art Alexandra Turner props byr/coord Kevin Butson art asst Russell Menary art runr Delainy Kennedy DP David Paul 1AC Focus Matt Tuffin 2AC Graham Smout data wrang Alastair Mckenzie cast Neill Rea (Fly Casting) pub/cast coord Sian Clement stills Joni Anderson caterer La Petite Fleur chaprn Kerry Fleming cost des Jill Alexander cost s/by Haley Lukies cost asst Sophie Hodge script sup Karen Alexander ed Paul Maxwell asst ed Nicki Dreyer gaffer Adrian Hebron key grip Hamish McIntyre grip asst Bret Saunders b/boy Mark Matchett loc mgr Graham Thompson scout Michaela Blackman m/up sup Jean Hewitt m/ up sup assts Kate Fox-Heywood, Poppy MacPhedran hair Aboki safety Willy Heatley, Damian Molloy snd rec Ben Vanderpoel boom op Nikora Edwards stunts
Steve McQuillan lead trolleys bldr Gordon Dacombe add trolleys Trevor Carston, Stephen Lovell unit mgr Josanne Tane post prod Images & Sound insurance AON NZ, Paul Weir, FIUA, Joe LoSordo legal Matt Emery cast Edward Hall, Tikirau Hathaway, Tandi Wright, Dai Henwood, Vince Martin, Doug Colling, Myer van Gosliga
RUNAWAYS 35mm NZFC funded short prod co Candlelit Pictures prod Alix Whittaker writer/dir Jordan Dodson cowriter Oliver Page DP Matt Meikle 1AD Tony Forster prod coord Emily Van Wichen prod des Lyn Bergquist strybd Glen Christie cam op Dana Little f/puller David Shope loader Raymond Edwards clapper/ vid split Alan Waddingham snd rec Mark Williams boom op CJ Withey gaffer Paul Eversden key grip Jim Rowe gaffer asst Richard Schofield, Sean Loftin grip asst John Whiteside script sup Shana Lang m/ up/hair Paige Best sfx/m/up Sean Bridle w/robe Krysta Hardaker sfx rain Raymond Allen stunt coord Albert Heimuli catering Luscious Catering unit mgr Roan Lewisham making of Ilai Amir ed Kerri Roggio 4k scan Pete Williams, Nick Booth snd des James Hayday foley art Jonathan Bruce colorist David McLaren cast Donogh Rees, Stephen Ure, Mitchell Hageman, Thomas Hageman
SQUASH Short prod co NZ Film & Television School prod John Reid line prod Alison Langdon exec prod Tommy Honey dir Sky Adams writer Priscilla Rasmussen 1AD sched/ prod wrap/grad sup/prod mgr Ants Faifai ed/1AD Jesse Moriarty asst ed James Wypych DP Oren Graham art dir Bex Djentuh loc mgr Sam Spooner prod coord Kate Hooker cam op Tony Stewart 1stAC/f/puller/post prod sup Nikita Baines c/loader Natasha Tylee grip Duncan Pacey gaffer Tim Wells vid asst/rush Natasha Tylee snd rec/snd post sup James Carroll boom op/snd ed/foley Sam Bryant cont Jen Metcalf art dir Rebecca Djentuh props/art asst/making of Steve Goodwin m/up Sasha Rees w/robe Elliot Stevenson thanks to Brett Mills, Film Queenstown industry mentors Nicola Marshall, Charless Edwards, Ken Saville, Andreas Mahn. Graeme Tuckett cast Christine Raki-Noanoa, Theo Taylor, Rangimoana Taylor, David Lamese, Robert Hartley, Kahu Taiaroa, Shane Poihipi, Amalia Calder, Shaun McCluskie, Jacob Kerr, Jazz Calder
SUNI MAN Short prod co Opposable Thumbs writer/dir/prod Hamish Mortland prod mgr Nikki Baigent DP Andrew McGeorge 1AD Darren Mackie 2AD Sez Niederer casting dir/extras co Jay Saussey loc mgr Jeanette Bremner prod asst Alix Whittaker prod runner Rachel Ross prod des John Ioane art dir Sarah Beale art asst Lisa Ioane illustrator Niamh Purcell 1st cam asst/f/puller Dave Hammond 2nd cam asst Dave Steel vid split/ data wrangler Alan Waddingham steadicam op Dave Garbett snd rec Mike Westgate boom op Shardae Foden gaffer Gilly Lawrence b/ boy Merlin Wilford lx asst Mana Lawrence key grip Tommy Park b/boy grip Adnan Taumoepeau grip asst Hamish Young script sup Shana Lang m/up/ hair Vee Gulliver w/robe Sarah Aldridge safety off/ onset co Dr Rebecca Mackenzie-Proctor catering Jenny Mortland, Katie Heath & Ainsley Allen unit sup Ronnie Hape unit mgr Nicki Tremain unit asst Wayne Hooper ed Simon Price asst ed Dena Kennedy script ed Kathryn Burnett stills p/grphr Mark Gore cast Beulah Koale, Murphy Koale, Maggie Tele, Mauri Oho Stokes, Patrick Tafa, Ben Timu, Andy Bryers, Aleni Tufuga, Stacey Leilua, Madhu Narsai
Production listings THE CURE Digital action/thriller prod co David Gould Studios sales agents Archstone Distribution, Joker Films writer/dir David Gould prods Alex Clark, David Gould prod coord Olivia Scott prod asst Amanda Berryman runners Alistair van Hattum, Steven Charles acct Marc Tyron prod des Gim Bon art dir/sby Haley Williams byr/dress Chris Chandler art dept assts Hannah Sutherland, Heather Winship, Josh Cleary set bldr Richard Klinkhamer painter Stine Wassermann gfx Larissa McMillan intern Ruby Fitzgerald 1AD Marc Ashton 2AD Jack Nicol 3AD Keryn Johns cast dir Liz Mullane script sup Marian Angeles DP David Paul equip hire Cameraworks; David Paul, Chris Hiles f/ puller Matthew Tuffin 2AC Graham Smout 3rd AC/ grip Gene Warriner data wrang Josh O’Brien 2U cam Ross McWhannell 2U cam asst Manuel Czepok cost des Gabrielle Stevenson byr/sby Estelle Stroud asst/ sby Rose McIntyre gaffer Adrian ‘Wookie’ Hebron b/ boy Alan Wilson b/boy add Chris Murphy lx asst Jared O’Neale fx m/up lead Naomi Lynch fx m/up art Tanya Barlow m/up intern Sarah Elford snd rec Benoit Hardonniere stunt sups Rodney Cook, Shane Rangi stunts Allan Henry, Luke Hawker spfx sup Paul McInnes vfx sup Frank Rueter fluids/fire Bodo Keller concepts/gfx Felicity Moore sci consult George Slim experiments Richard Hall weapons Paul McLaughlin EPK Brendan Dee unit pub Sian Clement cast Antonia Prebble, Daniel Lissing, John Bach, Stephen Lovatt
THE IMPORTANCE OF HAVING BREAKFAST Short prod co NZ Film & Television School dir Jen Metcalfe writer Kate Hooker prod John Reid exec prod Tommy Honey asso prod Alison Langdon DP Jesse Moriarty prod mgr/prod wrap/grad sup Ants Faifai prod asst James Wypych loc mgr Tony Stewart 1stAD Priscilla Rasmussen cam op Steven Goodwin 1stAC/f/ puller Sky Adams c/loader/vid asst/snd ed/foley Duncan Pacey grip Sam Spooner gaffer Oren Graham gaffer asst Sam Bryant snd rec Rebecca Djentuh boom op James Carroll cont Francesca Brooks art dir Tim Wells props/art asst Elliot Stevenson w/robe /prod coord Kate Hooker unit/post prod sup Nikita Baines ed Elliot Stevenson asst ed/making of Natasha Tylee snd post sup James Carroll tech sup Sam Spooner m/up Kerry Taylor industry mentors Nicola Marshall, Charles Edwards, Adrian Hebron, Ken Saville cast Robert Tripe, Alison Walls, Robert Hartley
IN RELEASE A BEND IN THE ROAD NZFC funded short prod co Alpha Bristol Films prod Gemma Freeman dir/writer Rollo Wenlock DP Simon Baumfield hd art Kasia Pol eds Charlie Bleakley, Michael Horton cast dir Tina Cleary asso prod mgr Georgiana Taylor 1AD Del Chatterton stunts Rodney Cook cam asst Graham Smout lx Byron Sparrow grip Wayne Subritzky lx/grip asst Simon Oliver snd rec Aaron Davis, Kevin Hill w/robe Caroline Stephen m/up Lucy Gargiulo m/up asst Tiffany Te Moananui continuity Marian Angeles, Nina Katungi snd des Matthew Lambourn cmpsr Stephen Gallagher dialogue ed Christopher Todd snd fx ed Jeremy Cullen ADR mixer Nigel Scott foley art Robyn McFarlane snd mixer Gilbert Lake, Park Road snd post prod Amanda Heatley colourist Matthew Wear taperoom sup Victoria Chu facility prod Emma Bartlett ed asst Greg Jennings loc res Lily Hacking prod assts Rachael Glassman, Robert Ormsby p/grphr Michael Hobbs casual driver Lillian Beets catering Peartree Lane Catering cast Aaron McGregor, Tom Hern, Leon Wadham, Cohen Holloway
BLINDSIDE Short prod co Zodiac Entertainment dir Dimi Nakov
writers Chantal Rayner-Burt, Sean O’Connor prod Dimi Nakov, Graeme Cash 1AD Tim Butler-Jones add AD Kate Carver DP Jarod Murray cam ops Sam James, Stephen Morris, Lydia Stott cam assts Dinesh Chelat, Peta Douglas, Jamie Drummond, Lars Quickfall snd Richard Dugdale boom ops Josh Finnigan, Lars Quickfall, Daiyaan Rhoda sndtrack Unsub, Dano Songs, Kevin MacLeod, Valdi Sabev vfx Kathy Kenndedy, Jill Round art dir Kevin Luck asst art dir Natasha Luck stby props Peta Douglas, Rokhshana Lang, Henric Matthiesen stills Nichola Gilchrist, Tim Butler-Jones, Robert Aberdeen gfx des Jose Gilabert m/up Celeste Strewe, Victoria Haines cast dir Beren Allen loc mgr Daiyaan Rhoda safety Phil Greeves stunt coord Melvin Te Wani cont Brooke Macaulay, Anjula Prakash, Peta Douglas ed Martin Collyns cast Jordon Buckwell, Tonci Pivac, Sarah James, Paul Thomas Lewis, Lulu Bell, Tessa Jensen, Tara Eloise
PLAYMATES Short prod co Zodiac Entertainment dir Dimi Nakov writer Tonci Pivac prod Graeme Cash exec prod Dimi Nakov, Tonci Pivac post prod Samuel Wheeler 1AD Tim Butler-Jones DP Stephen Morris cam ops Levon Baird, Jarod Murray cam assts Dinesh Chelat, Paul Hudson snd Sudarshan Badrinarayanan boom ops Daiyaan Rhoda, Richard Dugdale score Tim ButlerJones, Samuel Wheeler tech dir Jarod Murray m/up Celeste Strewe stby props Peta Douglas stills Nichola Gilchrist, Simon Long cont Jess Maitland, Brooke Macaulay catering Yagoda Pivac, Tim Bulter-Jones ed Samuel Wheeler cast Delaney Tabron, Tonci Pivac, Phil Greeves, Simon Long, Thomas Moon, Aleisha Moore, Jesse Miller, Sean O’Connor
REST FOR THE WICKED Feature NZFC 16mm prod cos RFTW, Antipodean Films, Esidarp Prods prod Maile Daugherty dir Simon Pattison writer Bob Moore line prod Judith Trye DP Jos Wheeler ed Paul Maxwell 1AD Simon Ambridge 2AD Reuben Van Dorsten 3AD Hannah McKenzie 2nd unit 1AD Hamish Gough prod coord Angela da Silva asst prod coord Donna Pearman prod acct Naomi Bowden prod runner David Cowlrick prod des Shayne Radford art dir Zach Becroft art dept coord/ byr Anna Jordan art asst Dominic Miles f/puller Graham MacFarlane c/loader Tammy Williams v/ split Alex Campbell B cam 1stACs Dean McCarroll, Jason White stdcams Rhys Duncan, Grant Adams, Dana Little script sup Kat Phyn script con Nick Ward dramaturg Aileen O’Sullivan dir trnee Elena Doyle cast dir Sally Spencer-Harris cost des Kirsty Steele cost stby Ylona McGinity cost dssr Anna Reid cost asst Pearl Jolly key grip Jim Rowe grip Chris Rawiri gaffer Graeme Spence b/boy Regan Jones lx asst Ben Corlett snd rec Myk Farmer boom op Eoin Cox loc mgr Damion Nathan m/up&hair Natalie Perks m/ up asst Hannah Wilson safety Anthony Pennington, Safe Scene pub Sue May EPK Alistair Crombie stills Matt Klitscher, Marc Mateo sfx sup/armourer Gunner Ashford stunt coord Paul Shapcott unit mgr Nicki Tremain vfx sup Zane Holmes asst ed Kerri Roggio mus sup Amine Ramer comp David Long colrist Paul Lear snd des Ray Beenjes snd fx ed Hassan Lahrech dial ed Jeremy Cullen post prod Images & Sound, Park Road Post vfx house Eklektik Design lab Film Lab stock Kodak cast Tony Barry, John Bach, Teresa Woodham, Irene Wood, Ilona Rodgers, Elizabeth Mcrae, Ken Blackburn, Bruce Allpress, Elisabeth Easther, Stephanie Tuaevihi, Ian Mune, Helen Moulder, Sara Wiseman
THE PSYCHOLOGIST Short prod co Zodiac Entertainment dir/prod Dimi Nakov writer/exec prod James Crompton exec prod Dimi Nakov prod mgr Graeme Cash DP Jarod Murray cam assts Kevin Luck, Lars Quickfall, Peta Douglas snd Richard Dugdale boom op Josh Finnigan sndtrack
Cap Gun Hero, Kevin MacLeod, Dano Songs art dir Peta Douglas m/up Celeste Strewe cont Peta Douglas ed Logan Swinkels cast Stanislava Balkarey, James Crompton, Miho Wada, Pascal Roggen, Kevin Luck, Lars Quickfall, Tim Butler-Jones
WHEN A CITY FALLS prod co Frank Film writer/dir/prod Gerard Smyth prod Alice Shannon eds Richard Lord, Ken Sparks cine Jacob Bryant, Gerard Smyth rsrchr Rhys Brookbanks, Cate Broughton, Jennifer Dutton, Brent Fraser, Jo Malcolm sup snd ed/snd des Chris Sinclair snd des/mus dir Ben Edwards creative con Alun Bollinger exec prod Paul Swadel sndtrack by Tiki Taane & Aaron Tokona, Te Taonga Puoro & Richard Nunns feat Caroline Blackmore, Carmel Courtney, Ben Edwards, Mark la Roche, Serenity Thurlow, Ariana Tikao thanks Christchurch Symphony Orchestra dev Garth Campbell, Greg Jackson prod asst/snd asst Jennifer Dutton snd asst Carrie-Jo Caralyus, Rob Jamieson, Jake Sheldrake, Maggie Smyth, Jake Stanton footage supplied by Archive NZ, Simon Baker, Scotty Behrnes, Sam Britten, Nigel Brook, Steven Goodenough/Photo NZ, Mike Harvey, Richard Lord/Caravan Media, Brian McCausland, Logan McMillan/Gorilla Pictures, Joe Morgan, Dan Watson, Peter Young/Fish Eye Films, YouTube user Bugsandal, Anthony Dean, Wendy Ingram, Richard Harris, Tim McDonald, Finn & Sally McMillan, Shaun Ryan, Daniel Szesniak, Dawn Walsh stills supplied by David Barrell, Richard Jongens/GNS, Carys Monteath/ The Press, Gillian Needham/Getty, Philip Pearson, Geoff Sloan/The Star, Malcolm Teasdale/Kiwirail stills p/grphr Richard Lord/Caravan Media pub Alice Shannon, Sue May dist Gordon Adam/Metropolis gfx des Andrew Ashton, Aaron Beehre art dep Michael Dell, Denali Lord, Rosie Smyth lx Andy Rennie/Bright Lights, Park Road gen mgr Cameron Harland HO prod Dean Watkins snd prod Amanda Heatley fac mgr Nina Kurzmann HO pic David Hollingsworth sen online ed Rob Gordon colourist Matt Wear HO snd John Neill sen re-rec mix Mike Hedges, Gilbert Lake digi mast sup Victoria Chu digi mast op Steve Deuburguet projctnst Paul Harris HO tech Phil Oatley data wrang Natalie Best, Clare Brody, Jennie Yeung
Television pre PRODUCTION AVALANCHE HUNTERS 7x30mins n/wrk Eden TV dist Naked Flame prod cos Making Movies, Bear Cage co pro New Zealand/ Australia exec prods James Heyward, Michael Tear prods Andy Salek, Hugh Barnard writers Hugh Barnard, James Heyward
WILD AT HEART 6x60min HD doco prod co NHNZ (03 479 9799) for TVNZ, NZOA Platinum Fund exec prod John Hyde series prod Nicky Hammond prod mgr Suzanne Lloyd rsrchrs Marcus Turner, Claire Clements, Rob Bridgeman prod asst Michael Henríquez cam Alex Hubert
IN PRODUCTION ATTITUDE - 7 40x29min disability focused docos prod co Attitude Pictures prod Robyn Scott-Vincent dirs Emma Calveley, Magdalena Laas, Richard Riddiford, Wendy Colville prod mgr Sue Wales-Earl prod trainees Brent Gundesen, Daniel Wrinch prod acct Jane Cotter rsrch Tanya Black, Dan Buckingham, Ann-Marie Quinn cam Sean Loftin snd Damon Arts, Eugene Arts gfx Brandspank ed Attitude Pictures offline eds Simon Hyland, Jai Waite online ed Simon Hyland snd TVNZ, Simon Weir reporters Tanya Black, Dan Buckingham
BORDER PATROL prod co Greenstone TV ho prod Andrea Lamb prod Saffron Jackson prod mgr Jani Alexander prod coord Carita de Jong fund TVNZ
BOTH WORLDS 10x26min special interest prod co Notable Pictures prod Julia Parnell dirs Dane Giraud, Stephen Kang, Zia Mandviwalla DP Richard Harling snd op Cameron Lenart ed Tim Grocott prod mgr Zanna Gillespie res Angelique Kasmara
COASTWATCH prod co Greenstone TV ho prod Andrea Lamb prod Megan Jones prod mgr Angela Burgess prod coord Carita de Jong fund TVNZ
COUNTRY CALENDAR 2012 26x30min rural NZ lifestyles prod co TVNZ exec prod Tina McLaren prods Julian O’Brien, Dan Henry prod mgr Robyn Best dir/reps Frank Torley, Jerome Cvitanovich, Carol Archie, Kerryanne Evans, Katherine Edmond, Dan Henry res Vivienne Jeffs
DOG SQUAD prod co Greenstone TV ho prod Andrea Lamb prod Kate Peacocke prod mgr Laura Peters prod coord Wendy Tetley fund TVNZ
FROCK STARS (WT)
TANGAROA WITH PIO SERIES 7 26x26min fishing/lifestyle b/caster Mäori TV prod co AKA Prods prod/dir Aroha Shelford pres Pio Terei cam op Richard Curtis u/w cam Dean Savage snd Colleen Brennan te reo Mäori Tumamao Harawira ed John Fraser aud post Reade Audio mus Reo Dunn, Woodcut gfx Lettica Shelford prod acct Lee Ann Hasson prod mgr Karen Sidney prod asst Shelly Matiu n/wrk execs Annie Murray
WHAT NOW 120min weekly live kids show pres Gem Knight, Adam Percival, Ronnie Taulafo, Johnson Raela eds Michelle Bradford, Tyler King, Stuart Waterhouse audio post Whitebait Facilities, Vahid Qualls, Dave Cooper props Warren Best, Rosie Taurima w/robe Wilma Van Hellemond stylist Lee Hogsden asso prod mgr Joshua
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Pollard writers Andrew Gunn, Jeff Clark dirs asst Jenny Murray post prod dir Franc Bol gfx des Matt Landkroon, Yosef Selim rsrchr Joanna Manson prod asst Charlotte Meads prod mgr Sharyn Mattison studio dir Kerry Du Pont creative prod Jason Gunn asso prods Rebecca Browning, Josh Wolfe prod Reuben Davidson exec prod Janine Morrell-Gunn n/ wrk exec Kathryn Graham
6x30min HD doco prod co NHNZ (03 479 9799) for Smithsonian exec i/c of prod Andrew Waterworth exec prod Judith Curran series prod Judith Curran prod mgr Robyn Pearson rsrchrs Katy Kassler dirs Lauren Thompson prod coord Katy Kassler DP Jenna Rosher cam 2 Andrew Mungai field snd Barry Weissman offline eds Cameron Crawford, Marilyn Copland
GEM HUNTER 1x60min pilot HD doco prod co NHNZ (03 479 9799) for Travel Channel exec prod Craig Meade prod/dir Scott Sinclair prod mgr Jill Soper DP Rob Taylor rsrchr Rob Bridgman host Ron LeBlanc co-hosts Diane Robinson, Bernie Gaboury
GOLDEN Series 1, 6x30min comedy prod co SPP (09 839 0999) exec prods John Barnett, Chris Bailey prod Charlotte
The 2011 Data Book is now available. BUY YOUR COPY TODAY for just $25 + GST www.onfilm.co.nz
march 2012
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Production listings
Hobson line prod Sharron Jackson prod coord Linda Fenwick prod sec Liz McGlinn prod run Lance McMinn writers Lucy Schmidt, Stayci Taylor acct Lee-Ann Hasson dir Katie Wolfe 1AD Jimmy Scott 2AD Kylie McCaw script sup Lisa Cook loc mgr Tafale Matafeo loc scouts Ian Goldingham, Charlotte Gardner DP Marty Smith f/puller Frith Locke-Bonney cam asst Fiona Janet Young gaffer John Bell lx/grip asst Ewan Hall snd rec Daniel Loughnan boom op Craig O’Reilly prod des Clayton Ercolano art coord Lia Neilson art asst Anna Rowsell stby props Craig Wilson gfx Christiaan Ercolano cost des Sarah Aldridge cost s/by Ciara Dickens byr/dresser Ruth England m/ up des Vanessa Hurley, Shannon Sinton m/up assts Ana Ah Kuoi, Dani Orme unit mgr Josh Dun stunt co Mark Harris cast dir Andrea Kelland safety Lifeguard & Safety ed Jochen Fitzherbert asst ed Kerri Roggio post prod sup Dylan Reeve pub Tamar Munch pub asst Lucy Ewen stills p/grphr Matt Klitscher cast Lucy Schmidt, Jesse Griffin, Joel Tobeck, Jennifer Ludlam
GOOD MORNING 2012 prod co TVNZ exec prod Tina McLaren prod SallyAnne Kerr line-up prod/ed Melanie Phipps script ed/line up prod Dominic Smith prod mgr Terri McFarlane dir Barbara Mitchell DA Samantha Fisher line up prod Erina Ellis advt prod Amber Smith advt mgr Donah Bowers-Fleming advt prod asst Isabella Stimpson spnsrship mgr Merril Thompson rsrchrs Cinna Smith, Daniel Hood, Fiona Cumming, Liana McPherson, Marilyn McFayden script ed/rsrchr Adrienne York prod asst Julia Lynch 2nd floor mgr Giverney Cootes stylist/props Anna Clark greenrm host Rosi Wilde segment pres Matai Smith rnnr Tavis Hughes
HINDSIGHT SERIES 3 13X30min current affairs prod co TVNZ prod unit TVNZ n/wrk exec Philippa Mossman exec prod Tina McLaren prod Damian Christie ed Gary Young res Sofia Wenborn prod mgr Stewart Jones pres Damian Christie
I ESCAPED A CULT
1x60 min pilot HD doco prod co NHNZ (03 479 9799) for Nat’l Geographic Channel series pro Alan Hall dir Sally Howell post prod Mark Orton ed Owen Ferrier-Kerr DP Kris Denton rsrchrs Bridget Baylin, Amy Tenowich
I SURVIVED 4 (#2)
10x60min HD doco prod co NHNZ (03 479 9799) for A&E TV exec i/c of prod Michael Stedman series prod Alan Hall prod mgr Dayle Spavins rsrchrs Marina De Lima, Stephanie Antosca, Bridget Baylin, Jonathan Zurer, Peter Holmes, Brant Backlund, Amy Tenowich dir Sally Howell DP Kris Denton prod coord Dwayne Fowler 2nd unit cam Max Quinn post dirs Jacqui Crawford, Bill Morris, Peter Holmes offline eds Chris Tegg, Jack Woon, Jeff Avery snd Stacey Hertnon, Errol Samuelson, Alan Gerrie vid post Stu Moffatt, Ulf Uchida
I SURVIVED 5 20x60min HD doco prod co NHNZ (03 479 9799) for A&E TV exec i/c of prod Michael Stedman series prod Alan Hall prod mgr Dayle Spavins rsrchrs Stephanie Antosca, Bridget Baylin, Amy Tenowich, Amy Kagelmacher, Karen Price, Tucker Bowen, Hillary Heath dir Sally Howell DP Kris Denton prod coord Dwayne Fowler
I SURVIVED…BEYOND AND BACK 10x60min HD doco prod co NHNZ (03 479 9799) for A&E TV exec i/c of prod Andrew Waterworth exec prod Judith Curran series prod Janice Finn prod mgr Robyn Pearson rsrchrs Nadia Izakson, Becky Beamer, Alissa Collins Latensa, Kelly Meade dirs Judith Curran, Lauren Thompson DP Alex Hubert, Eric Billman cam 2 Lindsey Davidson prod coord Supriya Vasanth post dirs Craig Gaudion, Kelly Meade, Jane Adcroft, Libby Young offline eds Cameron Crawford, Marilyn Copland, Karen Jackson, Sandy Pantall vid post Stu Moffatt, Frank Lodge snd post Stacey Hertnon, Errol Samuelson
MOTORWAY PATROL prod co Greenstone TV ho prod Andrea Lamb prod Kate Fraser prod mgr Jody Phillips prod coord Kali Moss fund TVNZ
NEIGHBOURS AT WAR prod co Greenstone TV ho prod Andrea Lamb prod
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march 2012
Lee Baker dir Lee Baker rsrchr Jane Dowell prod mgr Lauren Lunjevich prod coord Kali Moss fund TVNZ
NEW ZEALAND FROM ABOVE 5x43mins n/wrk ZDF Arte/Prime dist Naked Flame prod cos Making Movies, Gebrueder Beetz, Bear Cage co pro New Zealand/Germany/Australia exec prods James Heyward, Michael Tear prod Andy Salek dir Bruce Morrison DP Simon Baumfield writer James Heyward res prod Hugh Barnard, Liz DiFiore pilot Alfie Speight
OPERATION HERO 10x30min prod co The Gibson Group exec prod Dave Gibson prod Bevin Linkhorn prod mgr Inga Boyd dirs Dan Henry, Michael Huddleston pres Dayna Vawdrey prod coord Kristen Rowe prod asst Sadie Wilson DP Grant Atkinson cam op Gary Hopper cam asst Matt Henley snd Craig Mullis, Michael Kerslake art dept Pete Shaw data wrang Rajeev Mishra fac mgr Rex Potier safety Neal Luka chaprns Jono Regan, Angelique Poczwa prod acct Kathy Regnault n/wrk exec Kathryn Graham
POLICE TEN 7 40x30min prod co Screentime exec prod/prod Philly de Lacey, Mary Durham dirs Scott Hindman, Les Dawson prod Sarah-Luise Whatford asso prod/ rsrch Katherine Birchall prod coord Olivia Lynd gfx Kathy Kennedy pres Graham Bell offline ed Malcolm Clarke online ed Keith Mclean
PRAISE BE 2012 prod co TVNZ prod unit TVNZ exec prod Tina McLaren prod/dir Ron Pledger prod mgr Dawn Bowater pres rsrch Chris Nichol mus dir Peter Averi
RESTORING HOPE 1x52min doco charting the Maori restorative justice process prod co Notable Pictures prod Julia Parnell dir Eugene Carnachan DP Rewa Harre snd op Cameron Lenart prod mgr Zanna Gillespie
RURAL DELIVERY 7 40x30mins weekly prod co Showdown Productions exec prod Kirsty Cooper prod Tracy Mika line prod Emma Slade dir Jerome Cvitanovich, Kirsty Cooper prod mgr Iris Derks prod coord Barbie Nodwell prod asst Andrea de Klerk DP Richard Williams rsrchrs Richard Bentley, Jerome Cvitanovich, Hugh Stringleman, Marie Taylor ed Christine Jordan presenter Roger Bourne
SAFEHOUSE 1x90min drama prod co Screentime exec prod Philly de Lacey prod/dir John Laing prod Bridget Bourke prod coord Jo Finlay prod sec Sarah-Jane Vercoe cast dir Terri De’Ath 1AD Mark Harlen 2AD Sarah Rose 3rd AD Esther Clewlow prod rnr Melinda Jackson prod des Chris Elliot art dir Brant Fraser on set art dir Adam Bilik art dept coord Megan Robertson stby props Sam Evans props asst Kylie Harris constr mgr Mathew Thomson DP DJ Stipsen cont Hayley Abbott gaffer Phil Totoro b/boy Danny Fepuleai gene op Puna Patumaka key grip Evan Pardington b/boy grip Mike Coney snd rec Adam Martin boom op Kyle Griffiths stunts Mark Harris cost des Tracey Sharman w/ robe sup st/by Carmel Rata drssr Adele Hing m/up sup Stefan Knight m/up stby Shannon Sinton cost rnr Marina Serrao loc mgr Sean Tracey-Brown safety coord Robert Gibson on set safety Steve Jennings unit mgr Nod Anderson caterers Luscious Catering prod acc Barbara Coston ed Allanah Milne ed asst Kerri Roggio legal Karen Soich
SHORTLAND STREET 5x30min weekly prod co SPP exec prods John Barnett, Simon Bennett prod Steven Zanoski line prod Liz Adams dirs Geoff Cawthorn, Katherine McRae, Richard Barr, Wayne Tourell, Oliver Driver script prod Paul Sonne head writer Kim Harrop s/liners Kirsty McKenzie, Alistair Boroughs, Caley Martin, Joanna Smith, Damon Andrews, Aimee Beatson med adv Sally Geary, Sarah Nevitt script eds Lynette Crawford-Williams, Karen Curtis script eds asst Nina Vlahovic prod coord Kinta Jennings prod sec Kylie Newman script typ Eva Yang prod acct Diane Boddy acct asst Stephanie Dahlberg loc mgr Bryce
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Wood 1ADs Michele Priest-Edmondson, Moe Hobbs, Flora Woods, Jimmy Scott 2ADs Francis Koon, Katie Dallimore 3AD Cat Henshall prod runner Aaron Levi dir assts Kathe Calis, Sarah Brinsdon, Laurel Urban tech prod George Platt tech coord Bryn Collins vis mix Fran Hodgson lx asst Chris Watkins loc DP Drew Sturge loc gaffer Drew Wright cam ops Nigel Roberts, Nick Hayward cam asst Daniel Lacy snd rec Greg Moon boom ops Andrew Revell, Andrew Lusk prod des Ana Miskell art dirs Ross Goffin, Andy Currie, Natalie Tsuchiya art dept mgr Liz ThompsonNevitt stby prps Scott McDowall, Logan Childs art dept assts Katherine Sasse, Brooke Darlison gfx coords Alex Kriechbaum, Sarah Dunn cost des Nicola Newman asst cost des Rebecca Jennings cost standbys Katie Jones, Kelly Marumaru, Keri Wheeler cost asst Rowena Smith cost trainee Galareh Golbakhsh laundry asst Jan Beacham hair/m/ up sup Rebecca Elliott m/up Ambika Venkataiah, Katie Fell, Sophie Beddoes eds Anna Benedikter, Matthew Allison asst ed Lorne Haugh Post 4 Sound & Video snd mixrs Simon Weir, Graham Wallace cast dirs Andrea Kelland post prod sup Dylan Reeve pub Rachael Keereweer pub asst Chris Henry dialogue coach Shirley Duke asst chaprn Renee Lyons comp Graham Bollard p/grphr Jae Frew caterer Rock Salt cast Michael Galvin, Angela Bloomfield, Amanda Billing, Robbie Magasiva, Benjamin Mitchell, Peter Mochrie, Lee Donoghue, Matt Chamberlain, Beth Allen, Sally Martin, Jacqueline Nairn, Ido Drent, Pearl McGlashan, Geordie Holibar, Frankie Adams, Virginie Le Brun, Tyler Read, Amelia Reid, Teuila Blakely, Brooke Williams, Gerald Urquhart, Pua Magasiva
THE ART OF ARCHITECT 44min prod co TVNZ Production Unit exec prod Tina McLaren prod Gavin Wood prod mgr/prod acct Naomi Marsh dir Dean Cornish pres Peter Elliott sen rsrchr Sue Donald rschr Sue Killian ed Doug Dillaman
THE ERIN SIMPSON SHOW 30min wkday youth show prod co Whitebait-TV pres Erin Simpson reporters Kimberley Crossman, Katy Thomas, Isaac Ross, Mark Dye, Eve Palmer prod coord Kim Johnston studio rsrchr Nicola Eton dir asst Tom Dyson art dept Lennie Galloway cam op Matt Martini ed/cam op Nathan McKinnon w/robe Lee Hogsden website Kieran Granger eds Stu Waterhouse, Tyler King audio post Vahid Qualls gfx Mike Boulden rsrchr Juliana Murphy post dir Tracey Geddes dir Nigel Carpinter prod mgr Jo Eade asso prod Penny Watson prod Emma Gribble exec prod Janine Morrell-Gunn n/wrk exec Kathryn Graham
THE HEALTH STORY 1x90min Platinum fund doco prod co PRN films prods/dirs Paul Trotman, Malcolm Hall DP Scott Mouat cam Peta Carey
THE INVESTIGATION prod co Greenstone TV ho prod Andrea Lamb prod Sam Blackley prod mgr Angela Burgess rsrchr Nicola Wood, Gemma Murcott prod coord Wendy Tetley fund TVNZ
THE ZOO prod co Greenstone TV ho prod Andrea Lamb prod Tash Christie dir/loc coord Candace McNabb prod mgr Lauren Lunjevich prod coord Rochelle Leef fund TVNZ
POST PRODUCTION CLINICAL YEARS 1x60min doco prod co PRN prod/dir Paul Trotman cam Scott Mouat, Stephen Dowwnes, Wayne Vinten snd Brian Shennan
CROCZILLA 1x60min HD doco prod co NHNZ (03 479 9799) for Nat’l Geographic Channel exec prod Craig Meade dir Kate Siney DP Rob Taylor post prod Job Rustenhoven ed Marilyn Copland snd post Errol Samuelson music Leyton prod mgr Christina Gerrie
DESCENT FROM DISASTER 6x60mins prod co Screentime exec prod Philly de Lacey prod Ross Peebles line prod Carolyn Harper
dirs Ross Peebles, Mary Durham, Bryn Evans, Howard Taylor visual dir Rupert Mackenzie rsrchr Dianne Lindesay prod coord Olivia Lynd eds Roger Yeaxlee, Margaret Kelly online ed Keith McLean
MaHARO 6 50x26min Māori language, educational prod co Tūmanako Prods exec prod Kay Ellmers prod Kim Muriwai prod mgr Moana-Aroha Henry prod coord/art/res Casey Kaa prod asst Miria Flavell res/comp dirs Summer Wharekawa, Jo Tuapawa pres/dir Huria Chapman pres Whatanui Flavell reo con Hohepa Ramanui dirs Kent Briggs, Kewana Duncan, Dan Mace, Lilly Panapa, Paora Ratahi, Tui Ruwhiu, Orlando Stewart, Jan Wharekawa, Lanita Ririnui-Ryan, Ngatapa Black, Mahanga Pihama, Jo Tuapawa trnee dir Monowai Panoho cam ops Samarah Wilson, Greg Parker, Daniel Apiata, Te Rangi Henderson post prod RPM Pictures ed Charlotte Wanhill comp ed Jason Pengelly illus Zak Waipara snd post prod/anim Phill Woollams comps Joel Haines, Ngatapa Black
SHACKLETON’S CAPTAIN 85min feature prod cos Making Movies, Gebrueder Beetz n/wrks TVNZ, ZDF, ARTE dist ZDFE writers James Heyward, Leanne Pooley, Tim Woodhouse prods James Heyward, Andy Salek line prod Liz DiFiore dir Leanne Pooley dir assts Kelly Krieg, Olivia Garelja prods PA Katie Bolt 1AD Hamish Gough 2AD Katie Tate 3AD Andrew Burfield prod assts Ellie Callahan, Rachel Choy, Shannon Ween prod intern Lisa Brown prod runners Jasmine Rogers-Scott, CJ Withey, Emma Behrns, Nathaniel Sihamu prod des Roger Guise on set art dir Geoff Ellis propmster Paul Dulieu props mker Phil Gregory art assts Clarke Gregory, Jim Anderson constr mgr William Schmidt DP Simon Baumfield 1st cam assts Graham MacFarlane, Roger Feenstra 2nd cam assts Kim Thomas, Jacob Slovak vid splt/data intern Leigh Elford 2nd unit DP John Cavill 2nd unit ac George Hennah 2nd unit 2nd ac Meg Perrot snd Myk Farmer conts Rachel Choy, Katie Theunissen gaffer Thad Lawrence b/boy Tony Slack lx assts Merlin Wilford, Gilly Lawrence, Steven Renwick, Ben Corlette, Sam Jellie, Jack Gow key grips Kevin Donovan, Jim Rowe b/boy grip Chris Rawiri grip assts Winnie Harris, Chris Tait grip trainee Sam Donovan spfx Film Effects Company spfx sup Jason Durey spfx office coord Tanya Bidois spfx snr tech Mike Cahill spfx techs Graham Nixon, Rowan Tweed, John McLaren, Eliot Naime, Michael Lawton spfx runner Gavin Ravlich cost des Suzanne Sturrock w/robe stdby Cathy Pope w/robe assts Charlotte Turner, Amber Rhodes m/up des Davina Lamont m/up arts Michele Barber, Tash Lees, Hayley Oliver, Debbie Watson, Levonne Scott safety coords Scene Safe, Chris Griggs, Sam Armitage nautical adv Kevin Donovan unit mgr Samuel Shelton unit asst David Shope caterers Bonifant & Saxby epk/stills Cristobal Araus Lobos, Andy Salek cams Panavision prod acc Kylie Strain ed Tim Woodhouse cmpsr John Gibson post prod sup Grant Baker vfx prod Cris Casares vfx sup Brenton Cumberpatch vfx arts Brenton Cumberpatch, Richard Borg, Dale Pretorius, Carlos Purcell vfx interns Richard Neal, Brendon Chan, Josh O’Donnell archive res Sarah Bunn cast Craig Parker, Charles Pierard, Hugh Barnard
SIEGE 1x90min drama prod co Screentime exec prod Philly de Lacey prod Ric Pellizzeri dir Mike Smith co prod Bridget Bourke prod coord Jo Finlay asst prod coord Kate Moses prod acc Barbara Coston ed Margot Francis ed asst Nicki Dreyer legal Karen Soich
THE ALMIGHTY JOHNSONS 2 13x60min drama/comedy prod co SPP (09 839 0999) exec prods John Barnett, Chris Bailey, James Griffin prod Simon Bennett line prod Tina Archibald eds Bryan Shaw, Eric De Beus, Nicola Smith, Sarah Hough asst ed Gwen Norcliffe post prod sup Grant Baker post prod snd Steve Finnigan post prod coord Anna Randall vfx Peter McCully comps Victoria Kelly, Sean Donnelly pub Tamar Munch pub asst Lucy Ewen cast Emmett Skilton, Tim Balme, Dean O’Gorman, Jared Turner, Ben Barrington, Keisha Castle-Hughes, Hayden Frost, Fern Sutherland, Rachel Nash, Michelle Langstone, Eve Gordon
FOUR YOUR CONSIDERATION Two new lightweight zooms expand the ARRI/FUJINON Alura series The new Alura 15.5-45/T2.8 and Alura 30-80/T2.8 zooms are compact and lightweight: perfect for handheld, Steadicam and 3D rigs. They are compatible with the ARRI Lens Data System, deliver outstanding optical performance and, like the original two Alura Zooms, match all other ARRI prime and zoom lenses.
Visit the ARRI booth at IBC: Hall 11.F21
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