ONFILM August 2010

august 2010

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Crime & merriment Writer-director Jason Stutter & lead Hayden Frost on making Kiwi feature film Predicament

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Michael Stedman on his career, & Darryl Ward, Philip Andrew, James Mok, Bruce Everett, and others on aspects of the NZ TVC sector

contents august 2010

Views

4 Doug Coutts takes a leaf out of TVNZ’s nightly news book; James

Bondi reports on how a reality show has turned Aussies into foodies.

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Enforcing your rights – part II

Know the best way to proceed when someone has infringed your rights.

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“Dear Iwi”

NAW chairperson Tearepa Kahi shares some correspondence.

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Onfilm online

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When the price isn’t right

16 Cover: Hayden Frost and Rose McIver in feature film Predicament. Photo: Simon Cardwell.

An update on the development of Onfilm’s website.

John Dee rates the performance of TV One, TV2, TV3, Prime, and Sky in the first six months of 2010.

12 One out of the box

Peter Salmon talks about making short film The Box.

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WIFT NZ Awards 2010

Photos from WIFT NZ’s eighth annual awards.

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The natural history of Michael Stedman

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An interview with Michael Stedman, 2009’s Industry Champion.

Larceny for laughs

Writer-director Jason Stutter on making feature film Predicament.

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A touch of Frost

Hayden Frost talks on his big screen debut in Predicament.

TVCs 19

They’re stiffing our talent here?

Philip Wakefield revisits the March controversy over the use of a US actor for the latest Steinlager TVC.

22 The mother-in-law test

Peter Parnham looks at the visual content management systems used by the TVC sector.

26 A spot that pops

Director Darryl Ward talks about working with Iggy Pop.

28 Sound observations

Digipost’s Clive Broughton and Kylie Green talk TVCs.

29 Oktobor GM Bruce Everett on the TVC market, & APRA|AMCOS’ Damian Vaughan with advice on song clearances for TVCs.

30 Production listings Plus, inserted this issue: a special booklet celebrating the WIFT NZ Awards 2010

Volume 27, Number 8

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AUGUST 2010

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w e i v e t A priva

Over-wintering discontentedly

One of the big issues facing industry commentators, and me as well, is keeping by doug coutts up with all the bold new initiatives that are being instituted on almost a daily basis. It can be a struggle at times.

Fortunately, I have always been an early adopter – in fact you might have seen me in the queue outside Dick Smith’s the other day lining up to be one of the first to get one of those new Walkman things that use dinky little audio cassettes but sound like a real big radiogram.

Sadly, they’d sold out by the time I got there, but next time I’ll get up even earlier to beat the crowds.

(And perhaps use a bigger bat.)

So this column is going to be one of the first to take a leaf out of the state broadcaster’s flagship nightly news bulletin’s book and give you approximate times that you can expect a particular piece of information. For example, I’m going to discuss the NZFC report in about 50 words or so. Then, approximately two paragraphs after that, we’ll segue into a report into the activities of the Tosh Club, and another five column centimetres later there’ll be a pithy wrap-up that will send at least one of us away with a smile on the dial.

Firstly, the NZFC report. It was worth the weight, if not the wait, I thought. Some people might have been disappointed with the lack of special effects and monsters (although previous chairpeople could

almost qualify there) but most were impressed with the duration – the time it took to read, if not the time it took to produce.

There are no hard and fast rules for filmmaking, the report suggests, and so steers clear of attempting to impose any on the NZFC. As the authors point out, filmmaking is not something that can be taught from books. And, as the authors point out, scripts really ought to conform to the Hollywood standard, which is something that can be picked up from any number of books. It’s best to have a bob each way in these things.

And in late breaking news, nice threads, your Imperial Majesty.

The Tosh Club has been going through a similar period of soulsearching and re-evaluation over the past few months. A special subcommittee has been looking at ways

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of recession-proofing with a high rate of return for minimum energy expenditure. So far they’ve ruled out larceny and games of chance but will further investigate running primetime viewer surveys with an 0900 number as a possible alternative to the 40-hour week.

One suggestion – that accounts departments process invoices with the same sense of deadline-meeting foisted on the writers of said invoices – has been roundly pooh-poohed, mostly by said accounts departments.

The 20th of the month following was good enough for ostlers and fellmongers so it should be good enough for the likes of us.

As a freelancer I personally am so delighted to be in work that I am perfectly happy to wait months for payment while the client launders the lucre through high interest bearing ac-

counts, but others are less obliging – they usually have names ending in ‘co’ and employ young business studies grads to call me on a daily basis and lull me into a false sense of security by asking how my day is before coming on strong like a Rottweiler with a gumboil.

Still, things can only get better.

Apparently spring will be here earlier this year as a result of La Niˇ na, although I wouldn’t rule out the gummint’s continued meddling with daylight saving. That’s good news indeed for the thousands of little lambs who won’t succumb to hypothermia before they can be chauffeured to the works.

And good news too for all those filmmakers who, thanks to a rejuvenated commish, are out there making quintessentially Kiwi films for the Hollywood market.

e t o n s Ed’

Views

Taonga television T

hanks to doing a spot of multitasking last Friday night, I had one of those realisations that’s screamingly obvious in hindsight but can otherwise prove elusive. (Actually, it was really more of a recollection, but let’s not get lost in pointless pedantry just yet, eh.)

Of course, disadvantaged as I am by my possession of the Y chromosome, the multitasking I was engaged in was very much at an elementary level: I was simply ruminating on the NZFC review (in particular, what specific recommendations are likely to be adopted, and how – I’ll get back to you about that) while idly flicking through the free-to-air channels.

(An aside: it’s worth noting that channel surfing is a rarity for me these days.

Thanks to the advent of offspring seven years ago, I have many, many apparently essential movies and television series to catch up on, something I’m now doing courtesy of the local DVD store – the entire runs of The Wire and Arrested Development have been ploughed through in recent weeks, for eg, and Deadwood and The Thick of It are about to be embarked on, with Mad Men and 30 Rock to follow... So don’t bother asking me what I think of the current series of Outrageous Fortune, okay – I’m waiting for the DVD release.)

Anyway, I just happened to fetch up on Ma¯ ori Television in time (that’d be 10pm, folks) to catch the premiere of Mike King’s TV version of his Nutters Club show on RadioLive. The studiobound conversation between King and guest Nicola Kawana was riveting stuff, and has clarified what I’ll be doing on Friday nights for the next 11 weeks, especially now that the excellent 7 Days on TV3 is on hiatus (one trusts it’ll be returning soon, though, right?).

Thanks to being pinned to the couch

Letter

for that half-hour, I was also exposed to a promo for October 15, a new doco dealing with the so-called anti-terrorism raids on the people of Tuhoe in 2007, from director Kim Webby and producer Pietra Brettkelly. Interest duly piqued, I tuned in at 8.30pm the following evening to find that this excellent piece represented the kick-off of a new season of Pakipumeka Aotearoa, Māori Television’s New Zealand documentary slot. Awesome! In lieu of anything resembling a social life (which withered away at the same time as my audio-visual intake, and for much the same reason), that’s Saturday nights sorted for the foreseeable future too.

These two viewing experiences were timely reminders for me that public broadcasting is alive and relatively well (if a little frail due to underfunding) in this country; it’s just being provided by a broadcaster other than the one that’s allegedly fulfilling this role.

As Michael Stedman points out on p15, Māori Television is “innovative, it’s relevant, it’s parish pump”. And, as I was also reminded by the ep covering the onscreen depiction of tāngata whenua from Prime’s marvellous 50 Years of Television series (when’s that coming out on DVD?), a mere six years after its launch, MTS has managed to weave itself into the fabric of NZ TV so successfully that I’d already begun to take it for granted. I’m pleased to stand corrected on that score.

Of course, there are also examples of public broadcasting programming playing out on other networks, thanks to funding from NZ On Air, an organisation that Stedman reckons is so successful in this task that he amusingly assumes it can only be the result of some political oversight.

Interestingly, playing back that interview with last year’s SPADA/Onfilm

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Chris Knox’s

Industry Champion (this year’s call for nominations coming soon) was the first time in a wee while that I’ve heard unstinting praise for the television funding body, which in the eyes of at least some industry members is currently consigned to the doghouse usually reserved for the NZFC. (It strikes me that last year’s regime change at the Commission, coupled with the purgative effect of the airing of historical grievances via the review, has given that funding body what’s surely a welcome respite from constant criticism. Be interesting to see how long this détente lasts – anyone running a pool?)

The group who appear to be particularly frustrated are documentary makers who feel the requirement to have a New Zealand subject unduly hampers them in the pursuit of their art and craft.

Wrote one to me, “I don’t see why the NZFC have to shoulder the weight of all serious aspirational filmmaking in this country … It’s not perfect by a long shot, but in comparison with [NZOA], it’s

view in 2004

at least contributing to some positive outcomes.” (Yup, up is down, black is white, and we’re clearly not in Kansas anymore, Toto.)

Now, in the past I’ve been pretty unsympathetic to the idea that NZ film and television makers should be able to access public funding in order to make anything other than Kiwi-centric content.

Having just seen a couple of delightful docos by local filmmakers at the NZ International Film Festival that have little or nothing to do with Aotearoa – that’d be Candyman and Free China Junk, in case you’re wondering – I’m no longer so adamant about that position.

That said, I would caution those about to get on their lobby-horses that – as far as I understand it, in any case – NZOA’s strict focus on local subjects is not a matter of discretion but legislation.

As such, might I suggest you aim your brickbats at the Beehive, rather than the funding body bureaucrats and their board? Babies, bathwater and all that…

– Nick Grant

editor

Reviews receive positive write-up I

just wanted to comment that Helen Martin’s reviews of the New Zealand films screening at the International Film Festival are excellent. I now want to see all those films, so I hope they come back!

It’s nice to read intelligent, articulate reviews with a sense of humor. Her ability to drop the odd personal story in to emphasise a point or further colour the review adds a great touch.

Emma Kelly, PhD student, Auckland

E

ditor’s reply: Thanks for the note, Emma. Needless to say, I agree wholeheartedly that Martin’s reviews – exclusive to our website – are a great addition to Onfilm’s editorial offerings. For more on what reviews of which local films are currently available on our website, by all means turn to page 9 of this issue.

09 818 1981 www.dolly.co.nz P.O Box 8068, Symonds St, Auckland 1150 9A Akatea Rd, Glendene South, Auckland 0602

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h c t i D e h t s s o r Ac Our expat spy provides his idiosyncratic take on the Aussie film and television industry.

B

y the time you read this, the Australian Federal Election will be all but over, but at

by JAMES BONDI the time of writing the country is in frenzy. Not over the election, but about Australian TVs most successful show yet, MasterChef.

On Sunday July 26 the first election debate between the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition was rescheduled to avoid the 8.30pm final of MasterChef on Channel 10. Won by lawyer Adam Liaw, it broke ratings records, achieving average figures of 5.2 million across city and regional areas. How much does it matter? Well, a major supermarket chain that sponsors the show stocks up with the ingredients to be used on screen each week – a good thing too, given that one week, sales of pink ling fish went up by 1400% as a result (the species is probably now extinct).

Rumoured to bring in advertising revenue of $80 million, the show has turned Australia into a nation of foodies. The conversation amongst dusty workers in heavy boots and fluoro jackets over a couple of schooners in the public bar after work is no longer about the latest stoush in rugby league or the perennial argument over which car is best, Ford or Holden. Now they compare their crème brulee recipes and discuss what to do when your hollandaise sauce curdles.

So what of that rescheduled political debate? On paper at least it looked promising, with the contenders possessing a potentially piquant combination of similarities and differences (for eg, Labor atheist Julia Gillard recently ousted sitting PM Kevin Rudd, while conservative Catholic Tony “The Mad Monk” Abbott snatched the Liberal party leadership from ex-banker Malcolm Turnbull by one vote in a party room coup; she is red headed, while he famously wears red budgie smuggler swimming togs as he punishes himself doing triathlons). In the

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The most successful Australian TV show ever, MasterChef caused the first leaders election debate to be rescheduled and has changed the favoured conversation in public bars from the latest rugby league stoush to what to do when your hollandaise sauce curdles. event though, anyone expecting a stimulating clash of personalities – or gawd forbid, actual policies – was better off watching MasterChef.

What we did get was the perennial favourite of shock-jock radio hosts and their xenophobic rednecked listeners – immigration and population growth. Listening to those rabid ravers, you’d think that tens of thousands of Asian boat people were establishing beachheads on the shores of the Northern Territory and Western Australia. The truth is that most illegal immigrants are white, arrive by plane and overstay their visas. But never let the facts get in the way of (electoral) ratings!

Gillard wants to set up processing centres for the invading hordes in East Timor and Abbott wants to resurrect the Howard government’s Pacific Solution and send them to Nauru. Both want to cut back on legal immigration, which is a ‘storm in a tea cup’ in an election that should have focussed on more important issues. Even our business leaders are not impressed, as they want lots of immigrants to work in their mines, digging up this continent to send back in shiploads to their countries of origin. Isn’t international trade wonderful?

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Another topic the pollies are skirting around is climate change: Gillard is to establish a citizens’ panel to advise her, and Abbott wants a 15,000-strong green army of volunteers to plant trees to mop up all the dirty carbon. Slowly.

We in the film industry know the reality of climate change only too well. Filming for the new Mad Max flick, Fury Road, has been put back until next year. Why? Not the finance for a change, but because the area around Broken Hill – which was to be used for the main location because of its dry, dusty expanses – is now verdant with new growth after uncustomary rainfall.

Yup, the desert is greening! Buy cheap land in the red centre now and pretty soon you could be sitting on a prime dairy farm. Long odds, maybe, but probably a better bet than trying to earn a living out of making Australian films.

NZ film artists in brief – a series Martin Rumsby

M

artin Rumsby works triple time as a distributor, writer and maker of experimental films. In the 1980s and ’90s he exhibited films widely throughout New Zealand and North America. As part of these tours he introduced Len Lye’s films to diverse international audiences.

In the mid-1990s Rumsby stepped back from distribution to focus more fully on writing and filmmaking. More recently he has recorded interviews with numerous film artists including Philip Dadson, Chris Kraus and Brent Hayward.

Rumsby’s films include Science Fictions (1981), Fanfare (c1984), Vistas (1985), American Sketchbook (2000), For Dots (2005), Driveway (2006), The Overlander (2006), Brown’s Barbeque (2006), and Landscapism (2008). He is currently making Rewa, based on his experiences as a Manukau town centre ambassador in Manurewa in 2009.

“I like to think about the history of art and experimental film as I explore landscapes with my camera. The films are like documents of my evolving notions of cinematic landscape. Each completed work and landscape encountered leads to a new work, almost as an inarticulate form of autobiography. They range across locations as varied as the North Island’s volcanic plateau, African American neighbourhoods and the media, in the form of Canadian television, as contemporary landscape.”

His audio works include Six Grey Lynn Histories (c1980), Seven Artists (c1981) and recordings of Len Lye’s kinetic sculptures.

NZX2K10, his compilation DVD of New Zealand experimental films, is included as a free giveaway in the current issue of ILLUSIONS magazine.

Rumsby is now looking at international distribution opportunities for NZX2K10.

Views

Legal Enforcing your rights – part II Knowing the best way to proceed when someone has infringed your rights is absolutely vital, as David McLaughlin explains.

L

ast month we began discussing what to do in the screen industry when you feel your rights may have been infringed. Having covered the kinds of issues that need to be considered before you decide whether to take formal action, in this instalment we discuss the different options you have when it comes to taking action.

If you are dealing with a very blatant breach of your rights, in some cases a firm and well written letter from your lawyer that sets out your position and the necessary actions you require the infringing party to take to remedy the situation can be the best way to try to resolve things. In other cases, however, depending on the history and personal relationship between the parties, an informal approach by you to the infringing party may be a more appropriate way to go.

If you do decide to make an informal approach in the first instance, you should still get legal advice on the best way to proceed. Just because you don’t want the other party to think you’ve got a lawyer involved doesn’t mean you can’t seek advice behind the scenes. This advice can give you a much better idea of what you should and shouldn’t say in these early stages so as not to compromise your position.

If initial discussions or correspondence with the other party doesn’t provide the desired results, then

there are a number of other options you can consider. One of the most obvious is legal action through the courts. Unless the infringement in question is sufficiently serious or there is a lot of money at stake, however, this isn’t likely to be the best course of action, as the time involved in taking court action – not to mention the financial and personal costs – can be significant.

Although there are certain kinds of disputes – those relating to intellectual property, for example – that it cannot hear, the Disputes Tribunal can be a very effective and cheap way to resolve certain types of disputes. No lawyers are involved in any hearings before the Tribunal, there is only a nominal fee to be paid in order to have your claim heard, and a decision of the Disputes Tribunal can have the same legal standing as if the matter had been decided by the District Court.

Other alternatives to court action are mediation and arbitration. Although both require the other party to the dispute to agree to such proceedings, these options can be cheaper and quicker than taking a matter through the courts. Mediation and arbitration also have the added benefit of the parties being able to agree to keep the matter confidential, whereas anything heard in the courts is of course open to the public. Mediation essentially in-

volves a mediator or mediators acting to try to help you, and the other party, agree on a settlement. Arbitration, on the other hand, involves an arbitrator or arbitrators hearing both sides to the claim and then making a decision on the matter that you and the other party will be legally bound by.

In order to help you decide which course of action is the most appropriate for you, it is always important to have a very clear understanding of exactly what you want out of the situation. If all you are looking for is an apology from the other party, for example, then court action is not going to be the most appropriate avenue for you to go down. However, if there is significant money involved, it is not just a one-off occurrence and the other party is refusing to communicate with you about the issue, then initiating appropriate court proceedings may be an option worth seriously considering.

If the remedy you are seeking in any situation involves the payment to you of some kind of damages, then you also need to consider if you have the ability to actually prove the basis for the loss or damages you are seeking. If someone has reneged on an agreement to pay you for services or intellectual property for which you normally charge around $1000, for instance, then trying to claim $5000 may not necessarily be realistic. If,

however, there are other related verifiable costs you have incurred in respect of the infringement of your rights, such as associated legal fees, then it is worth bearing in mind that you may also be able to factor these into the final amount you are claiming from the other party.

Although being involved in a serious dispute is never pleasant, being aware of the issues that need to be clarified before you commence action, the most appropriate way to pursue such action, and what’s realistic in terms of what you hope to achieve, will all help to get you through the situation in the least painful way possible. • 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).

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Views

i r a a k a h W o h A a Ng

Photo: Merata Mita

“Dear Iwi”

NAW chairperson Tearepa Kahi (pictured) shares some correspondence that presages an upcoming announcement about a new filmmaking initiative.

Dear Iwi, I’m a solo parent, married for ten years, ex-Drama School graduate, executive manager at KPMG (San Francisco Office), education facilitator at a newly founded PTE, freelance PR consultant, life time member at Ponsonby Video EZY, ex-pat musician recently returned from London, successful NZ short film maker, and I’ve got this great idea for a Ma¯ori film – or rather a film with Ma¯ori content – think a cross between Whale Rider and Once Were Warriors, but without the whales and leather jackets.

You knew my grandparents really well; they spoke about you all the time.

They came from Taurua, Papamoa, Raetihi, Paekakariki, Howick, Pawarenga, Tapu ¯, Rua¯tahuna, Waihi¯, Hicks Bay, Tahuna, Matakaea, Flaxmere, Linwood, Porirua, Mt Albert, Rangiriri, Ohinemutu.

I just downloaded a copy of your Annual Report after I saw a short story on the post-Treaty settlement landscape on the news last week.

Looks like it’s been a good year. Congratulations.

However, the real reason I am writing this letter is because my film idea requires considerable financial support. The benefits, I believe, are potentially enormous for a funder and so, as an Uri [descendant], I’m wondering whether you – as my Iwi – would consider funding my film?

Dear Uri, Thank you for your letter of interest.

Te Ru ¯nanga o Te¯ra¯ is a legal entity, which was set up under the Official New Zealand Establishment Board Formation Legislation.

For the past 85 years we have been engaged with the Crown over a series of Treaty breaches.

Our primary focus has been and remains tribal land re-acquisition, beneficiary social welfare, tribal economic development, improving education, and maintaining the health of our 3714 Marae.

New areas of interest relate to the foreshore and seabed, air space, water, partnering with other Iwi on mutually beneficial commercial ventures, developing trade agreements with other indigenous peoples, increasing export and trade opportunities, implementing an Iwi savings programme for all Uri, and also supporting communal initiatives that focus on the ongoing transmission of our Reo. 8

august 2010

The fact that you concentrate on non-creative enterprises illustrates a lack of vision in seeing the potential power of our stories in the modern world. Don’t you think it’s time that our stories came out from the meeting house and on to the big screen?

All to say, the notion of financing a film falls outside of our current aims and objectives.

While we do have a commercial arm in our Iwi operations, which invests in ‘high risk’ ventures, the money available for investment is highly competitive and relatively small.

We do, however, wish you well with your creative endeavour and would like to take this opportunity to remind you that Iwi beneficiary forms are also downloadable from our website.

Dear Iwi, While I can understand your current ‘tribal focus’, I would like to point out that as a creative – and someone who recognises the importance, place and potential of our unique stories on film – that the role of the storyteller in your vision has to date been severely limited in its scope.

Our Iwi stories deserve a forum beyond kapa haka competitions and one-minute visual essays in small heartland stories or sensationalised three-minute news items when you have a 0% growth year.

I honestly believe you are overlooking a unique growth area.

Contributing financially in some way to my film – a pre-European/postEuropean, intimate epic on Pootatau, Te Rauparaha, Hongi Hika, Hone Heke, Titokowaru, the 28th Ma¯ori Battalion (A, B, C and D Companies), and Hone Harawira and his Mum – is a unique way to inspire our future generations and promote our culture to the world, as well as make a financial return for the Iwi. The script has been in development for nine years and I am working with a hugely successful Pakeha production company that believes strongly in the commercial and cultural value of my story. My grand-

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father’s younger brother has also agreed to come on board the project and help provide authenticity to the cultural aspects of the story – the aim being to create some poignant cinematic moments. Funding is limited at the NZFC, so the ability to identify ‘alternative sources’ has become all important to making this dream a reality. I just feel that if you were to decline my proposal, you would be missing out on a transformative idea that could change the future of film in this country and would also be a great educational resource for the tamariki at your kura kaupapa on either a projector or an iPad. I also downloaded the beneficiary forms. You can expect them next week.

Dear Uri, Thank you for the beneficiary forms.

A list of upcoming tribal events will be sent to your address shortly.

Also, one of our board members grew up in Patuma¯hoe and knew your Kuia well.

Dear Iwi, Your failure to engage meaningfully is a characteristic often associated with that of a corporate entity.

I’m disappointed in your position and think you are making a grave mistake by not considering my film proposal as a viable venture.

The fact that you concentrate on non-creative enterprises illustrates a lack of vision in seeing the potential power of our stories in the modern world. Don’t you think it’s time that our stories came out from the meeting house and on to the big screen?

My grandmother grew up in Waiuku, not Patuma¯hoe – perhaps you have me confused with one of your other 30,000 beneficiaries.

Dear Uri, Our Iwi has been involved with a number of film projects in the past, albeit in a limited capacity.

Members of our board now feel that unless we can enter into a new memorandum of understanding around areas such as sales, distribution, exhibition fees, and constructing a recoupment plan that prioritises Iwi putea, then it is difficult to see the commercial benefits to us as an Iwi. But our board also feels that equal partnership at the decision-making table is the only way forward. Relying on government appointments is akin to relying on grand-uncles to monitor Reo on set.

And as an aside, the ‘commercial benefits’ aspect of your proposal should not be the sole focus of your application. What our board may be more interested in is a ‘cultural development’ aspect.

Dear Iwi, Ko Waihio¯honu te awa.

Ko Meanui te tupuna.

Ko Ka¯tahi-nei-ka-uru te Iwi. (I have enrolled in a Reo Ma¯ori language course. It is going tino pai.)

Dear Uri, Parauri’s niece is getting married next week at Te Katoa Marae. Perhaps, if you are free, you could come down? It would be good to meet kanohi ki te kanohi.

Also, Nga¯ Aho Whakaari – the national Ma¯ori television and film body – is about to release details around a new film development initiative that intends to develop Ma¯ori film talent and Ma¯ori stories alongside their Iwi. I’ll post you the details soon.

Website developments

Onfilm online R

eaders rejoice! The current, archaic Onfilm website will imminently be consigned to where it so clearly belongs – the past.

In its place, a new website is on the cusp of being launched, one that’s a great deal easier on the eye than the current visual atrocity.

But wait, there’s more: site navigation will also be vastly improved, as will the search function, allowing visitors to ferret around both the exclusive website material and the digital archive of the past decade of print editions, which represents more than two-and-a-half million words of information about the NZ film and television industry.

In addition, the interface will allow users to post comments and thus engage in online discussions on all the material on the website, whether it be news, reviews, press releases, or event notices.

Long story short, the relaunch of Onfilm’s website will be the first step in realising our ambition to provide a

digital space in which all the NZ screen production community can gather and interact.

Then, as now, there’ll be a regular, free email update service available to anyone who wishes to sign up (if you’re not already on the 1000-strong list, simply drop a line to editor@onfilm.co.nz with ‘updates please’ in the subject line).

How the new updates will differ from the current ones, though, is that rather than each containing a huge amount of text to laboriously scroll through, all items will consist of a headline and short, pithy summary, along with a link to the full version on the website.

In the meantime, we’re in the process of ramping up the amount of content carried on our present website, something that will snowball once version 2.0 is up and running (which, again, will be soon…).

So if you haven’t visited for a while, drop on by to smirk at this soon-to-begone relic of the 20th century, and catch up on the editorial that’s exclusive to

Onfilm’s site at time of writing – the following is an indicative list of some of the material currently available…

– the editor

Does Life have legs?

Round-up of reviews and ratings for This Is Not My Life’s double ep premiere.

[750 words]

Film reviews by Helen Martin • After the Waterfall • Asylum Pieces • Candyman – the David Klein Story • Gordonia • Sam Hunt: Purple Balloon and other stories • The Box • There Once Was an Island • TrinityRoots, Music is Choice • Wound • Predicament (to be posted prior to the film’s release on 26 August)

Film updates & interviews Round-up of initial responses to NZFC review In an industry that can be sharply divided on policy and funding questions, it’s noteworthy the reaction of key groups and players – not to mention the NZFC itself – to the NZ Commission Review has been generally positive so far.

[800 words] Documenting Gordonia Tom Reilly discusses aspects of making wild Westie doco Gordonia.

[900 words] Against the tide Our complete interview with director Briar March and producer Lyn Collie about making doco There Once was an Island, which concerns a Pacific community that will soon lose their home to the rising sea. [4600 words]

TV updates TVNZ uses TiVo to go over the top The strategy behind TVNZ’s investment in TiVo becomes clearer as the big picture emerges about the PVR icon’s plans to become the Netflix of Asia.

[700 words]

www.nichecameras.co.nz ALL NEW SITE

ONLINE BOOKING

NEW GEAR

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august 2010

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Views

: V T n o JD

when the price isn’t right John Dee rates the performance of TV One, TV2, TV3, Prime, and Sky in the first six months of 2010. very fine line between getting the programming and pricing right, and it depends on a number of factors.

In the first six months of this year we have already seen channel fortunes fluctuate accordingly.

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enerally speaking, record viewing levels are great news for the television industry but what would be even better news is increased revenue.

Unfortunately this was not the case last year, when overall revenue declined by 11%. This year, however, there is some light at the end of the tunnel, with revenue for the first six months up 5.4% compared to the same period last year.

Despite this, both TVNZ and MediaWorks continue to face challenging financial pressures, which means that rationalisation and the tough decisions associated with it will continue to be the norm.

Already this year TVNZ has had to sell its rights for the Commonwealth Games and reduce its news department numbers. And, not surprisingly, TV3 dropped the struggling Sunrise.

With revenue closely linked to ratings, the finger of blame is often pointed at advertisers and agencies as the parties who demand programming changes and put pressure on the networks to deliver ratings. The reality is that, yes, we do want high ratings but the rates charged to advertisers need to be realistic – which is sometimes simply not the case.

If a programme is priced too high and does not rate well, advertisers won’t support it, with the network generally opting to pull it, as opposed to dropping rates to better reflect the ratings.

With so much at stake there is a 10

august 2010

TV One After a horrific 2009, TV One would have been hoping for a positive reversal of fortunes in 2010 but, alas, it has instead suffered a further 9% audience decline in peak time against its core audience of all people 25-54 years.

Although One News at 6pm started the year poorly, its ratings have picked up, which has in turn helped Close Up, now outperforming Campbell Live.

The channel would have been disappointed with the ratings for the heavily-hyped series Pacific, especially given the lack of a new Dancing With the Stars, which had been very successful in early 2009.

Last year, TV One’s best performing shows were local and that continues to be the case in ’10, with the long-serving, ever-reliable Country Calendar and the revamped Fair Go continuing to be ratings winners. The other major winner has been Australian series Packed to the Rafters.

Sunday night, meanwhile, has been a problem, with Damages being pulled and replaced with Cold Case, which has disappointed.

Back in my December ’09 column I expressed concerns about the potential impact of dropping Days of Our Lives and The Young and the Restless.

Well, the good news for TV One is that viewers obviously like the changes, with the result that its afternoon share has grown and is now leading both TV2 and TV3.

Having a third episode of Coronation Street scheduled on Fridays has helped that night’s ratings to the point that when TV One reverts back to two-episode weeks, Friday will replace Tuesday.

While that change may upset some fans, the good news is that hopefully we will finally be up-to-date with what’s screening in the UK. TV2 Unlike TV One, TV2 has been able to hold onto its 2009 audience growth, thanks to a programme line-up in which established properties like Des-

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perate Housewives and Grey’s Anatomy have continued to rate well, and have been complemented by new properties including Cougar Town.

The American sitcoms Big Bang Theory and Two and a Half Men have continued to be extremely popular, even when – in the case of the latter series – they’ve been repeats.

Other strong rating programmes include Hell’s Kitchen and local shows Neighbours at War and Police Ten 7.

While TV2 has strong expectations for The Vampire Diaries, as the genre is seen as the next big thing, the scheduling at 8:30pm on Thursdays is a surprise.

After its huge success in its debut season we can expect the new season of The Mentalist (8.30pm Mondays) to rate well.

Prime After a disappointing 2009, Prime has bounced back with good solid audience growth in 2010, albeit off a low base.

Prime has an eclectic programme line-up that offers good alternative viewing but has probably suffered from a general lack of awareness as to what shows are on and when. Still, stronger cross promotion by Sky (which has also enjoyed audience growth) and the clever device of enabling MySky homes to series-link via the programme trailer has probably helped.

Prime may have a small audience but there is a strong degree of loyalty for such select programmes as Top Gear, The Crowd Goes Wild and True Blood, all of which have diverse audience appeal.

TV3 TV3 is not having a great year, losing share against its core audience of all people 18-49 years in all the key zones, including a 7% decline in peak.

3 News has been experiencing declining share since April, which could be due to Home and Away no longer being the strong lead-in that it once was.

This situation hasn’t helped Campbell Live, which has its own problems – the key one being that, with such a strong personality, Campbell is probably alienating some audiences.

CSI, a long-serving and once highly successful show, has now done its dash and has therefore been moved to Saturday night.

Two highly respected new shows have suffered from poor scheduling – having The Simpsons as its lead-in was far from ideal for Modern Family, while sticking Parenthood on a Thursday night has limited its chance of being a top-rating show.

Not surprisingly, Outrageous Fortune continues to be a winner but the fact that this is its final season highlights the pressure on TV3 to get its schedule and programming mix right in 2011.

I believe the other major problem afflicting TV3 this year is a result of the decision to take its advertising in-house – since this move, TV3’s off-station presence has diminished, probably reflecting a case of being too close to the product and out of touch with consumers.

Sky Although Super 14 Rugby may not have rated well, this has not affected Sky’s ability to increase its overall audiences.

Thanks to having a monopoly, Sky is in the enviable position of being viewers’ only choice when it comes to live sport. The unfortunate outcome of this is that Sky delivers content with very little or no support or effort to get viewers engaged. This was highlighted with the recent Football World Cup where, apart from the All White games, there was no local input into the coverage.

Given this lack of engagement, the free-to-air channels have little to fear from Sky and Prime having the upcoming Commonwealth Games.

In the past, events like this rated well on TV One due to a number of factors, including its accessibility and the fact it provided interesting alternative viewing that helped to draw in casual observers. Whether Sky and Prime can do this is questionable.

W

hile the revenue growth of the first six months has resulted in cautious optimism, the television networks are well aware the remainder of 2010 is still going to be challenging.

Advertisers will continue to demand value, which means getting both programming and pricing right.

• John Dee is founder and principal of J.Dee Media, a boutique independent media agency.

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Learn more at www.dvt.co.nz/smoke

w e i v r e Int

One out of the box Peter Salmon talks to Helen Martin about making The Box, a short film that screened at this year’s New Zealand International Film Festival.

Tell me about the shoot.

The Box was literally shot from the hip on the streets of New York City. [Lead actor] Raj [Rajeev Varma] and I would roam the streets armed with a handicam and improvise scenes as they came to mind, using the city as an interactive backdrop.

My strongest memory is of when we were shooting the opening sequence on a very busy subway train and being surrounded by New Yorkers on their way home from work. People ignored the camera, probably because we looked like typical tourists, so we were able to get hundreds of awesome authentic New Yorkers as extras – for free! We made the film for a measly $25.

What did you spend the $25 on?

It was actually US$25, and I spent most of it buying a budget pack of mini DV tapes from a supermarket in Brooklyn.

The rest went on a hotdog and a glass of beer, which were props in the film.

How much of the script was planned?

There was no script per se, just a two page scene-by-scene treatment that Raj and I wrote over a couple of days.

To create the story we focused on the resources we had at hand – which of Raj’s actor friends were available, what locations we had and what props were around us. For example, I had been travelling around Europe and India for a few months so I had my massive backpack with me, which I had a love/ hate relationship with by that stage, so we made that a key prop in the film and suddenly Raj’s character was a traveller. We had the use of two different apartments and a café, where Raj’s wife worked, and of course the streets and subways of Manhattan.

With the treatment done we broke it down to a loose schedule and started shooting. The dialogue scenes were

All the world’s a (sound)stage: Rajeev Varma playing “gauche and lonely” Kiwi traveller Satish in Peter Salmon’s 27-minute-long short The Box, filmed on the streets (and in the subways) of New York.

all improvised with the actors in the moment.

It’s so well crafted – did you do lots of takes?

Some scenes took a few takes to get right. This was mainly to find the dialogue and streamline it so it didn’t seem too waffly and improvised. For example, when we were shooting a scene where Raj’s character, Satish, is having dinner with his ex-girlfriend and her new boyfriend, we spent a lot of time, and a lot of tape, working out the necessary dialogue for the scene, which was just one line at the end.

But for me the scene wasn’t working.

It sounded too ‘actory’. So for the last take I got them to do the scene completely silent and just perform it in looks and awkward glances. It worked so much better. It’s amazing how much can be said without actually saying anything.

Other scenes were often done in one continuous take, almost documentary style. I would race about getting the coverage as the event happened.

How long was the shoot?

The Box took about five days to shoot.

The first day or two were mainly just

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wandering about the city, loosely filming sequences and trying to find the core of the character.

Did you shoot any scenes in NZ – eg, the scene with Nicole Whippy?

The whole film was shot in New York.

We were lucky to have a couple of Kiwi friends, KK Moggie and Nicole Whippy, who were over there at the time, so we organised them to meet us at a bar and I quickly told them their characters and the situation and then we pretty much shot the scene in real time.

Tell me about the other actors.

Raj had been living in New York for about nine months and knew a few actors he could call up. One of them was his wife, Jess Underwood, who played his ex-girlfriend. Her character’s boyfriend is played by Brian Taylor, who’s a good friend of Raj and a damn fine comic actor. Manish [Dayal] and Nina [Mehta], who play Raj’s cousins, were a couple of actors Raj had met only a few times before but were totally up for the experience. Manish is going from strength to strength as an actor now. I believe he is in a big TV show in the States and is in the new Harry Potter film.

How did you do the sound?

Pretty much all of it is wild sound, maybe 90%. We added a few atmospheres to scenes to cover some holes in the edit and a few extra sound details, like rustling and footsteps, but mostly we used what was recorded on the day. But of course this was heavily cleaned up by James [Hayday] and Tom [Miskin] at Images & Sound, who really supported me and the film.

James is the sound designer and he totally had his work cut out for him as the whole film was shot on a small domestic handicam and all the audio was recorded through the camera mic.

So after putting the raw sound through some very expensive filters and equipment, he made the soundtrack sound like a million dollars! In some cases James had to remove the camera handling noise click by click by redrawing the sound wave by hand.

The music was recorded in a wee basement on the North Shore by a couple of music teachers (piano and violin) and a university student (cello).

We had to do a few takes because the cat in the house was constantly popping in and out of the cat door.

What about the look of the film?

Images & Sound also did the grade.

Alana Cotton was the colourist and did an amazing job making such a low resolution picture come alive.

And the end result?

This film has been such a liberating experience for me – no script, no budget, no deadlines, no producers, no crew, no expensive equipment... Pretty scary stuff, but really freeing too!

• See Helen Martin’s review of The Box, and local other films that screened at the NZIFF, at www.onfilm.co.nz

Scene & herd

WIFT NZ Awards 2010 On 5 August WIFT NZ held its eighth annual awards. Full results, further pix and a great deal more are included in the booklet inserted in this issue.

Hana Spierer and Simon Marler.

David Ladd, Gina Dellabarca and Emma Blomkamp.

Pip Hall and Ainsley Gardiner.

Julia Parnell and Rachel Gardner.

Kathryn Burnett and Jackie Dennis.

Amanda Billing and Gemma Gracewood.

Rebekah Nolan, Paul Fairless and Lucy Pearce.

Steven O’Meagher and Robin Murphy.

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w e i v r e Int

The natural history of Michael Stedman The first of a two-part career-spanning interview with Michael Stedman (pictured), CEO of NHNZ and 2009’s SPADA/Onfilm Industry Champion.

What first interested you in working in television?

Well, we’ve got to go back a long way to answer that question. I’d been around theatre since I was six. The first play I was in was The Frogs by Aristophanes, in which I played a frog. I’d grown up around The Globe Theatre in Dunedin, which was quite a remarkable place to be when you were a kid; I’d stage managed by the time I was 13; done huge amounts and been involved in a lot of theatre – you know, Ionesco and Ibsen and Chekhov and Shakespeare, and so it goes on. Television seemed like a very logical step, because there were quite a lot of people involved in the theatre.

It was just one of those seamless transitions, one to the other. There was no Road to Damascus moment, there was no “Eureka!”, there was no “Ahhh – the light!”, you know?

So how did you ‘break in’ as it were?

I rang the station manager at the NZBC in Dunedin, said I’d like to come and have a chat with him – he was a guy called Alf Stick – and his secretary at the time asked why I wanted to see him. I said, “Well, I’m available to come and work.”

So I fronted up, he thanked me – with some amusement – for making myself 14

august 2010

available to work [laughs] and I said, “No, that’s fine.”

So he wheeled in the chief producer, who in those days was a guy called Roy Melford and we had a bit of a yarn. They asked me why I wanted to start editing and I said that’s where you learn about structure and storytelling and all those sorts of things, because I had an interest in film anyway. They said, “Oh, okay,” asked me to leave the room. I left and 10 minutes later they called me back and said, “You can start on Monday.” It was as simple as that.

Now I compare that to the journey of a lot of young people today and I go, “Boy, it was much, much easier.”

Because in those days television in this country was absolutely in its infancy – I was as close to the beginning of the industry as you can get without having been there on day one. So it was very much a young person’s industry – I remember being struck by the fact that almost the entire staff were under 25.

It hadn’t developed all those things like maturity and systems – you know, bureaucracies and all of the things that are impediments to getting on with life and making great shows…

When making the Industry Champion acceptance speech on your behalf, if memory serves, David Baldock mentioned that when he worked as your assistant editor you’d arrive at work each day wearing tails and dress gloves. Is that entirely apocryphal?

Really? Well, in those days I did wear suits a lot. Everybody in those days wore a suit – didn’t last long – and the gloves you wore as an editor were white. But they weren’t dress gloves, they were actually morticians’ gloves, and when I discovered this I wondered whether there was a hidden meaning in that. [laughs] I mean, I knew that a lot of the time we were dealing with rubbish but I wasn’t sure that it was that bad. [laughs] But yeah, they were morticians’ gloves because they’d been sourced cheaply from somewhere, and obviously you wore them so you didn’t leave your sticky little fingerprints all over the film, because you were dealing with negatives

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and often it’d been out of the processor for a couple of hours, so…

So was there a logical progression in terms of your career trajectory – trainee editor to editor and then after a certain period of time onto the next role on the ladder, or was it more haphazard than that?

No, it wasn’t haphazard. When I was working as an editor I started making films in my own time. I borrowed cameras, because I also wanted to learn about shooting, and acquired what we’d laughingly call ‘short ends’ – this was film stock from the camera section and I’m not sure why they were called short ends because they seemed like quite long ends to me. So basically I borrowed a camera, ‘acquired’ film stock, and used to pay the processing guy with beer to process my film for me.

So, on the side I was making films – you know, shooting and directing. I just loved film, it was totally consuming, and I spent a huge amount of time doing that. In fact, there were several occasions I was threatened with dismissal because I was found in the building at two or three in the morning, working on my films.

So I knew I wanted to go on to be a producer and director, and in those days you applied for – and were selected, if you were lucky – director and producer training courses. First I did a directors’ training course and then I was accepted on to one of the courses through which they were supposedly choosing the next group of people who would be producers. I recall, having been selected and arriving for this three-month course, being told on day one that 50% of us would fail, which was a very sobering moment.

Everyone else there on the course wanted to work in drama. I wanted to work in sport, and no-one could work out why; that was the last place people wanted to go to. The reason I wanted to go into sport was because, having worked in film I really knew nothing about the whole studio dynamic and that area of television production. And in sport I would get 10 hours a week in

the gallery directing, while in drama you’d be lucky if you got 10 hours a year.

So it was really a way of learning about the television machine.

I did go on to become a producer – I think I was one of the youngest-ever producers in New Zealand, at 22 or 23, I can’t remember which; I was very young anyway. So I spent five or six years editing, then directing and then – this is a long time ago, this is ancient history, I’m struggling – and then went on to become a producer.

And this was all in Dunedin?

Yeah, and Dunedin was quite interesting because the then-station manager, Hal Weston, had made some very bright decisions about what Dunedin would and wouldn’t do. And one thing it wouldn’t do was compete with Auckland and Wellington, so he avoided things like drama and established a children’s base, and out of Dunedin there were shows like Playschool, and there was Spot On, which was the first show I went on to take over and produce.

There were also other shows like Beauty and the Beast being done out of Dunedin – they’d do two weeks’ worth in a weekend – and University Challenge; there was a huge amount of production coming out of Dunedin, but it was all high volume, reasonably low cost and reasonably fast turnaround or specialised – ie, children’s. So for a young producer it was an extraordinarily good training ground.

The other thing was, if you came up with ideas that the Controller of Programmes in Wellington liked, then you could go and make them. So I was always looking for shows in addition – I produced over 1000 programmes that covered content from sport to children’s to classical music. There was a huge range of stuff and if you came up with good ideas and could execute them, you got the gig.

So how long had you been in the game when you became executive producer at the Natural History Unit (NHU) in 1979?

Oh shit, I don’t know – six or seven years; I think

The shambles the NZ television industry is in is because successive governments put people in charge of broadcasting who know bugger all about it but believe they have the answers, and appoint boards that have two qualities in common: incompetence and gratitude.

As I understand it, this was about two years after the NHU had been established, so presumably it was still a largely unformed organisation at that point?

Again, it was Hal Weston who was responsible for setting up the Unit. He had been to the UK, saw that some of the regional centres in the UK were centres of specialisation, and had been to Bristol, which was home of the BBC Natural History Unit. And he went, “Ah, well, that’s something we could do in Dunedin.”

So he established a small unit and the first producer of this unit was a guy by the name of Graeme Wilson, who you will have heard of. And part of that team was also Robin Scholes and another four or five of them. And the very first series that came out of the unit was called Hidden Places, a six-part 15-minute series that got a lot of attention and did really well.

Graeme Wilson then went on to greater things [including holding key senior executive posts at TVNZ], Robin moved on, and there was a guy in Dunedin called Neil Harraway who had been part of it, along with a cameraman called Bob Brown. And they started pestering me, because they were a couple of enthusiasts looking for a producer. I was doing game shows, quiz shows, all sorts of stuff, and after a lot of pestering I agreed to give them a hand.

It was one of those life-changing decisions, because I never got free of it.

I became involved and, thinking there was no future in a whole lot of one-off documentaries, developed the Wild South brand, which went on to become extraordinarily well known in New Zealand, and also developed Wild Track, which was a kids’ natural history series.

And the unit really started to hum, you know – it went from something that produced occasional films to something that had a regular output and was doing some pretty good stuff.

So it was all going tickety-boo and I went to Australia.

What brought that on?

Oh, never say no to a good opportunity. [laughs] I went to Australia to be head of training at the Australian Film and Television School, and I was there for two or three years. The first year was unbelievably exciting, the second year was pretty good, but by the third year I thought, “I’ve done all this before.”

I realised that if I stayed in a place like that for too long I’d suddenly become a teacher and I wasn’t a teacher, although I loved training. I then ended up at the ABC in Australia as head of features – I’d done some consulting for the ABC prior

to that, merging some departments and doing some stuff.

Perhaps we could pause for a moment in our chronological march through your career and talk about what’s obviously your abiding interest in training – as you’ve just mentioned, you had your stint at AFTS in the ’70s and I know you’ve got strong views about the training environment for film and television in NZ. So what’s your view of the state of play, in terms of how the industry has been served in terms of training and education?

Oh, appalling. I was involved in the Screen Council and, as part of that organisation, I advocated strongly on behalf of training, because I see it as the future. Whereas this country was full of people being trained via a variety of media courses that turned out graduates who were entirely unemployable. They were being sold a dream that would never be realised. So there were two things wrong: a whole lot of kids spending a lot of money acquiring skills that were absolutely of no use to the industry, and at the same time the industry had a serious lack in a number of significant areas. That continues to this day.

Now the Screen Council took that all on board, did some really good work, [industry accreditation process] ScreenMark was developed but, yet again, it was scuttled by politicians. And if you really want to get me going, let’s forget all the history and start talking about the state of the television industry in this country, and the shambles it’s in as a result of successive governments putting people in charge of broadcasting who know bugger all about it but believe they have the answers, and appoint boards that have two qualities in common: incompetence and gratitude...

The television industry is in a shambles that started with Muldoon, and everybody comes in and thinks they’re going to fix it. Well, it’s changed directions so many times, it’s just appalling.

So of course with the Screen Council, ScreenMark, things are going quite well, the industry’s bought into it. But the Government, because it’s only got a three-year view, couldn’t see any because it isn’t going to make them popular, and so I think it was [Trevor] Mallard that killed it [the council and ScreenMark] by refusing to give it any more funding.

That’s the problem with government – it has a three-year window and television needs a 20-year window. They play in the world of instant gratification: “If I do this or I contribute that I’m go-

ing to get the headlines and everyone will think I’m wonderful. But if I fund something on a third year, that’s not noteworthy.” It’s not a new initiative and governments love new initiatives.

The only part of the industry that’s controlled by government and has served the industry well is New Zealand On Air. And I think the fact that it’s survived and done such a remarkable job, I dunno, some accident obviously happened there. They’ve done a fantastic job – without NZOA, god knows what the industry would look like…

Successive governments have always believed there was some residue of public broadcasting left in New Zealand and NZOA was set up to do what commercial television so often won’t do, and that’s to tell stories that reflect ourselves and may not be commercial. The only flaw in that is that NZOA can’t fund it unless there’s a broadcaster willing to screen it, so that’s a bit of a fly in the ointment.

But we pretend we’ve got some sort of public broadcasting residue and it’s just complete nonsense. Television New Zealand is no more a public broadcaster than I’m an astronaut.

Yeah, Maori Television is clearly the closest to a public broadcaster the country has.

Absolutely – it’s innovative, it’s relevant, it's parish pump, it’s all sorts of stuff that TVNZ isn’t.

I remember someone from TVNZ saying to me not too many years ago that audiences don’t like documentary because they want to chill out and documentary hurts their brain. Well, you know, could somebody explain to me why Discovery, National Geographic, the History Channel, Animal Planet have done so amazingly well? Audiences do seem to like documentary. On a lot of the terrestrials, documentaries have been replaced by freak shows and I just find that – yeah, don’t get me started.

We’re bereft of current affairs, we’ve got tabloid instead; there’s occasionally some quite interesting documentaries on, but they are few and far between, most of it’s light and fluffy.

TVNZ will argue that, of necessity, they’re market-led and are just providing what the audience wants.

Then why are they losing their audience to Sky? I know you’ve had frustrations over the years with how difficult it’s been to get the NHU’s output screened on TVNZ. I take comfort in the fact we weren’t

alone – there were many, many other companies treated really appallingly

by TVNZ. Unlike a lot of other companies in NZ, we have a yardstick of comparison because we deal with broadcasters all over the world, and I would have to say that without question that TVNZ is one of – if not the – most difficult of the broadcasters we’ve ever interacted with. And you know, when you think about the size of some of the other organisations we’re dealing with, that’s pretty scary…

And that frustration was a major driver in you seeking to get the NHU out from under TVNZ and to go looking for someone else to buy it, wasn’t it?

Look, I think that when Television New Zealand was turned into a state owned enterprise and government demanded a profit from it, it became very evident very quickly that the only true discretion you have if you’re running a television organisation is production.

You’ve got to buy programming, you’ve got to transmit programming, you’ve got to do a whole lot of things that are musts. Production is where there is latitude. And you didn’t have to be a rocket scientist to work out that if production is going to be squeezed, then the chances are, you’re going to be squeezed.

So okay, what’s Plan B? And Plan B is, we’ve got to find another way. And that drove the idea of looking out internationally.

The two big drivers behind it were: (1) there were no great fans of NZ wildlife inside TVNZ – it wasn’t seen as popular or sexy, which was quite contrary to the audience’s perception; and (2) the NHU’s output was expensive, and if you’ve got a product you’re not very fond of or you don’t think is very important, and it’s expensive, it’s going to go. So that’s when we said, “Whoops!” and we developed the plan to encourage TVNZ to divest itself of the Natural History Unit.

So I said to the then-chairman, “You’ve got three choices: fund it, close it, or sell it.” And because you had boards making decisions about the future of television in this country that were in my view entirely ill-equipped to do it – and because as soon as they learnt something useful about the industry, they were replaced – they couldn’t see how Natural History could ever be a business…

• Next issue: the progression of Stedman’s career in parallel with the evolution of the NHU into NHNZ.

www.onfilm.co.nz

august 2010

15

w e i v r e Int

Larceny for laughs

What was the biggest challenge for you in adapting Ronald Hugh Morrieson’s Predicament for the screen?

I really did love the novel it and I was like, “Well, if I’m going to make a movie of it, I’ve got to make his book, I can’t just go and steal his characters and the bits I like, and sort of make up my own thing.” [laughs] So the movie is really faithful to the novel. The biggest challenges were all at the end.

It’s interesting, because Ronald Hugh Morrieson died before the novel was published and it had actually been edited and I wonder – I guess we’ll never really know – whether a lot of the end was constructed from notes and things, because it does sort of wrap quite quickly. So for the movie I’ve invented a few events, but they came out of reading the novel a lot and breaking all those things down and thinking, “Well, it wouldn’t be too far removed from the source if Cedric did this, or Mervyn did that.”

It’s been interesting having feedback from other people who really enjoyed the novel, saying that they thought we’d fixed some of the problems they’d had with the story, which is kinda nice…

I understand you were originally given the book by a friend?

Yeah, while I was working on the behind the scenes of Lord Of The Rings, cutting these feature length docos, [composing group] Plan 9 was sharing the office because they were doing some temp scoring for the movie. One of the group, Steve Roche, happened to be reading the novel and he just started talking about it excitedly – “I really think you could make a film out of this!” – and he also said he thought it was something that I’d be really into.

So he leant me the novel and it took me a long time to get around to read it [laughs]. But when I did I had that sort of experience where you sit down and you just can’t stop reading.

I really loved it; I really warmed to [lead character] Cedric, I think he’s a fantastic character and it’s interesting how Hayden Frost plays him, because I think Hayden really warmed to the character as well and really understood him. There’s a lot of really interesting depth to Cedric, he’s not your classic good guy, he’s actually quite a manipulative guy himself [laughs].

I think I read it in, like, two days; I 16

august 2010

Photo: Simon Cardwell

Writer-director Jason Stutter on making Predicament – his third feature film, but the first with proper funding.

Stutter eyeline: Director Jason Stutter considers the next shot while Predicament’s cast and crew look on.

read it very fast and then I rang [producer] Sue [Rogers], told her about this book I’d read and that I’d love to get the rights. And that process took a long time because I think a number of people had had a go at it, so it was a matter of every few months piping up again and saying, “Any news on Predicament?” And then we got the rights and, you know, it took a long time to adapt – that’s the other thing with adaptation, I think it takes a lot longer than writing something from scratch.

So how long were you developing it?

A few years but during that time I was also doing other stuff. In terms of getting it funded, the big thing was the SPIF grant – without that it would have been really hard to make the film because it’s period and everything.

But the Film Commission was really supportive of the development and all of that.

So at the time you started developing the script you’d already made lowbudget feature Tongan Ninja?

Yeah, I’d made Tongan Ninja and also a number of shorts.

But not second low-budget feature Diagnosis Death?

No, the thing with Diagnosis Death was that we were having a go at funding Predicament in a slightly different way – this was before the SPIF grant came

www.onfilm.co.nz

around – but it didn’t happen, and I thought, “Oh well, I’m going to go and make a film anyway.” And I’d been writing this script with Raybon [Kan] and I said, “Why don’t we just go and make it?” So basically we just made another little credit card movie.

While the experience of making two low-budget features and various shorts would have been invaluable experience for making Predicament, there’s presumably also a big difference in making a film that’s properly funded?

Oh yeah! You don’t have to compromise so much, which is the most frustrating thing about making films with your own resources. A lot of times people would say, “Oh, it’s more creative because we have to be more clever about the way you do things,” and I think it’s true to a degree. But there’s also that point where you’re doing your big scene and you can’t afford the crane or whatever it is you should actually have in order to tell that story well. So a bit of that frustration goes away with a decent budget.

One thing about having made a couple of low-budget films is I really love working with comedians and I really love improvising a lot, and because I’d had a good few years trying that out and paying the bills myself, by the time I was spending somebody else’s money to make this movie, I felt really

confident about having a go and going off the script every now and then. And the actors love it and I think you do get some great material – I enjoy the performances you get from doing that.

Another thing about our budget was the time we had to shoot it in – we had seven weeks. Even so, we were doing quite a few set-ups each day and had to be quite clever in order to get all the coverage we needed and also get the film to look the way we wanted it to.

Did shooting with a RED camera help facilitate that?

Yeah, it did. Shooting with RED doesn’t make for a quicker shoot but it does make for a more confident shoot. Like, at times we’re very close on people’s faces on long lenses and we could do those shots without being worried about getting into post and not having anything to cut together, because we could sit and see on the monitor how sharp things were.

The other great thing about RED, from a directing point of view, is you could do long rolls, especially in close ups – you could just keep shooting because you didn’t have stock going through the camera. Which is great, especially when you’re working with Heath [Franklin] and Jemaine [Clement] – often you could just feed them Continued on page 18

w e i v r e Int

A touch of Frost

Hayden Frost talks about making his feature film debut in Predicament, in the lead role of Cedric Williamson.

Room with an askew view: Cedric Williamson (played by Hayden Frost) is far from the master of all he surveys in Predicament.

This is your first screen role – how did you find the experience?

Screen is certainly a lot different to stage. It requires you to tweak your performance a lot differently because of course the camera is going to see things in a different way. With theatre essentially the way the audience is going to see the performance rests with you in that moment, but when you’re creating something for the screen it depends on what lens the camera is using, where it’s positioned, how far away it is, how it’s edited later on, so it requires a bit more care in terms of exactly what level you’re pitching things at.

I get the sense you quite enjoy grappling with those technical considerations?

Yeah, yeah, as an actor I tend to be quite technical so it was really very fun to find those levels and really start to discover the way of the craft of screen acting. As a discipline it tends to be a lot more specific…

A big difference is obviously doing things out of [chronological] order, and – when you’re filming a scene that leads into something else you’ve already done – having to think back, “Okay, so how did I do that? How do the scenes lead into one another? How do I pitch this so they fit together?”

So how did you deal with that particular challenge?

A lot of my process tends to be more instinctive. You tend to learn, particularly

in theatre, a lot of processes for breaking things down, but I’ve always preferred to leave my script as blank as possible, I don’t know why. So the moment a note is given to me, I try to internalise it as much as possible, and just remember it, so that the moment I’m doing something I’m not thinking, “Oh, what was that note? I have to go to my script and find it,” I can just remember it.

A lot of it was pretty basic in terms of process – I didn’t do a lot of written preparation or cards or things like that.

I tend to make a lot of assumptions and a lot of decisions when I read through a script the first couple of times and those tend to stick pretty fast until I actually get on set and things change. So it’s usually just a matter of looking at the script again and reminding myself of what I originally felt about that scene and how it connects with these others things.

Was there much in the way of rehearsal prior to the shoot?

There was almost nothing, which was kind of terrifying, because I’m so used to that discipline of spending three months getting to know everyone else in the cast really well and practising it until you know exactly what you’re going to do and exactly what you’re going to say and exactly how you’re going to move.

But [writer-director] Jason [Stutter] was very, very specific about doing very little rehearsal. He had kind of cast based on qualities people naturally had

Photo: Simon Cardwell

when they walked into the room, so a lot of the qualities for the characters were also inherent in the actors.

When we got on set and blocked something for camera for the first time, it was usually the first time we’d heard each other say those words; Jason wanted to be able to capture that sense of surprise. And we usually did as few takes as possible, just so the reactions would be fresh.

Did you find that approach helpful?

It could be helpful, yeah. A huge amount of the acting process in terms of Cedric was just reacting; a lot of the time he’s placed in these unfamiliar situations with these people he doesn’t know and they’re just throwing stimuli at him. So being able to sit there in character and have these things come at you and just react to them on the spot and find those moments was really helpful, and really satisfying as well – little things would happen that you wouldn’t expect or find if you’d spent ages rehearsing a scene over and over again.

By the same token, did you have any problems with corpsing, given there must have been some pretty funny stuff. The first time you heard Jemaine [Clement] speak in the voice of Spook, for example? [laughs] The voice from Jemaine was something I don’t think any of us were really expecting…

There was only one really bad instance; I think it was one of the first times that Jemaine and Heath and I were on set together. We got through the scene itself, more or less okay, and then to finish Jason just wanted to get us to riff a bit on the end of the scene – for Jemaine to come up and throw some extra lines in and for us to bounce off them. But the moment Jemaine opened his mouth, Heath and I would absolutely just lose it. We tried about four or five times and in the end it was clear it wasn’t going to work, so Jason literally just removed us from the shot – he said, “Go and stand over there and put your hands over your mouths,” and just focused on Jemaine, who had to improvise all these things completely on his own.

The seven-week shoot must have been pretty gruelling for you, given you’re in almost every scene?

Yeah, I think I had two days off in total.

It was kind of gruelling but once I settled

into the schedule I found it fairly easy.

The thing is, I not only love the process of acting, since I was really young I’ve been kind of obsessed with the process of filmmaking, so when I wasn’t acting I’d sometimes just find myself standing around watching people work, things get set up and the process run along. So there weren’t any times where I was getting really bored or stressed out; there was always something I could involve myself in in some way.

Funnily enough, it was only difficult when it came to the days off and the weekends – I’d get up in the morning, stretch, “Oh yes, I’ve got a day off,” potter around for 10 minutes and then go, “Oh, I’m a bit bored now, I wish I was working.”

I understand you’ve got a real eye for continuity, and that you provided some assistance in that respect on set? [laughs] Ah, you’ve been talking to other people, haven’t you?

Yeah, on set I’ll think a little about what I’m supposed to do and then my mind will just wander and I’ll find myself starring at monitors and looking at everything else and kind of wondering what other people’s jobs are and, yes, I’ll just start involving myself in everything I’m not supposed to. [laughs] I’ll start wondering whether I’ve got my microphone on straight or start looking at props and wondering if there are any anachronisms, so yeah, I did get myself involved in continuity, occasionally, with the props I was dealing with. I have no idea how much I irritated other people in that respect but I tried to do it as little as possible – it was one of those slightly compulsive things, I just couldn’t help myself.

For example, there was a scene where I was flicking through an encyclopedia for homework and between takes I’d just read all the entries on the page to see if any of them were dated too late or if I turned to this page would the camera be able to catch that it says the wrong date there? I was always far more worried about those things than I was about my own performance. [laughs] You said earlier you’ve had an abiding interest in the filmmaking process – had you had the opportunity to be on a set prior to Predicament?

Back when I was 10 or 11 I had a very short experience. My uncle is Simon

www.onfilm.co.nz

Continued on page 18 august 2010

17

Interview Larceny for laughs

A touch of Frost

Continued from page 16

Continued from page 17

other stuff and they’d give you that different look or some other cool thing; it was really good for that.

Striking that balance between the comedy and drama and getting the tone just right was presumably a big challenge of the shoot. With respect to that, did you do different versions of scenes and then make your final decisions about how it would play out during the edit, or – No. I mean, you tend to get that first take, which is in keeping with the script and then you might play around with it a little, but nah, you kinda go into the movie with a set idea of how you want each scene to manipulate the audience – where you want them to turn, where you want them to laugh. I kind of stick pretty closely to that because otherwise what can happen – and it didn’t happen with our cast, because we were all making the same movie – but sometimes you hear those stories: “Oh, we were laughing really loudly on set but then later…” You know what I mean?

There was none of that, because we had a real set plan: “Okay, in this scene Mervyn is trying to manipulate Cedric and to get the audience into it we’re going to get Spook to lighten it a little bit, because the movie’s got to be fun as well, and then we’re going to turn again…”

It’s interesting – I love watching some of those scenes, especially the bullying scene where Mervyn really starts to reveal who he is to Cedric; I love to listen to the audience change there, because you do get quite a big laugh and then you hear the room fall silent and feel them start to get unsettled. I love all that stuff. So yeah, there was definitely a set plan.

I can’t help but think of your Careful … series of shorts as a kind of rehearsal for that kind of comic tension and release.

Yeah, it’s funny that, eh, because Careful with that Axe was really good in terms of helping people really quickly get the style [of Predicament].

Because what happens when you read a screenplay is that whoever reads it takes their sensibility ‘in’ with them, and what was happening with Predicament’s script was that people weren’t getting that combination of comedy and tension. So while it wasn’t like I set out to do those shorts for that reason, they did become supportive in terms of Predicament.

I remember that, just before the Film Commission agreed to fund it, we played them Careful with that Axe. It had just won at Valladolid in Spain [in 2008 it won the Golden Spike 18

august 2010

for Best Short Film at the Valladolid International Film Festival], so they’d heard of it but hadn’t seen it. And it was great – the whole board were basically yelping and hiding their eyes [laughs] and then at the same meeting we showed them [Heath Franklin’s] Chopper Reid: Harden the Fuck Up. So we do wonder whether we’re the filmmakers who have dropped the most F-bombs in a Film Commission board meeting. [laughs] But yeah, we had a lot of other support – we also had NZ On Air and the [South Taranaki District] Council, and a private investor. So we had a lot of other things around it that made it seems like a good film to take a chance on.

What did you most enjoy about making the film?

I seriously just loved everyone involved in it; it was such an amazing group of people, you know. Every single person on it was amazing to work with, and really supportive. There was never that moment – you know, I’ve had this on some of my smaller projects where you’ve got people who are trying to push you in a different direction or trying to, I dunno. We were all making the same movie. I know the actors all really enjoyed that as well, they all felt absolutely supported and part of something really fun.

So how much longer are you ‘on’ Predicament? Obviously the release is ahead of you, but are you already looking at your next project or projects?

Yeah, I’ve got a number of things, which are definitely along the same kind of lines – comedy and violence. [laughs] But, you know, I want to do everything I can to support the movie, and we’ve also got some exciting stuff happening in the States later in the year, so I want to go and support that as well.

In terms of…?

Oh, there’s a thing happening that you’ll get to hear about a little later. [laughs] In the meantime you’re welcome to allude to something happening.

But yeah, there are a number of things I’m interested in making.

You know what I’d love to make? A real good Wellington action movie. [laughs] Anything else you’d like to mention?

Is it cheeky of me to ask you to mention the film’s website: www.predicamentthemovie.com? And obviously we can’t mention enough that it opens 26 August so, you know, get along to it. [laughs]

www.onfilm.co.nz

Raby, who has worked as a DOP and occasionally a director in the NZ film industry for quite a long time – and was actually the DOP on Predicament – and when I was 10 or 11 he took me on to the set of Young Hercules for a morning.

So that was a fun early experience and an opportunity to stare at everything and wonder at the magic of it all.

Oh, and how could I forget – I also did some extra work on The Tribe way back in 2003, when they were shooting season five I think. So that was a couple of days just spent loitering around at the back of The Tribe set.

There is this idea that if an actor is going to befriend just one person on the crew then it’d better be the DOP, but given your uncle was filming Predicament, you presumably had a bit of a head start in this respect. So did he favour your best side and so on? [laughs] Yeah, I wasn’t really worried about that side of things going in, though having that relationship certainly helped. But I’m really pleased by the way the whole thing’s come out – I think the whole film looks really fantastic, actually.

How have you found watching yourself on the big screen? I can imagine it might be a little discombobulating?

It is a weird sensation, but watching this is okay really. I’ve only seen the film once so far and most of that experience was just about matching the finished product up with what I could remember from actually doing it, so I wasn’t hugely worried about the way the performance was going. But I didn’t have any real cringe moments when I was thinking, “Oh, I could have done that better” or “That didn’t come out very well”, so it was remarkably painless really.

What did you find most challenging about the whole experience?

The hardest thing was probably just learning to let go of any of the anxieties and worries, to go with it and trust all of the people around you and the fact they’re not going to let you get away with anything that isn’t up to standard.

It was just about being able to get on to set and relax into the process, so you’re not bringing your own nervousness and all of that with you and into the performance.

That, and learning to ride the bike, which was just nightmarish. [laughs] I didn’t know going into it that I had to ride a bike, and they didn’t know that I couldn’t ride a bike. We all discovered this a couple of days before I got to Hawera and so it was just a matter of, “All right, that’s fine, we’ve got a week-anda-half pre-production – you’ll learn!”

To begin with it was just as simple as me

being pushed along by Joel AnscombeSmith, the cast assistant, who thankfully was also a mountain biker who had lots of experience and knew exactly what he was doing. Every day it was a matter of getting back on that damn bike and getting better and better until I could do everything I needed to do for the film without falling off.

To end at the beginning, how did you find the audition process?

I think it was only my third experience of putting an audition down on tape and so it was something I was going into more or less blind. I went in without too many preconceptions, put down an audition and met Jason, who seemed really nice and to like what I was doing, and I just walked away from it the same way you walk away from every audition: “Oh okay, that was fun,” and then forgot about it.

Then I came back a few months later for a recall and came out of it thinking that I didn’t really give them what they were looking for. About 45 minutes after finishing that I got a call from my agent saying they wanted me to come back in and audition again later that afternoon, was that okay? And of course I said “yes!”

So I went back in and the process was slightly different, because I think one of the main things they were looking for in that audition was the fear – Cedric is quite scared at a few points in the film and they really wanted to see that coming through. And so we started and they’d obviously given instructions to the person I was doing it with, because they just put down the script and absolutely blew up on me.

They went nuts, pushing me around and throwing me against the wall, and I was absolutely terrified! [laughs] Just completely terrified – I was thinking, “Have I done something wrong? Did I muck up the first audition so badly that they’re punishing me?” I just had no idea what was going on. [laughs] But I held it together, we got through the scenes with me looking suitably terrified, and a few weeks later got a call saying I’d got the part.

That experience turned out to be quite useful actually, because not only did it get me the part but Jason also learnt there was a very easy way to emotionally manipulate me to get the fear he wanted. There were a couple of times during the shoot when I wasn’t pushing it as far as he wanted, and Jason would just take the other actor aside without me realising and tell them to shout at me all of a sudden. So there are a couple of scenes in the film where that’s what’s happening – on my close up the other actor is just going nuts at me and I’m terrified. [laughs]

TVCs

They’re stiffing our talent here?

In March this year, a minor controversy erupted in the local mainstream media about the use of a US actor on the NZ shoot for the latest in a series of beer commercials. Now the heat has died down, Philip Wakefield revisits the story in the hope of shedding a little light on what happened and why.

L

et’s be honest: why would a New Zealand brewery use an indie US actor in an Australian-helmed campaign to promote an iconic Kiwi beer that trades on the country’s “100% pure” image?

To some, it’s a riddle as enigmatic as the presence of the controversial frontman for the latest Steinlager Pure commercial, Vincent Gallo.

To others, it’s either a “slap in the face” to all Kiwis or an “uncompromising” endorsement of our international standing.

Five months after the filming of the commercial in Central Otago, Onfilm wanted to discuss the strategy behind the shoot, and the ensuing furore, with its key creatives.

But the agency, Publicis Mojo, referred all comment to the client, Lion Nathan; agency producer Jane Oak, who now works for Saatchi & Saatchi, didn’t return repeated phone calls; and the creative director/writer/art director, Stephen McKenzie, who’s left Publicis Mojo for parts unknown, couldn’t be contacted by phone and didn’t respond to emailed questions.

N

ot surprisingly, NZ Equity had no such reluctance about commenting on why it opposed Gallo being cast and expressed “shock and disappointment” over the Government supporting his visa application on the grounds he was an actor of international distinction and merit since he’d worked with Martin Scorsese and Johnny Depp.

“This decision is a slap in the face for all New Zealand performers and frankly shows contempt for all New Zealanders,” Equity president Jennifer Ward-Lealand argued in a press release at the time. “Kiwi performers are Kiwi workers, too … Obviously when the Government talks about ‘Kiwis First’, it applies to everyone except Kiwi performers.”

Equity claimed the casting process was rigged to ensure a NZ actor wasn’t cast because the brief called for one with a UK accent – even though the role went to one with a US accent (who, ironically, doesn’t even speak in the ad).

“The criterion of ‘international distinction or merit’ is determined in a number of ways,” Equity’s industrial organiser, Frances Walsh, tells Onfilm.

Storm in a beer bottle?: The presence of US actor Vincent Gallo in the latest Steinlager Pure TVC drew protests from NZ Equity and others.

If we were discussing NZ workers in any other industry, the Government would not allow overseas workers to fill such jobs, unless exceptional circumstances were at play.

“Equity would expect the actor’s performances to have been acknowledged as exceptional by reputable sources.

“Note that international distinction relies on an actor’s personal stature and work, not upon the stature of those with whom she/he has worked, or at what festivals the production in which she/he has appeared screens.

“In short, reflected glory does not constitute ‘international distinction’.

“Moreover, there is an expectation that an actor ‘of international distinction’ would have a high profile in the public’s eyes.”

Walsh cites a newspaper poll that found 70% of respondents had “no idea” of Gallo’s existence, “which is not to say that Mr Gallo may not be a fine actor – he is just not one who satisfies Immigration New Zealand criteria, and as such is not allowed under the country’s immigration laws to work here.”

She adds the climate in which performers operate has to be accounted

for under immigration policy, too.

“At any one time, the effective unemployment rate of performers in NZ is 95%. The vast number of their jobs are subsidised by the taxpayer, whether it’s in the form of NZ On Air, NZ Film Commision, Creative NZ or Te Mangai Paho grants.

“Moreover, if a production is for the New Zealand market, as it was in the Steinlager Pure TVC, there is reasonable expectation that any job on the production would be filled by a New Zealand performer.

“If we were discussing New Zealand workers in any other industry – a teacher, a baker, an electrician, for example – the New Zealand Government would not allow overseas workers to fill such jobs, unless, of course, exceptional circumstances were at play.

“We issued a press release in respect to the Steinlager Pure/Vincent Gallo case because we felt strongly that New Zealand’s immigration laws had not been upheld. We would not have done

so without irrefutable evidence.”

The Screen Directors Guild, on the other hand, believes immigration policy “works effectively” and doesn’t have the same objection to the commercial being directed by an Australian, citing it as an example of “CER in action”.

“It would be wonderful if a New Zealand director had been used on the commercial and it is always our objective to encourage producers to employ New Zealand directors,” SDG executive director Anna Cahill says.

“However, in this sort of situation we are unable to hold any sway and an Australian production company is highly likely to use a local director or one they are used to working with.

“We would have been very pleased if the project went to a New Zealand production company, post-production company, director and editor – but we are working under an arrangement that allows free trade.

www.onfilm.co.nz

Continued on page 21 august 2010

19

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TVCs

They’re stiffing our talent here?

Continued from page 19

“The Australians are in exactly the same situation.�

Others in the film industry also disagreed with Equity’s stance, with one producer copying an email to Onfilm in which the organisation was urged to apologise to Gallo for its “very unfair critique� of him and his body of work.

Yet there was support for Equity’s view from within the advertising industry, with one anonymous letter writer to AdMedia magazine (“Shirley from Herne Bay�) castigating the campaign for “the sort of shit that makes the advertising industry look like a bunch of soulless pricks who would do and say anything for the money�.

H

owever, those ad men who were prepared to stand up and be counted over the campaign argue otherwise.

Philip Andrew, of Clemenger BBDO, remembers being similarly criticised for a Positively Wellington Tourism TVC because it was postproduced in Australia and partly shot by an Auckland director. “As a creative person there’s no wish to cut New Zealanders out of the work or out of the spots,� he says. “It’s simply that your focus is on trying to do the very best you possibly can for your client and for the product. “I’ve worked in the business for a long, long time and I don’t know any creative people who would think, ‘We won’t use New Zealand talent because we don’t think they’re good enough.’ They simply go looking for someone who they feel is right for the job. “And we live in a global community.

I just think this wittering by the local [screen] industry is just pathetic.�

He acknowledges he hadn’t heard of Gallo before the campaign, and concedes he may not justify “star� status. “He certainly is enigmatic, and

I just think this parochial attitude of, ‘We must only use New Zealanders if we’re talking about a New Zealand product’, is just horseshit. perhaps that’s what they were looking for. He does bring something unique to that message.�

As for the irony of using an American to front an Australian-led shoot for a NZ product espousing the virtues of purity, “it’s so small-minded of people to try to argue that case. Look at the history of Steinlager, back to when Meares Taine had the account and did the very first campaign that really kicked Steinlager off: ‘they’re drinking our beer here’. “It was a series of print ads, doublepage spreads that were beautifully shot all around the world showing Steinlager in different locations. It’s a New Zealand psyche thing – although it’s been a little different in the past 5-10 years – that as a nation we don’t really believe we’re any good until we do it well overseas. “I just think this parochial attitude of, ‘We must only use New Zealanders if we’re talking about a New Zealand product’, is just horseshit.�

Nor does he think the campaign buys into the Kiwi cringe mentality: “It’s just saying we have the confidence to use whoever we wish and to make a truly global message about a stance we’ve taken or about a Kiwi product.

I find it bizarre that anyone would be concerned we’re using a foreigner to talk about our products.�

Andrew also doesn’t believe the “pure� message of the ad was compromised by an Australian production house, Radical Media Sydney, and director, Christopher Riggert, shooting it – or it being post-produced across the ditch as well.

“The reality is the budget would have to have been met by a New Zealand film company or an Australian film company. We’ve been in that situation many times when we’ve been looking for the right director for a certain job and you have to make a call on a number of different aspects. “We would traditionally look at three to four directors to start with and then make a decision. But invariably it’s not more expensive to shoot with an Australian film company. The Aussie film companies would fit the price to your budget or match the price of New Zealand companies. “I’ve been in a situation where the Australian film company has been cheaper on many occasions. Someone will say, ‘Oh, well they’re trying to undercut the New Zealand market.’ But it’s just not like that. “Sometimes the director you really want may not be available. We’ve had that a lot. There are certainly fewer directors in the New Zealand commercials market than there were 10 years ago.

Our market is much, much smaller. “Often the ones you want – there’s a core group of top New Zealand directors – often those people will be too expensive or won’t be available or won’t want to do the job. “We find that in putting jobs out to film companies it’s not unusual to have directors say they’re too busy or don’t really want to do that job. “You really are looking for the right director with the right production company behind them and the right production skills, and those are the things that really drive the choice of director.�

Philip Andrew

A

lthough he understands why some in the screen industry would feel defensive over the campaign, James Mok of DraftFCB, doesn’t agree with their reasoning. “It’s an industry that’s proved itself over the years,� he says. “But does that mean advertisers and their agencies, who conceive the ideas and determine who produces the work, shouldn’t have access to whatever talent they think is best to make their brands famous? “The reality is that we exist in a free market rather than a protected market. Agencies are just as vulnerable to clients deciding to run overseasproduced work regardless of the proven creative talent in New Zealand agencies and regardless of how much we believe ads from Australia, Europe and the USA don’t connect with the New Zealand public. It’s their commercial prerogative. If agencies want to change this, we have to prove that investing in our ideas is going to be more commercially beneficial than any other option. “There’s no doubting we have extraordinarily skilled filmmakers in New Zealand. But just like New Zealand agencies, they battle on the open marContinued on page 24

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fastbydelivery readybysystem www.onfilm.co.nz

august 2010

21

TVCs

The mother-in-law test

Photo: Peter Parnham

The visual content management systems used by the TVC sector point the way to a future of digitally delivered films and television programmes, writes Peter Parnham – well, once they’ve solved those pesky HD problems anyway…

Michael Orton, chief operating officer for eBUS.

I

stayed at my mother-in-law’s house last week. She’s got a new TV. Like any set bought within the past year or so it is a real high definition television – it will tune directly into Freeview’s HD channels.

There are a lot of us out there with earlier model flat screen TVs that will display HD only if it is fed into the back.

That means if we want free-to-air HD we have to purchase a Freeview HD set-top box. I for one haven’t got around to it.

That’s why, stuffed with roast lamb and apple pie, I settled on the couch with a great deal of anticipation.

What a disappointment. The HD programmes looked fabulous: pin sharp and with an enhanced sense of depth.

Too bad about the rest of it.

Commercial makers must be disappointed too. The images should be pretty snappy if you’ve paid big bucks for a digital HD camera, got a good DP and paid HD rates at the post house.

But here’s the problem: whatever format you shot and post-produced in, your commercial is only standard definition because, well, that’s just the way it’s

22

august 2010

done. This is because, unlike HD programmes, commercials are delivered to the broadcasters in standard definition.

There are plans afoot to change this, but it will take the rest of the year before viewers see the difference.

Even when a TVC is up-converted again for broadcast in HD, there is no way it is going to look good against a high definition programme.

Where the programming is standard definition, the commercials don’t stick out in the same way – except against the up-converted news, which looks so inferior that the commercials actually seem to look better.

To be fair, it turns out HD channels don’t actually promise wall-to-wall HD and they are, in truth, digital channels that broadcast a variety of formats.

“Freeview HD provides crystal-clear digital-quality pictures and sound with the added bonus of some of your favourite programmes broadcast in High Definition,” intones Freeview’s website.

Still, your production budget is not wasted. Shooting high definition – or, better still, 35mm film – does make material look better than acquiring it on a standard definition camera.

But at the other end of the scale, retail commercial makers beware. Using low-end cameras and cheap formats to save money comes at a cost – even in a standard definition digital broadcast your commercial can look soft, while your own computer-generated graphics tend to look sharper as well, making your live footage look lacklustre.

Pop this kind of quality into a slot on Coronation Street that’s broadcasting in HD 720p format and the overall effect can look positively amateurish.

For high-end commercials, a few rebels have figured out a partial workaround – an old-fashioned backdoor into the TV3 play-out system. And old fashioned it is: you make an HD video tape of your commercial and send it over by courier.

Of course, that is sooo last century.

www.onfilm.co.nz

B

ack at the end of the last century, HD channels were still a distant dream and it made perfect sense, shortly thereafter, when two competing Aussie companies, Dubsat and Adstream, set up to eliminate video tape from commercial deliveries.

The concept is simple. The commercial is uploaded from an ordinary desktop computer to the delivery company’s server. The Commercials Approval Bureau takes a look from its desktop, approves it, and then it is transferred to the broadcaster. So long as it’s cheaper than a couriered video tape, it has to be a winner.

From there the services developed into what might be described as a secure and sophisticated version of YouTube, where agency employees, clients, and anybody else who has appropriate rights can look at a commercial, comment on it or approve different versions – all from their desktops.

But as you probably found out not long after your teenagers discovered YouTube, your broadband data plan evaporates pretty fast when you start watching videos.

When you watch them in HD, the processing, bandwidth and storage requirements climb enormously.

This means that broadcasting in HD is one thing, but storage and managing everything behind the scenes in HD digital files is a lot harder and it costs more. So they don’t do it yet.

The result is that commercial production might be in HD and the actual broadcast might be capable of HD, but the quick and convenient commercial delivery service is standard definition.

TV3 can’t wait for HD commercials to come in by the same route.

According to John Allen, director of technology for TV3 owner MediaWorks, the majority of material on TV3 in prime time is already being broadcast in HD. “We’d love it if everything we could

get was on HD – just to save the upconverting,” he says.

He also expects to commission future local programmes in HD but expects news and current affairs to be the last to upgrade to HD, “in due course”.

There are also plans over at TVNZ to put an end to up-conversion, and they have a name for it: Project Nexus.

“It is fundamentally going to transform the way we manage our content and our assets,” says the project’s sponsor, TVNZ head of production services and technology, Helen Clifton.

The $23 million company-wide project will change the broadcaster into a file-based broadcaster.

“It will all be hooked together by a large media asset management system that enables people across the organisation to browse content and make decisions,” she explains.

It will be rather like a scaled-up version of the system the commercial delivery companies offer but with an important difference: it will be HD – except for news and current affairs.

Clifton says this means TVNZ will accept – and encourage – HD commercials and programming. (Calls on individual independent productions will be made by TVNZ commissioners.)

Thus the world will be set to rights.

You’ll be able to shoot your commercials on HD and have the whole pipeline in HD too – so long as the delivery companies upgrade their systems as well.

“We’re ready,” says Michael Orton, chief operating officer for eBUS, the third player in the New Zealand commercials delivery market.

D

iffering from the other two companies in the market in that it’s not an Aussie branch office, eBUS is in fact quite the opposite: a New Zealandbased company expanding overseas.

Started in 2005 by Carmine Masiello after he sailed in from Italy, the company counts a number of

TVCs

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New Zealand post-production houses in its share register.

The company now has operations in New Zealand, Thailand, India, and Singapore.

Orton arrived in New Zealand about six years ago, after starting with the BBC and a stint in post and VFX in the US. “You can have a nice lifestyle business servicing the New Zealand market,” he says. “But if you have any ambition, there’s a big world out there.”

With the business now spread across several hours worth of time zones, Orton controls operations from his desktop on the North Shore.

“Quite a significant amount of our process and storage is now held in ‘the cloud’, which effectively means to say it’s on servers that are owned by Amazon,” says Orton.

Cloud computing is a hot topic in IT at the moment. Instead of buying your own grunty servers you use an internet-based service. The heavy duty computing takes place anywhere – you don’t know and you don’t care.

“But you’ve got to use it carefully,” explains Orton. “First of all we don’t have the international bandwidth to put all the storage in the cloud. Secondly we get dinged for international traffic quite heavily. So we minimise the international transactions. If every one of our TVC transactions was an international delivery, then our customers would be screaming.

“It’s true somebody can use eBUS with a fairly ratty broadband connection. The reason is that television commercials are short. When we start look-

ing at delivering programme material and film material, that’s when it starts getting interesting.”

The idea of delivering long-form HD programmes electronically is tantalising, both for New Zealand companies delivering and/or exporting content and for broadcasters importing content.

The same speed, convenience and cost advantages of TVC delivery would apply, provided the data cables in and out of New Zealand have enough capacity at a reasonable cost.

Allen explains a lot of international suppliers for TV3 don’t want to persist with sending tapes.

“Inevitably, in the fairly near future we are going to have to come up with alternative solutions,” he says. “Again, it’s a bandwidth issue. If you are in America there’s not a problem because there is lots of bandwidth. Getting it across the Pacific is probably the biggest challenge and extremely expensive.”

Over at TVNZ the technical guys speculate about avoiding the Pacific cable bottlenecks with their own courier workaround – someone in LA would download batches of the material onto hard drives and ship them across the Pacific.

It might sound ridiculous when you can watch YouTube videos (sourced from somewhere in the cloud) on your five megabits per second broadband but remember, we’re talking about broadcast quality files, which means anywhere from 25 megabits per second upwards.

That’s a lot of data – and we haven’t even got HD commercials yet.

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august 2010

23

TVCs

They’re stiffing our talent here?

– ie, independence – the latest commercial featuring Vincent Gallo dispenses with these clichĂŠs. “For me, the latest idea is a far more contemporary concept than the previous ideas. To have repeated the same idea construct would have made the brand predictable and therefore way less cool. For beer, image is everything. “I think continuing to use an American actor builds on the equity of the past. It would not have made any sense to have cast a New Zealand actor as this is not what Steinlager Pure drinkers have bought into.â€?

He also doubts the public think as deeply about the issue as the film industry. “They don’t think about why an American actor has been used because the brand’s always been fronted by one, and they certainly don’t care about who directed it, post-produced it or made the music. ‘Does it look cool, does it sound great, do I like it?’ is about as far as it goes.�

Mok says directors and production companies are chosen on the quality of their work. “Agencies and agency creatives build their credibility on the quality of work they produce and will pursue the very best outcome, regardless of where or who does it. Most of the time it is with New Zealand talent.

Continued from page 21

ket for work based on their track record and the value they bring to the job. “In a commercial world, our job is to give our clients the very best chance of ensuring their brands are distinctive and their advertising stands out. Choosing talent outside of New Zealand may be the best solution and one we shouldn’t be limited from considering if it’s relevant to the brand. “If the bigger issue of whether using overseas production talent should be allowed over New Zealand talent, then I’m afraid I err on wanting to have the freedom of choice.�

He points out Steinlager Pure’s “very successful strategy� has been built on overseas endorsement. “It’s an incredibly effective way of tapping into an insecure New Zealand psyche where international validation gives people enormous pride and confidence in a brand. “While the first ads featuring Harvey Keitel and Willem Dafoe waxed on about New Zealand’s spirit of ‘purity’

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â&#x20AC;&#x153;I do believe we choose to work with people we trust and respect. Perhaps one of the challenges in New Zealand is the number of creatives who originate from overseas. They will have a wider choice of production people they have worked with in the past and therefore may choose them over local talent for the reasons Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve stated. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s therefore the challenge for local talent to show they have the ability to produce the goods.â&#x20AC;?

He adds there are a number of Kiwi directors and production companies vying for, and successfully winning, productions from overseas agencies. â&#x20AC;&#x153;And often these jobs end up being shot and post-produced in New Zealand. And they win these jobs on their talent and value. â&#x20AC;&#x153;And as attractive as it is for Japanese agency people to come down and buy sheepskin Ugg boots, I suspect the real reason is because they really want to work with the director and the production is exceptionally good value for money.â&#x20AC;?

As to how successful the TVCâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s been, Mok thinks it â&#x20AC;&#x153;really stands outâ&#x20AC;? in a commercial break. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s well shot, I love the soundtrack, and I think the concept is quite stirring. (The only shots I hate are the super-wide shot of NZ â&#x20AC;&#x201C; looks shonky â&#x20AC;&#x201C; and the grinning idiot shot at the end â&#x20AC;&#x201C; seems unnecessarily forced). And I think itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s both consistent with where the brand had come from, yet has taken a bold step forward. â&#x20AC;&#x153;I went on the Pure Futures website [www.purefutures.co.nz] soon after the campaign broke. It was okay but I havenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t been back. Engagement and participation are fundamental marketing imperatives now, especially for high involvement categories like beer. â&#x20AC;&#x153;I suspect the aspirational goals expressed on the site would have been appealing to most people who could be arsed going there. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s the brand walking its talk. â&#x20AC;&#x153;I certainly donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t think the campaign or the brand has been adversely affected by the flap around using Vincent Gallo. As I said, I donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t think people think or care that much. Choosing a familiar Kiwi actor just seems wrong to me, strategically. â&#x20AC;&#x153;However, I canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t make a call on what Galloâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s value is to the ad. Heâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s certainly not known enough to bring star power so I can only imagine he was

deliberately chosen for his â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;outsiderâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; off-track value. â&#x20AC;&#x153;If you donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t know who he is, well, heâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s certainly a man with character and thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s not a bad thing for a beer brand.

If you do know him, he has a certain cool cache. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Agencies are rarely random with their choices when it comes to selecting talent. There must be a reason why the agency and client went with such noncommercial talent and only they can say whether it has been commercially successful.â&#x20AC;?

W

hile none of the key creatives would speak with Onfilm, Lion Nathan corporate affairs director Neil Hinton reluctantly agreed to comment.

He says the Pure Futures campaign has been â&#x20AC;&#x153;hugely successfulâ&#x20AC;? for Lion Nathan and argues the international imagery was â&#x20AC;&#x153;intrinsicâ&#x20AC;? to the brand and Steinlagerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s global awards.

The brief was for a European-style look, Hinton says, â&#x20AC;&#x153;and when Gallo was available, his uncompromising reputation fitted hand-in-glove with the proposition we have for Steinlager ... The feedback from people here and crew was that he was fantastic to work with. In that respect, it was fantastic for the New Zealand industry to be exposed to a guy of that quality. â&#x20AC;&#x153;It wasnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t just about his acting. If we could have found a New Zealander who could have brought as much to the table, weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d have been open to that.â&#x20AC;?

Hinton points out of the 50 or so crew, only about three werenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t Kiwis, including the director and DOP, while two of the three directors it was pitched to were New Zealanders. â&#x20AC;&#x153;We did online production here.

Most of the post was in Australia but elements were done here.â&#x20AC;?

Ultimately, Gallo gave the ad and the brand international credibility, Hinton says. â&#x20AC;&#x153;We felt â&#x20AC;&#x201C; and the Associate Minister for Immigration agreed with us â&#x20AC;&#x201C; that Galloâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s rĂŠsumĂŠ stood for itself. It is ironic that the PR created by Equityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s stance has made him significantly more widely known in New Zealand than he had been previously. â&#x20AC;&#x153;However, our intention was not to PR him widely â&#x20AC;&#x201C; we planned to have him in and out of the country quietly.â&#x20AC;?

TVCs

A spot that pops Director Darryl Ward of Curious talks about working with Iggy Pop on the award-winning “Together Incredible” Orcon broadband campaign.

In at least one instance in the distant past, you were considered the “obvious candidate” to shoot an ad – one of Coke’s 2000 “Enjoy” spots – due to your status as an honest-to-goodness Goth (as reported in AdMedia, September 2000)…

Really? I was never a Goth... no makeup or shoe-gazing for me, but I did wear a coat and have very long hair at school.

I often shoot my own work and I also like to work with the best people in the industry, but I do miss just being a DOP where it’s all care and no responsibility!

Huh – guess that claim was an example of Lockie McPherson being “creative” then… What do you think recommended you for the “Together Incredible” Orcon broadband campaign featuring Iggy Pop – presumably your experience as a DOP on 50-plus music clips wouldn’t have hurt?

Maybe. Special (the agency that commissioned the spot) and Curious make for a good forward-thinking creative fit… And Curious gets a lot of scripts that call for an innovative approach.

What was most enjoyable about the process of shooting “Together Incredible”?

It was fun watching Iggy tick over and still work intuitively, despite all the technology and the unconventional approach being taken to re-recording the track (over the internet).

He was right there in the moment as a mentor to the players and also as an artist with a vested interest in protecting his own property. We had some laughs, but we also kept it real as there was a lot to do!

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august 2010

So what do you see as your strengths?

Dunno. I like cooking. Good with a chainsaw.

www.onfilm.co.nz

Iggy was genuinely very enthusiastic about the project – he came to the first meeting with lots of notes and questions. There was a lot of explaining to do and I had prepared some cartoons of how we might set it all up. Once Iggy realised we weren’t going to impede his working process and were being realistic, we just set about doing the work.

There was a moment later in the day where we booted everyone out of the studio and just got down to work…

I am a big Stooges fan and also a fan of the recording process, but it’s always hard meeting people in the context of advertising. There are certain expectations to deal with.

What was most challenging about the process – in a technical as well as a creative sense?

On paper it was a fairly straightforward technical exercise, but the things that

were out of my control presented the greatest challenges.

Where were you actually situated for the shoot?

We went to Miami where Iggy resides.

Were you able to direct Mr Pop’s performance to any great degree or was it more a matter of hanging on for dear life?

I didn’t want any directorial presence felt, and I didn’t want Iggy to feel like I had a list of stuff I needed him to do.

But I did have some ideas for moments that might occur since I have a pretty good understanding of how the recording process works. I just looked for the opportunities to create those moments and then directed Iggy to them.

What about the nine Kiwis – the agency material says that Mr Pop selected the

TVCs

Pop’s stars: Iggy Pop and virtual band record The Passenger for the Orcon spot directed by Darryl Ward.

nine himself, but presumably you had some input too?

Everyone involved in the process had an opinion and their favourites, but Iggy had the final say as to who made the cut.

How much directing of them was it possible to do remotely?

We put together three-person crews comprised of a DOP, a sound engineer and an Orcon tech standing by to travel to the musicians’ locations around the country. I spoke to each of the musicians in NZ the night before the shoot just to let them know how the session might pan out and also understand their personalities a little better.

Iggy walked into the studio at 2pm EST just as everyone was coming online in NZ early in the morning. I more or less directed (and ADed) the shoot in NZ via the net from Miami, letting

everyone know what we were doing to keep it inclusive, and Iggy directed the ‘recording session’ just like he normally would… We just ploughed into it and the technology fell away once we got our groove on.

We had Iggy from 2pm till 11pm. At 10pm, Iggy was like, “I think we got it, I’m gonna split – you know what to do.”

Did you have much, if any input into the edit of the spot/s? (My understanding – quite probably erroneous – is that directors often don’t tend to get that much of a look in once the TVC is in post)?

In America the agency cut the job by themselves, but here the director is closely involved on the edit. So I came back to NZ, listened to everything that we had, and arranged and mixed the track at Roundhead studios with engineers Neil Baldock and Jordan Stone.

We took a few minor liberties but

the overall integrity of the track was left intact. Iggy then approved that mix.

Both “Together Incredible” and the “Photochains” Canon EOS spot you directed won Grand Prix Lions at the recent Cannes Lions Advertising Festival.

What was that like (one hopes you were present to bask in the resulting adulatory glow) and what if any effect can one expect these wins to have on your career?

I arrived in Cannes a couple of days after the awards were given. As a film company we rarely attend the official ceremony and all the events associated with it – it costs too much. So all the business is basically done in the bars and at the parties…

Not sure about effect on career as yet!

I’m told that you’re a really interesting person to speak to about how the new media/digital landscape has

affected your process…

No, while I roll with the punches, I love most things analogue. I’m still very happy for you to show me whatever new digital gadget you got, though.

By what long and winding road did you become a commercials director in the first place (or was it more of a highspeed autobahn)?

I have worked as a photographer since I was 17, a cinematographer since my mid20s, and I started directing commercials when I was 30.

What attributes do you think it’s essential for a commercials director to have?

Patience… and a good head of hair seems to make a difference.

• See the award-winning “Together Incredible” and “Photochains” spots at www.curiousfilm.com

When it comes to music in advertising, we know the score.

If you’re a creative, you want a great soundtrack that will get you to Cannes.

If you’re a producer you’re the only one that understands copyright.

And if you’re the account director, well, you don’t really care what the music sounds like, as long as the client’s happy.

So why not give APRA|AMCOS a call. We represent virtually every music publisher in Australasia and we charge the lowest commission in NZ. What’s more, we can let you know ballpark rates for commercial music within 48 hours.

We are also the only organisation where you can obtain licences for cost-effective quality production music to be used in advertising, film and TV production etc… (Now that’s service.)

Call APRA|AMCOS toll free on 0800 692 772 or email Damian: dvaughan@apra.com.au or Amy: abodsworth@apra.com.au www.apra-amcos.co.nz

www.onfilm.co.nz

august 2010

27

TVCs

Sound observations Digipost’s Clive Broughton and Kylie Green talk TVCs.

Post party pose: Clive Broughton and Kylie Green at the 2010 WIFT Awards in early August.

D

igipost is a post house that television commercials built back in 1990, and these days – according to lead sound designer Clive Broughton and audio producer Kylie Green – TVCs still make up a good chunk of the business’ throughput. The lion’s share are destined for the small (or not-sosmall) screen in your living room and about 20% for the radio, while a smaller but increasing percentage are playing out on your desktop.

However, over the past few years there has been a big swing toward longform programmes and feature work.

A major reason for this change in the source of the company’s revenue was identified by Digipost managing director Garry Little in Onfilm’s May issue: “A lot of that [TVC] work has left the country, residing in Australia or further offshore as evidenced by the number of advertising agencies there are now compared to 20 or 30 years ago,” he noted. “There’s just not the [TVC] production that used to happen in New Zealand.”

In response to this, Digipost decided to pursue more long-form

work, building on the reputation it had already established thanks to its contributions to such US TV series as Hercules, Xena: Warrior Princess, Legend of the Seeker, and Power Rangers. Securing US series Spartacus – Blood & Sand is an early indication of the success of this strategy.

Now, notes Broughton, the turnover from this long-form work helps the company to invest in the equipment its TVC clients demand, something of a reversal of its previous business model.

While Digipost sees the talent it has under its roof as its key selling point, providing access to that high-end gear is an increasingly important competitive advantage when some of the local competition for TVC post is coming from the agencies themselves.

“For example, DraftFCB handles a lot of picture work for clients inhouse,” says Broughton. “Then they send it to us as Quicktime files to add the sound.”

And there are several other large agencies that not only handle post work on pictures in-house, but also have their own sound facilities.

Another emerging trend is that a few production companies are beginning to invest in small-scale desk-top equipment to keep costs down A good thing, then, that Digipost’s sound recording room qualified for Dolby certification in 2008; two years on, the only other post houses in New Zealand that have that sought-after seal of approval – which means they’re able to convert TVCs to cinema advertisements – are Park Road Post Production and Inside Track.

A big reason for the scarcity of Dolby approved facilities is the major costs involved in their construction – floating concrete floors don’t come cheap.

The Dolby tick allowed Digipost to do both pictures and sound on a recent, innovative DraftFCB spot for the Mini Soho #11. Devised by creatives Leisa Wall, Jane Jamieson and James Mok, it was a 3D cinema ad (an Australasian first) that played before some of the latest 3D movies (see http://soho.mini.co.nz for more about the campaign).

Jimmy Corden did the 3D Flame work, while Broughton and Adam Iles did the sound, a task Broughton clearly relished: “Being in 3D, that was great fun,” he grins, “because it meant we could bring a whole other dimension into play for the atmospheric sound mix.”

To handle the huge interest and demand for 3D Stereoscopic, the company has upgraded its audio, Flame, digital grading, and theatre facilities.

Another way in which Digipost is responding to the leaner pickings provided by the local TVC market is to bring commercial work back to New Zealand from abroad, with Asia an increasingly important market for the company, thanks to general manager Stephen Douglas’ regular and effective business building trips to the region.

“We’ve been doing picture work for overseas clients for a while, and we’re just starting to get into doing audio work now,” says Green.

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A recent example of an overseassourced commercial for which Digipost did both sound and vision post was a spot for Mobil – clearly something of a united nations effort, it came from an agency in Shanghai, was shot in China, and directed by a Frenchman.

Music composition was done by Digicake’s Andrew McDowell, who – along with Woodcut Productions – the Digipost audio team works closely with.

(Don’t look for this TVC on a screen near you anytime soon though – it doesn’t air until February.)

Closer to home, the post shop worked on Cadbury’s ‘Freida’ commercial, which features a tap-dancing cow and was the brainchild of creatives Joe Hawkins, Dave Brady and Toby Talbot from DDB NZ. While LA-based Psyop provided the animated bovine, Digipost finished the pictures and did the sound mix. In order to aid the ad’s authenticity (which is clearly what you’re looking for when making an ad featuring a – ahem – hoofing Friesian), Green got hold of some actual cows’ legs from a local freezing works (“They were gross,” she reports).

And the sound of those happily tapping hooves? Provided by heavily pregnant foley artist Narelle Ahrens, naturally.

While the much smaller relation to TVCs in terms of Digipost’s commercial work, “radio is fun because you’re not a slave to the pictures”, says Broughton, while web-based ads provide more of an opportunity to be “creative and wild”, thanks to not being required to go through the Commercials Approval Bureau.

One thing that Broughton notes about ads made for the web is that there’s often a lot of ‘fixing in post’ required for the sound.

“Obviously a lot of it’s got to do with them being shot on budget restricted technology,” he says. “The picture quality you get from these is fine for the internet but it’s not uncommon to have to completely rebuild the sound.”

Cautiously optimistic Bruce Everett, general manager of vfx and animation studio Oktobor, provides his p.o.v. on the state of the TVC market.

How much of your business does the TVC market represent, and how resilient are you finding it currently?

The TVC market, both locally and internationally, is a big part of our business.

Locally, the global financial crisis had a delayed impact on post for advertising and hit home about six months after some other industries were already feeling the pinch. Similarly, it feels delayed coming out of recession, with clients and other players in the industry now slowly starting to pick up again.

Internationally the trend is definitely up.

How do you think the TVC market is going to shape up for the remainder of the year?

The main issues for the remainder of the year are quality and budgets. At Oktobor we are strong believers in producing work of the highest possible quality. As budgets get squeezed this becomes a tougher challenge but one we are conquering through innovative improvements to workflow. We will continue to make sure that our creative offering is compelling so clients feel they are getting the best product by working with us. As a result we are cautiously optimistic about the upwards trend in the TVC market.

How much of your advertising work is now for new media platforms as opposed to broadcast television?

Almost every one of the commercials we do for traditional platforms has some component for new media platforms. Our expertise in-house means we are able to not only service new media but also deliver creative solutions around it in a way that creates brand continuity.

What’s your view of the future of television as an effective advertising platform in the medium-to-long term?

Television still has a very strong part

to play in advertising. The difference today is that TV advertising is just one of many platforms for a campaign so its emphasis has changed. New media has risen in use but we believe that the success of a campaign is still based on what is most effective for it and not the platforms themselves.

What can you tell us about new developments in advertising technologies and the opportunities they’re presenting the industry with now, and the kinds of developments and attendant opportunities you anticipate in the not-too-distant future?

We see new media technology as the area of growth for our clients. In this area we have developed custom tools that benefit our clients’ campaign needs. We also keep a close eye on what is happening in the market. This is a good time for learning.

Congratulations on the advent of Oktobor Animation – it’s a great coup.

While obviously the studio’s primary focus initially will be to service the Nickelodeon contract and focus on long-form animation, there’ll presumably be synergies with Oktobor’s TVC and other business arms?

Absolutely. Oktobor Animation benefits significantly from the technical infrastructure and shared costs of being part of the Oktobor AAV Group. These benefits are then, in turn, passed on to our clients.

It has been a long and worthwhile process bringing Oktobor Animation to life. I must say the Post, Digital and Visual Effects (PDV) rebate has been a key economic driver in helping us bring this business into the Auckland area. We have received invaluable assistance from the Ministry of Economic Development, as well as input from New Zealand Film Commission and Film New Zealand in order to make this business opportunity viable.

Getting music rights right Damian Vaughan of APRA|AMCOS provides some advice on getting clearances for the use of songs in TVCs.

W

hen synching music into a television commercial (or any audio-visual production, for that matter), there are two clearances required for each song: one is for the songwriters (sometimes called the ‘musical work’) and the other is for the sound recording (sometimes called ‘the master’).

The sound recording will be controlled by a record company and, if you intend to use existing sound recordings (ie, commercially released music), you will need to obtain permission from the sound recording owner directly.

APRA|AMCOS can assist in determining the appropriate record company and put you in touch with the right people.

If you are not using an existing sound recording you will not need sound recording clearance, but will still require the musical work cleared. This is true even if: • you make an arrangement of the work; or • make your own recording of the work.

In the context of musical works reproduced in TVCs and other audio-visual productions, APRA|AMCOS represents two types of music – commercially released (‘published’) music and ‘production’ music. Different clearance processes apply to each.

(1) To use published music in an advertisement you need to obtain permission from the copyright owner(s) in the musical work. This is usually the songwriter(s), although in most

instances a songwriter will assign their rights to a music publisher, who will be able to grant permission. Publishers will normally ask you for specific information about how you plan to use the music in the TVC and APRA|AMCOS can liaise with the publishers on your behalf to provide estimates for the use requested.

(2) In terms of using production music in a TVC, APRA|AMCOS represents both musical work and sound recording and publishes set rates for advertising in our annual rate card on a per 30-secondunit basis. This is a cost-effective and time-efficient way of incorporating quality music into advertising if time and budgets are limiting factors.

Other important factors to note: • In most cases the publishers will quote on a “Most Favoured Nation” basis, which means that if at any time you pay the record company a higher fee, you must pay the music publishers equally for the publishing rights, or vice versa.

• A copyright owner is not obliged to grant a licence and it may be that it is not available for moral or contractual reasons.

• APRA|AMCOS is a not-for-profit organisation representing NZ, Australian and Pacific Island songwriters and publishers and through its international affiliates the world’s songwriters and publishers.

APRA|AMCOS can in many cases issue licences for the use of musical works in advertisements.

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PRODUCTION LISTINGS

How to get your production listed Because listing information is voluntarily supplied by the production companies involved, these pages are indicative of production activity rather than being an exhaustive record.

• See www.onfilm.co.nz or contact crewlists@onfilm.co.nz for everything you need to know about getting your production listing in Onfilm, including deadlines, submitting new entries and updates, and abbreviations.

• Please also note that, when there is not enough room in the magazine, excess listings that have previously run in the same category will be published on www.onfilm.co.nz. The productions listed on the website this

FILM

month are: 50 Years Of Television, Ako, Autaia, Be Careful..., Beautiful Collision, Blue Mermaid, Boil Up, Box Seat Preview, Double Happy, First Call, Girl Meets Boy, Go Girls 3, Hip Hop Central, Holy Roller, Homai Te Pakipaki, Hot Rob, Ice, Inbetween, Jake, Life Force, Matariki, Meathead, Megastructures: Dubai Racecourse, Paradise Café 2, Poles Apart, Proposal, Red Alert, Russian Snark, Scu – Serious Crash Unit, Secrets Of The Ghost Army, Strike Force, The Almighty Johnsons, The Court Report, The Detectives, The Erin Simpson Show, The Fall Guys, The Flat, The Insatiable Moon, Unclaimed Luggage, Young Prey.

BACK & BEYOND

I SURVIVED 3

8mins prod co 3DLive prod Ronel Schodt holographic DP Karl Schodt ed/compositor Wayne Johnstone

6x60min HD doco prod co NHNZ for A&E TV Networks exec prod Judith Curran series prod Janice Finn prod mgr Robyn Pearson rsrch Kelly Meade, Amy Kagelmacher, Erin Browne field dir Chris Kugelman DP Alex Hubert cam asst Supriya Vasanth pst dir Craig Gaudion, Kelly Meade, ed Cameron Crawford, Marilyn Copland vid post prod Stu Moffatt, Frank Lodge snd pst prod TBC

SHANTYTOWN HOLOGRAM

BEYOND THE DARKLANDS 3

16x60min HD doco prod co NHNZ (03 479 9799) for A&E TV Networks exec in charge of prod Michael Stedman series prod Alan Hall prod mgr Dayle Spavins rsrch Marina De Lima, Alissa Collins Latensa, Bridget Baylin, Stephanie Antosca, Jacqui Morice Crawford, Erin Browne field dir Sally Howell DP Kris Denton prod coord Dwayne Fowler post dir Bill Morris, Jacqui Morice Crawford, Mark Orton eds Christopher Tegg, Owen Ferrier-Kerr, Geoff Conway 2nd cam op Dunedin, Stephen Downes vid post prod Stu Moffatt, Frank Lodge snd post prod Stacey Hertnon, Errol Samuelson, Mervyn Aitchison

PRE PRODUCTION FASHION WEEK HOLOGRAMS

POST PRODUCTION

6x60mins prod co Screentime exec prod Philly de Lacey dirs Mary Durham, Peter Bell, Eugene Carnachan, John Keir prods Mary Durham, Peter Bell, John Keir prod mgr Carolyn Harper prod coord Kate Moses cam op Mark Chamberlin eds Irena Dol, Roger Yeaxlee, Margaret Kelly online ed Keith Mclean

THE RUNNER

CLINICAL YEARS

12min prod co 3DLive dir Mike Firth prod Ronel Schodt holographic DP Karl Schodt ed/compositor Wayne Johnstone scrpt Bridget Ellis Pegler

10min prod co 316 Productions prods DJ McCartney, Allan George exec prod/dir Ben O’Hanlon writer Jarret Filmer DP Allan George prod mgr Emily O’Hanlon 1AD Omar Al-sobky cast dir DJ McCartney art dir Isaiah Vaega lx assts Johnathon Huston, Mathew Harte m/ up Kerri Thomassen grip Kerem Blumberg runner Jason Daniels stunt coord Craig Dunn stunt rigger Noodles stunt dbl Adrien McGaw ed Ben Fowler compsr Peter Laussen audio Kieran Clarke vfx art Paul Jones colourists Allan George, Ben Fowler art Leslie Chih cast Patrick Morison, DJ Mcartney, Samuel Thomas, Lathan Lockwood, Isaiah Vaega, Duane Haugie, Andrew Jenkins, Allan George

Television

1x60min doco prod co PRN prod/dir Paul Trotman cam Stephen Dowwnes, Wayne Vinten snd Brian Shennan

COUNTRY CALENDAR

ANIMAL ACADEMY

30mins indigenous current affairs prod co Mäori TV prod coord Ripeka Timutimu pres Lynette Amoroa exec prod Te Anga Nathan prod Kelvin MacDonald

FIRE WARFARE

KAITIAKI 3

prod co Greenstone Pictures ho prod Andrea Lamb prod Sophie Dungate dir Reuben Pillsbury prod mgr Kylie Henderson prod asst Catriona Macky, Magdalena Laas

KETE ARONUI 8

prod co TVNZ Prod Unit prod unit mgr Tina McLaren prod Sally-Anne Kerr line up prod Erina Ellis script eds Melanie Phipps, Liz Smith dirs Jim Curry, Alan Henderson, Mark Owers dir asst Christina Dolman prod mgr Dawn Aronie prod asst Alice O’Donoghue spcl projs Marcus Hamilton res Andrew Wood, Georgia Stephens, Simon Ragoonanan, Lucy Johnston, Sally Page, Nadine Millar res asst Ana Mules advertorial prod Amber Smith advertorial prod mgr Pippa Keiller advertorial dir Rachael Hennessey advertorial prod asst Rebecca Morrison

13x30min series for and about people who are passionate about animals prod co Whitebait TV pres Sarah Ulmer, Jeremy Maguire, Geoff Mehrtens writer/res Margaret Gordon prod mgr Nikki Edwards dirs Bill de Friez, Robin Shingleton, MaryJo Tohill, Scott Hindman, Louise Leitch, Dan Henry, Alan Henderson, Margaret Gordon audio post prod Dave Cooper online ed Leanne Munro prod Veronica McCarthy exec prod Janine Morrell n/work exec Philippa Mossman

GRASS ROOTS RUGBY – TE WHUTUPAORO-A-ROHE

ANTARCTIC WHALE EXPEDITION

50min weekly provincial rugby prod co Mäori TV exec prod Eruera Morgan prod Graham Veitch Television

HD doco prod co NHNZ (www.nhnz.tv) exec prod Judith Curran dir/prod/snd op Max Quinn prod mgr Nikki Stirling

ASIA DOWN UNDER 40x29min prod co Asia Vision prod Chris Wright asso prod Glenna Casalme prod mgr Jenna Steel prod asst Anna Petchell reporters Bharat Jamnadas, Milda Emza, Kadambari Gladding rsrch Geraldine Ramirez cam ops Dave Flynn, Simon Ellis ed Jeff Avery audio post Auckland Audio

ATTITUDE - 6 40x30min disability focused magazine prog prod co Attitude Pictures (formerly RSVP Productions) prod Robyn Scott-Vincent dirs Emma Williams, Ramon TeWake, Nicola Salmond, Richard Riddiford, Megan Jones line prod Robyn Barker prod acct Jane Cotter prod assts Sue Wales-Earl music coord Kristy Munro rsrch Emma Williams, Tanya Black, Dan Buckingham, Curtis Palmer cam Greg Parker, Ben Ruffell snd Wendy Adams, Eugene Arts gfx Brandspank eds Attitude Pictures, Simon Hyland, Jai Waite, Bill Toepfer online ed Simon Hyland cam/ed trainee Levi Beamish snd TVNZ, Simon Weir reporters Curtis Palmer, Tanya Black, Dan Buckingham, Kristy Munro

HAA 30min youth prod co Mäori TV exec prod Eruera Morgan prod Wiremu Te Kiri asso prod/prod mgr Teremoana Rapley dir Kataraina White pres Amanda Jay Ashton, Nawaia Watene, Junior Paparoa rsrchr Adam Burrell stylist Rachelle Christian m/u art Kelly Isherwood sen prod mgr Sandra Richmond

HIGH COUNTRY RESCUE 8x30min factual/entertainment prod co SPP (09 839 0999) exec prods John Barnett, Tim Sanders ho fact prog Sam Blackley prod dir Derek Stuart cam snd op Tony Barnes post prod dir Brigid Reilly post sups Grant Baker, Jane Anderson offline ed Vaughan Bayer prod acct Lee-Ann Hasson legal & commercial affairs Jessica Wiseman pub Tamar Munch

I KNOW A SHEILA LIKE THAT 6x30min docos prod co Velvet Stone Media prod Lara Northcroft dirs Kirsty Armstrong, Tim Worrell, Jillian White, Chelsea Winstanley, Ramon Te Wake prod mgr Nicola Smith cam ops Richard Curtis, Mike Jonathan, Maringi Houkamau snd ops Tere Tapsell, Frank Phipps, Hedell Raerino ed Lea McLean Te Reo Mäori Ratu Tibble rsrch Eugene Carnachan

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6x60min HD doco prod co NHNZ for A&E TV Networks exec prod Judith Curran series prod Janice Finn prod mgr Robyn Pearson rsrch Kelly Meade, Amy Kagelmacher, Erin Browne field dir Chris Kugelman DP Alex Hubert cam asst Supriya Vasanth, Adam Sayre post dir Craig Gaudion, Jennifer Crone, Kelly Meade ed Cameron Crawford, Adam Baines, Marilyn Copland, Karen Jackson vid post prod Stu Moffatt, Frank Lodge snd post prod Errol Samuelson, Stacey Hertnon

26x30min rural NZ lifestyles prod co TVNZ prod unit mgr Tina McLaren prods Julian O’Brien, Frank Torley prod mgr Robyn Best dir/res/reps Jerome Cvitanovich, Tony Benny, Vivienne Jeffs, Carol Archie, Kerryanne Evans, Katherine Edmond, Dan Henry

GOOD MORNING 2010

IN PRODUCTION

I SURVIVED... BEYOND AND BACK

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INDIGENOUS INSIGHT

13x26min doco series prod co Kiwa Media prod Rhonda Kite

13x26min doco series prod co Kiwa Media prod Rhonda Kite

MARINA BAY SANDS 1x60min HD doco prod co NHNZ (www.nhnz.tv) co prod NGCI exec prod John Hyde prod Jocelyn Little dir Donovan Chan prod mgrs Suzanne Lloyd ,Janine Campbell ed Joel Tan

MEET THE LOCALS: CONSERVATION WEEK SPECIAL 1x28min family wildlife one off production prod co TVNZ Prod Unit TVNZ n/work exec Philippa Mossman exec prod Tina McLaren prod mgr/res Stewart Jones pres James Reardon

MEGASTRUCTURE: Singapore’s Vegas 1x60 HD doco prod co NHNZ (03 479 9799) co prod NGC exec prod John Hyde prod Jocelyn Little, Janine Campbell dir Donovan Chan prod mgr Suzanne Lloyd, Michelle Tan ed Joel Tan post prod Stacey Hertnon, Stu Moffatt, Frank Lodge

MEGASTRUCTURE: World’s First High Performance Building

prod/rsrch Rebecca Singh prod mgr Natalie Tozer prod coord Anahera Parata eds Tim Grocott loc snd Cameron Lenart

MOTORWAY PATROL 11 prod co Greenstone Pictures ho prod Andrea Lamb prod Tash Christie prod mgr Rebecca Plaistow prod coord Lauren Slade fund TVNZ

NATIVE AFFAIRS 60min weekly current affairs prod co Mäori TV gm Te Anga Nathan exec prod Colin McRae prod Wena Harawira prod coord Tracey Carter dirs asst Pene Bush snr reporters Annabelle Lee-Harris, Makere Edwards, Carmen Parahi reporters Marisa Balle, Iulia Leilua rsrch Kelvin McDonald pres Julian Wilcox

NEW YEAR’S EVE SPECIAL 1x90mins TV special prod co TVNZ – Avalon Resources prod unit mgr Deb Cope prod Debra Kelleher pres Jason Gunn writer Andrew Gunn dir Mark Owers prod mgr Ali Black rsrch Erina Molloy field dir Lisa Burd

NGA IWI WHAKAPONO prod co Mäori TV prod Toi Iti rsrch/pres Ruia Aperahama rsrchr Tipare Toi snr prod mgr Sandra Richmond

NGA TAONGA WHITIAHUIA 26x26min NZ Film Archive show prod co Mäori TV exec prod Carol Hirschfeld prod Michele Bristow pres Lawrence Wharerau dirs James Ratahi, Ira Heyder prod mgr Trudy Steele snr prod mgr Sandra Richmond

NGATI NRL 9 13x30min reality brdcast MTS prod co ButoBase exec prod Glenn Elliott n/wrk exec Reikura Kahi prod Julia Parnell asso prod/dir Nicki Carston prod mgr Natalie Tozer prod/te reo coord Anahera Parata comp dir Dane Giraud writer Julia Parnell cam ops Myles Desenberg, James Costello eds Harry Snell, Yan Chengye, Brian Sarfatty te reo cons Scott Morrison nar Te Arahi Maipi snd post prod Cameron Lenart

PACIFIC BEAT ST 39x23min youth series for TV3 prod co Drum Productions prods Julie Smith, Stan Wolfgramm dirs Stan Wolfgramm, Carolyn Sylvester, Mike Bhana, Sam Cowley-Lupo, Koryn Dunstan rsrch Jane Dowell cam ops Nick Winter, Faanati Mamea prod mgr Jan Stensness ed Gary Young art dept Vea Mafileo, Sheldon Edwards snd post Jason Fox pres Koryn Dunstan, Khalia Strong, Michael Koloi, Sam Cowley-Lupo

PILL POPPERS 1x60min prod co Screentime exec prod Philly Iles prod John Keir dir Rupert MacKenzie rsrch Geraldine Johns

POLICE TEN 7

1x60min doco prod co NHNZ (www.nhnz.tv) co prod NGC Int’l Channel exec prod Andrew Waterworth prod Jayashree Panjabi prod mgr Suzanne Lloyd prod coord Nikki Stirling cam Curtis Rodda China liason Lauren Wang gfx Donald Ferns, David Batson, Kei Kasai ed Nicola Smith music Alex Stoloff writer Gary Parker

36x30min prod co Screentime exec prod/prod Philly de Lacey dir Rita Atwood co prod Sarah-Luise Hornblow asso prod/rsrch Katherine Birchall prod coord Olivia Lynd gfx Marcus Brill pres Graham Bell offline ed Jim Hudson online ed Keith Mclean

MEN IN BLACK

prod co TVNZ Prod Unit TVNZ prod unit mgr Tina McLaren prod/dir Ron Pledger prod mgr Dawn Bowater pres rsrch Chris Nichol mus dir Peter Averi

3x60min docos prod co Gibson Group prod Alex Clark exec prod Gary Scott dir Dan Henry prod mgr Wayne Biggs rsrch Sarah Boddy DP David Paul snd Chris Hiles, Hammond Peek ed Paul Sutorious n/wrk exec Jude Callen n/wrk TVNZ

MINORITY VOICES 10x22min docos brdcst TVNZ prod co ButoBase exec prod Glenn Elliot n/wrk exec Jude Callen prod/dir Julia Parnell writer/dir Dane Giraud asso

PRAISE BE

SHORTLAND STREET 5x30min weekly prod co SPP exec prods John Barnett, Simon Bennett prod Steven Zanoski line prod Tim Hansen dirs Geoff Cawthorn, Wayne Tourell, Jonathan Alver, Katherine McRae, Richard Barr, Laurence Wilson script prod Paul Sonne s/liner/story ed Paul Hagan s/liners Max Currie, Kirsty McKenzie, Alistair Boroughs,

PRODUCTION LISTINGS

Caley Martin med adv Sally Geary, Sarah Nevitt script eds Lynette Crawford-Williams, Karen Curtis script eds asst Nina Vlahovic prod coord Mariya Nakova prod sec Rori Leonard script typ Casey Whelan prod acct Diane Boddy acct asst Stephanie Dahlberg loc mgr Bryce Wood 1ADs Michele Priest-Edmondson, Moe Hobbs, Flora Woods, Jimmy Scott 2ADs Sarah Murphy, Francis Koon 3AD Cat Henshall prod runner Aaron Levi dir assts Kathe Calis, Sarah Brinsdon, Laurel Urban, Rachel Blair tech prod George Platt tech mgr Malcolm C Saunders vis mix Fran Hodgson lx assts Nick Hakaraia loc DP Drew Sturge loc gaffer Drew Wright cam ops Sheree Swale, Nigel Roberts, Rayner Cook trainee cam op Nick Hayward cam asst Pepe De Hoyos Ramos snd rec Greg Moon boom ops Quin Qwilliam, Andrew Revell prod des Ana Miskell art dirs Sophie Guthrie, Ross Goffin, Andy Currie art dept mgr Sophie Elworthy stby prps Natalie Tsuchiya, Scott McDowall art dept assts Genelle Eaglen, Logan Childs gfx coord Alex Kriechbaum cost des Nicola Newman cost des asst Rebecca Jennings w/robe assts Katie Jones, Joss Henry, Gloria Samuela, Rowena Smith hair/m/up sup Tracey Nelson m/ up Rebecca Elliott, Sophie Beddoes, Toni Anne Arbon offline ed Anna Marshall-Inman asst ed/digitiser Matthew Allison online eds Steven Mountjoy, Mariano Segedin, Kevin Henderson, Adam Page, Sean Rooney snd mix Neil Newcombe snd eds Margaret Newcombe, Ora Simpson cast dirs Andrea Kelland post prod sup Sara Knight pub Rachael Keereweer pub asst Kate Jones dialogue coach Shirley Duke, Linda Cartwright comp Graham Bollard p/grphr Jae Frew caterer Rock Salt cast Michael Galvin, Amanda Billing, Alison Quigan, Faye Smythe, Robbie Magasiva, Benjamin Mitchell, Peter Mochrie, Lee Donoghue, Kimberley Crossman, Kiel McNaughton, Harry McNaughton, Sarah Thomson, Beth Allen, Sally Martin, Matt Minto, Anna Jullienne, Jacqueline Nairn

SUPER CITY 6x23min prod co Super Fumes pro Carthew Neal exec pro Carthew Neal, Madeleine Sami consult pro Paul Horan writers Madeleine Sami, Thomas Sainsbury dir Taika Waititi line pro Leanne Saunders prod coord Chelsea Francis runner Gilly Luxton casual prod Hayley Cunningham office asst Jennifer Mead stills Louise Hyatt prod acc Diane Illingworth 1AD Hamish Gough, Quentin Whitwell, Katie Tate 3AD/unit Roberto Nascimento, Patricia Phelan, Richard (Ricky) James Silvester dir asst Prue Clarke loc mgrs Martin Hale, Richard Mills cas loc Andy Brown DP Jake Bryant cas DP Rewa Harre cam op Johnny Renata cam asst Ciaran Riddell cam intern Chesney McDonald snd rec Colleen Brennan boom op Adnan Taumoepeau cas boom op Sean O’Reilly, Nikora Edwards m/up des Dianne Ensor m/up art loc Anna Dewitt, Miranda Ramen m/up asst Abigail (Abby) Poynter cos des Larissa Lofley w/robe asst Hannah-Lee Turner, Lucia Farron-Diamantis art dir Dion Boothby art dpt asst Lisa Dunn cas art asst Haley Williams, Pritika Lal, Ethan Montgonery-Williams ed Cushla Dillion ed asst Dione Chard safety Scene Safe post fac Toybox - Olin Turrall, Trinette Norton ntwrk exec Rachel Jean lawyer Matt Emery thanks South Seas Film School, Unitec & AUT for intrn Anna Cecelia Rowe, Aziz Al-Sa’afin, Bec Sproule, Brooke Jackson, Chris Stratton, Corinne Ash, Elizabeth Maddison, Enny Benzonelli, Facundo Canaves, Gemma Duncann, Genevieve Driver, Gracie Emberson, Henric Matthiesen, James Watson, Jorge Alfaro, Josh Finnigan, Kristy Wallace, Lennie Galloway, Lisa Moore, Lisa Fothergill, Lydia Stott, Nikita Wist, Philip Copley, Rosie Abel, Tammy Brenstrum, Willem Crowhurst cast Madeleine Sami, Rose McIver, Jessica Joy-Wood, Calvin Tuteao, Mick Innes, Gillian Baxter, Rachel House, Nikki Siulepa, Fiona Edgar, Yvette Parsons, Fred Bishop, Edith Poor

Harawira exec prod Lynette Amoroa asso prod Kororia Taumaunu assign ed Taiha Molyneaux dir assts Anne Abraham, Pene Bush studio dir Jason Rameka reporters Semi Holland, Rereata Makiha, Dean Nathan, Tamati Tiananga, Rewa Harriman, Mere McLean, Rahia Timutimu, Rau Kapa, Numia Ponika-Rangi, Kereama Wright, Mataia Keepa, Jasmyn Pearson, Taroi Black prod mgr Sharmaine Moke dept asst Ripeka Timutimu subtitles Eva Mahara, Tepara Koti, rsrchr/ pres Stephanie Martin, pres Piripi Taylor, Amomai Pihama

son studio dir Ariki Spooner ed Lisa Holder writer/pres Toi Kai Rakau Iti writer/field dir Tipare Iti compile dir/ writer Paul Casserly ed William Roberts crew Simon Ellis, John McNicholas prod coord Tamara Azizian snr prod mgr Sandra Richmond

TE KAUTA 2

13x30min NZ lifestyles prod co TVNZ Prod Unit exec prod Bernard Macleod Fremantle Media prod Dana Youngman co prod/pres Annabel Langbein asso prod/rsrch Sue Donald line prod Sue Killian des Nicola Marshall builder Dean Taylor lx des Lightcraft dirs Michelle Bracey, Carolyn Sylvester, Emily Qereqeretabua cam ops Graeme Patrick, Scotty Lee, Stephen Moody snd ops John Patrick, Graham Wallace, John Prinsloo asst to Annabel Langbein Belinda Storey food mgr Emerald Gilmour

15x52min Inter-iwi debate series prod co Mäori TV exec prod Eruera Morgan dir/prod Te Rangitawaea Reedy snr prod mgr Sandra Richmond prod mgr Leichelle Tanoa prod coord Breviss Wolfgramm res Anahera Vercoe-Rangi

TE PAE HIHIRI 30x26min studio panel sports show exec prod Eruera Morgan prod Te Arahi Maipi dir Mahanga Pihama prod mgr Kym Morgan prod ass Kahukore Bell snr prod mgr Sandra Richmond

TE TEPU 30min weekly Mäori language current affairs prod co Mäori TV exec prod Te Anga Nathan studio dir Jason Rameka prod/pres Waihoroi Shortlanmd prod co Ripeka Timutimu

THE MISSING 2 6x60min prod co Screentime exec prod Philly de Lacey prod Carolyn Harper dirs Mary Durham, Peter Bell, Tom Reilly, Ross Peebles, Rupert MacKenzie prod mgr Kate Moses resrchrs Scott Bainbridge, Dianne Lindsay, Eugene Carnachan eds Margaret Kelly, Roger Yeaxlee, Lisa Hough, online ed Keith McLean

TO MAKE A DOCTOR 1x60min doco prod co PRN films prods/dir Paul Trotman cam Stephen Downes snd Brian Shennan, Ian Masterton, Andrew McMurdo

TOI WHAKAARI exec prod Matai Smith prod Jade Robson dir Jason Remaka snr prod mgr Sandra Richmond

TRIBAL HUNT 4x60min HD doco prod co NHNZ (03 479 9799) co prod NGCI exec prod John Hyde series prod Nicola Hammond cam Giles Pike rsrchr Marcus Turner, Peter Holmes prod mgr Kavita Chopra host Hayden Turner

VENOM LAB 3x60min HD doco prod co NHNZ (www.nhnz.tv) co prod NG Wild exec prod John Hyde sup prod Leo Faber prod asso Gavin Walburgh field dir Max Quinn rsrch Adam Barnett prod mgr Suzanne Lloyd prod coord Nikki Stirling cam Bo Dreisig undrwtr cam asst Chris Sammut dive eng Jaap Barendrecht pres Jamie Seymour undrwtr cam Richard Fitzpatrick

VOLUNTEER POWER prod co TVNZ Prod Unit prod unit mgr Tina McLaren prod Julia Leonard prod mgr/res Jan-Marie Nicolai pres Jim Mora pres Julia Bloore

WAIRUA 13x26min Spiritual ideals show prod co Mäori TV exec prod Carol Hirschfeld prod/dir Ngatapa Black pres Mere Black prod coord Mark Ihaia prod mgr Trudy Steele snr prod mgr Sandra Richmond

WHAT NOW

TAO

POST PRODUCTION ANNABEL LANGBEIN – FREE RANGE COOK

BLOODLINES 1x90mins prod co Screentime exec prod Philly de Lacey prod John Keir dir Peter Burger line prod Bridget Bourke prod coord Jo Finlay DP Simon Riera snd Mike Hopkins ed Paul Maxwell cast Mark Mitchinson, Nathalie Boltt, Craig Hall, Will Hall

GIRL MEETS BOY Feature prod co SPP (09 839 0999) prods John Barnett, Paul Davis dir Roseanne Liang writers Roseanne Liang, Angeline Loo line prod Janet McIver head acct Michelle Daley acct Ruben Ferguson post prod Images and Sound ed Eric de Beus asst ed Hamid Slaimankel pub Tamar Münch cast Michelle Ang, Matt Whelan, Kenneth Tsang, Pei Pei Cheng, Simon London, Katlyn Wong, Celeste Wong, Janet Tan, Josh Thomson, Todd Emerson, Gareth Yuan, Mike Ginn, Johnny Barker

MARAE DIY 7 7x30mins prod co Screentime exec prods Philly de Lacey, John Keir prod Lornelle Henry dirs Greg Mayor, Rahera Herewini, Hori Aihene, Whetu Fala, Matt Sumich prod mgr Richard Mills prod coord Anna vonTunzelmann, Neil James eds Rahera Herewini, Tara Durrant presntrs Te Ori Paki, David Clayton-Greene, Monty Ritai, Aroha Hathaway

OUTRAGEOUS FORTUNE 18x60min drama/comedy prod co SPP (09 839 0999) exec prods Simon Bennett, John Barnett, James Griffin, Rachel Lang, Chris Bailey prod John Laing co prod Carmen J Leonard co creators James Griffin, Rachel Lang writers James Griffin, Rachel Lang, Tim Balme, Maxine Fleming, Fiona Samuel, Jan Prettejohns script ed Rachel Lang prod acct Lee-Ann Hasson post prod sup Grant Baker snd post sup Steve Finnigan eds Allanah Milne, Bryan Shaw comp Joel Haines pub Tamar Münch pub asst Lucy Ewen cast Robyn Malcolm, Antony Starr, Siobhan Marshall, Antonia Prebble, Kirk Torrance, Frank Whitten, Tammy Davis, Nicole Whippy, Craig Hall, Shane Cortese

PHUNK NATION 13x30min reality show brdcst Mäori TV prod co Omnicron Productions exec prod Ondrej Havas dir Lisa Morrison prod mgr Natalie Frigault eds Chris Davis, Eddie Burrow

RIVERS WITH CRAIG POTTON 5x60mins factual/entertainment prod co SPP (09 839 0999) exec prod John Barnett hof factual prog Sam Blackley prod mgr Juliet Condon rsrch Gemma Murcott dirs Stephen McQuillan, Leon Sefton, Mitchell Hawkes DPs Bevan Crothers, Drew Sturge snd ops Matt Heine, Jeremy Lawry prod assts Hayley Thom, Stephanie Blake pres Craig Potton post prod dir Peter Allison eds Josie Haines, Ken Sparks

15x52mins Inter-iwi debate series prod co Mäori TV exec prod Eruera Morgan dir/prod Te Rangitawaea rsrchr Hineani Melbourne prod mngr Trudy Steele Reedy prod coord/res Aroha Rawson snr prod mngr Sandra Richmond

120min weekly live kids show pres Charlie Panapa, Tumehe Rongonui eds Michelle Bradford, Leanne Munro, Geoff Reid audio post Whitebait Facilities, Vahid Qualls props Warren Best, Simon Wells w/ robe Wilma Van Hellemond stylist Lee Hogsden field coord Catie Windelburn gfx des Harold Kho, Yosef Selim, Sam Prebble rsrch Rebecca Browning writer Andrew Gunn dirs asst Ella Cook prod asst Joshua Pollard post prod dir Bronwyn Williams prod mgr Sharyn Mattison dirs Kerry Du Pont, Bronwyn Williams creative prod Jason Gunn asso prod Josh Wolfe prod Reuben Davidson exec prod Janine Morrell-Gunn n/ work exec Kathryn Graham

TE KAEA

WILLIE JACKSON’S NEWSBITES

TAKU RAKAU E

30min weekday, 20min weekend Mäori language news prod co Mäori TV gm Te Anga Nathan hod Wena

prod co Mäori TV net exec Carol Hirschfeld ed prod Finlay MacDonald prod Erina Tamepo pres Willie Jack-

12min short 35mm prod co StanStrong Ltd prod Merata Mita dir/writer Kararaina Rangihau prod mgr

30x26min Mäori language, youth careers show prod co Mäori TV exec prod Carol Hirschfeld prod Pirihira Holling pres Manawa Wright dir Peter Lee prod asst Riria Morgan Nutric Noella Taiapa prod mngr Trudy Steele snr prod mngr Sandra Richmond

TAUTOHETOHE

SAVING GRACE 1x90min doco prod co Ora Digital, StanStrong prods Merata Mita, Cliff Curtis, Chelsea Winstanley dir Merata Mita pres Cliff Curtis prod mgr Desray Armstrong prod asst Tweddie Waititi rsrch Merata Mita te reo Mäori Hone Kaa fund Te Māngai Pāho, NZOA, Maori TV brdcst Mäori TV

Chelsea Winstanley prod asst Shannon Biddle prod runners Dena Kennedy, Dave Anderson 1AD Pita Turei 2AD Kath Akuhata Brown prod des Okiwi Logan Shipgood construct Bonnie Taiatini, Haruru Ripia props Jimmy Kouratorus DP Grant McKinnon asst DP Mike Johnathan gaffer Mike Toki b/boy Logan Phillips grip Jim Rowe grip asst Andy Troughton loc mgr Steve Frires m/up artist Jasmine Amohau snd rec Aaron Davis add snd Ethan Davis cont Kath Thomas f/puller Kent Belcher c/loader Meg Perrot cam asst Amber Smith stills Cinzia Jonathan cam equip METRO film lx equip Volcano Lighting unit/safety Tweedie Waititi catering Te Kohanga Reo o Waikaremoana ed Dena Curtis snd des/ foley artist Dick Reade music Justin Kereama karearea footage Hikoi NZ film stock Fuji film processing Film Lab Ltd telecine transfer Digi Post sound des studio Reade Audio curious film prod Matt Noonan flame op Nigel Mortimer title des Richard Shaw subtitles Luke Haigh cast Menu Ripia, Te Ratauhina Tumarae, Te Urewera Tekurapa, Kiripounamu Tekurapa, Kirikatokia Rangihau, Riria Rangihau, Whakarito Rangihau, Parehuia Eparaima, Pato Ripia, Raymond Tipu, Tarewa Rota, Charlie Lambert, Ivan Turipa

TANGAROA WITH PIO 26x26min fishing/lifestyle b/caster Mäori TV prod co AKA Productions 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 music Reo Dunn, Woodcut 2∏ D, Pop Design prod acct Lee Ann Hasson prod mngr Richard Morrell prod asst Lettica Shelford n/wrk execs Reikura Kahi

XENO 1x60min doco prod co PRN prods/dirs Malcolm Hall, Paul Trotman cam Stephen Dowwnes, Michael McLeod ed Josie Haines

IN RELEASE THIS IS NOT MY LIFE 13x60min drama prod co GRST exec prods Gavin Strawhan, Rachel Lang, Steven O’Meagher, Tim White prod Tim Sanders asso prod Polly Fryer line prod Liz DiFiore dirs Robert Sarkies, Peter Salmon writers Gavin Strawhan, Rachel Lang, Peter Cox prod coord Lisa Findlay asst prod coord Roisin Scully prod secs Sarah-Jane Vercoe, Zohra Trinder prod asst Sarah Banasiak prod runners Kimberly Hogan, Andy Brown acct Fa Suluvave acct assts Rachel Campbell, Stephanie Robinson post prod acct Kathy Corbett 1ADs Sarah Miln, Mark Harlen 2ADs Fiona Macmillan, Kate Hargreaves 3AD Esther Clewlow prod/ cost des Tracey Collins art dept coord Kirsty Van de Greer art dirs Davin Voot, Patrick Walker set drssr/ byr Anita Dempsey set dec Milton Candish art dept runner Tom Willis painter Marcus Winton prp/mkr Rhys Owen stby prp Sinclair Lonsdale art assts Ollie Southwall, Owen Ashton med adv Monnina Doran gfx des Lisa Rushworth DPs Andy Commis, Tom Burstyn cam op Grant Adams 1ACs Kirsten Green, Jason Cooper-White, Peter Cunningham, Johnny Yarell data wrang Kent Belcher 2AC Dusty Millar cast Neill Rea cast asst Bryan Coll chaprns Lana Davies, Sandy Cook caterers Luscious Catering constr Two Construct asst cost des Sian Evans cost byr Emma Aubin asst cost byr Lily Janes cost stby Kate Laver, Pip O’Brien asst cost stby Kat Fatu, Amanda Jelicich-Kane cost runner Anna Boyd cost assts Amber Rhodes, Miranda Penny mach Janine Harvey, Rosemary Gough pttrn cttr Marion Olsen key grip Kevin Donovan b/boy grips Jim Rowe, Chris Rawiri gaffer Grant McKinnon gaffer b/boy Brian Laird lx asst Jodie Sutherland, Russell Lloyd gene op Steve Joyce loc Robin Murphy loc asst Rick Waite, Kinder Te Moana loc PA Hendrick Gavelle, Tafela Matefo unit mgr Paul Fleming unit asst Dominic Stones, Mike Turner swng drvr coord Corey Blackgrove m/up/hair sup Vanessa Hurley key hair/m/up Stefan Knight hair/m/up Hannah Wilson eds Paul Maxwell, Jochen Fitzherbert ed asst Nicki Dreyer post prod Images & Sound post prod sup Grant Baker post prod coord Gwen McDonnell safety sups Willy Heatly, Danny Tenheuval, Nick Fryer, Shane Armitage, Damian Molloy, Jeff Hales script sups Kath Thomas, Jackie Sullivan snd rec Dave Hurley boom op Sam Spicer snd asst Alice Davies sfx coord Jason Durey sfx tech Mike Cahill still p/grphers Kirsty Griffin, Matt Klitscher stnts coord Paul Shapcott vfx Albedo vfx sup Peter McCully vfx coord Maile Daugherty snr compositer Dan Packer insrt coord Stephanie Robinson insrt DP Cristobal Lobos cmpsr Don McGlashan

INSTANT SHELTERS

Website: www.shedline.co.nz )QEMP MRJS$WLIHPMRI GS R^ Freephone: 0800 144 155 www.onfilm.co.nz

august 2010

31

SONY UNVEILS NEXT GENERATION

HDCAM-SR TECHNOLOGIES HDCAM-SR

UNVEILS

NEXT GENERATION

SRW9000PL

SONY

Sony has unveiled a new affordable Super 35mm HDCAM SR Camcorder as part of the CineAlta line of high-end acquisition systems. The SRW-9000PL camcorder expands the capabilities of Sony’s previously announced SRW-9000, adding a 35mm imager and PL mount, increasing its flexibility and offering endless image creation possibilities. Sony is also announcing a new version of its popular SRW recorders with the SRW-5800/2 recorder deck.

“HDCAM-SR is part of an ongoing evolution of image capture and recording and the products and solutions from this series have raised the bar on video production technologies. The new SRW-9000PL is ideal even for the most demanding of visual productions in digital cinema, commercial programs, TV dramas, and documentaries. Sony’s launch of the SRW-5800/2 recorder lays the groundwork for the future of SR codec file-based post production workflow which has been well received as the industry standard,” said David Colthorpe, Sales and Marketing Support Manager, Business Solutions Division, Sony ANZ (Australia and New Zealand). david.colthorpe@ap.sony.com

sonybusiness.co.nz/hdcamsr

SRW-5800/2

product profile

T

he SRW-9000PL combines the superb imaging quality of the F35 digital motion picture camera and the industry standard HDCAM-SR recording technology within a compact form factor, making it an ideal companion to the F35 for hand-held and steadycam work.

The SRW-9000PL features a full RGB Super 35mm CCD imager that offers wide colour gamut, wide dynamic range (over 12 T-stops), superb signal-to-noise level performance, variable speed (SR Motion) with speed ramp capability and S-Log and HyperGamma capability. The SRW-9000PL is capable of 4:2:2 10-bit recording at 1080/23.98PsF, 24PsF, 25PsF, 29.97PsF, 50i, 59.94i as standard. Variable speed (including speed ramp) recording at 1080 1Fps to 50Fps at either RGB 10bit or 4:2:2 10bit recording is achieved by adding option cards.

In addition to the camera details, Sony has also announced the SRW-5800/2 HDCAM-SR VTR which provides new file-based operation and enhanced workflow efficiency to high-end production.

The SRW-5800/2 recorder supports MXF file output capability with MPEG4 Simple Studio Profile (SStP) which is the native compression scheme of HDCAM-SR. The MXF SStP file can be derived from both HDCAM-SR and HDCAM tapes. Moreover, the new “SR-Lite” 220 Mbps data rate is supported for more efficient file operation.

It also supports 2K recording and playback at both 2048x1080 and 2048x1556 modes, 2X speed ingest and recording, as well as 3D stereoscopic recording for RGB 4:4:4 material, and 96KHz audio.