SEPTEMBER 2018
Vol 250
Email: finnzed@xtra.co.nz
New Face at PLS We are in the Auckland offices of PLS along with Chris McKenzie. Ed: Chris, we have got a couple of things to talk about today and I guess the first one is, of course, that you need people in your business to help customers with any problems and you have just recently taken on a new person in the form of …? Chris: Indeed. We’ve taken on Antonia Richardson whom you may have met when she was working for Philips Selecon for the last year or so, but she’s also well-known and notorious around the theatre and production industry in Auckland and New Zealand generally. She’s been around for a long time and has a great track record in that side of the business. Ed: Well Antonia, what are you going to bring to the business that perhaps other candidates would not?
Antonia: Put me on the spot! People skills and a wealth of knowledge and experience that I can hopefully adapt to the film and TV side of things. Ed: Because film and television is different isn’t it – and you understand that it is different? Antonia: I definitely do. It is a very fast evolving industry in terms of technology at the moment. My current challenge is getting my head around all the film and video LED fixtures available. Also getting a grasp on where the industry’s heading – and staying one step ahead! Ed: Any specialty areas that you might bring to PLS? Antonia: Years of experience on the floor working in venues, actually doing the craft itself and then moving over into more of a desk job – so seeing it from both sides of the coin, from the customer right through to the supplier. Ed: So Antonia is a valuable addition to the team Chris? Chris: Yes absolutely. We’ve always prided ourselves on having people out of the industry who understand that, at 10 o’clock at night, “no, that’s not going to happen” isn’t an answer. The show must go on, the cameras have to roll, so we have to be able to get stuff that people need in a hurry and/or in a timely fashion. Ed: And you have to take a holiday sometimes? Chris: Yeah I’ve done that for this year though and here’s the proof. Ed: Chris, the other matter is your Web Store which is getting bigger and better and you’ve got lots of specials for us at the moment? Chris: Absolutely. We decided to put a Web Store up 3 months ago and it’s always “a work in progress”. We try and put 1 or 2 new things on every day so keep checking. It’s starting to pay dividends for us and, for your customers and mine Grant, it means that they can stay at home in This photo is 1km into a mountain in Norway, it is a full 4 their underwear and order way roundabout cut into the rock. Please note the very what they want. They don’t effective up-lighting in blue of the centre of the roof dome. And this is in a country that builds opera houses on the have to get dressed and waterfront. Go figure! come into town. P06 Swami Hansa continues. P19 Last of the MTP presentations. P21 Grant’s Garage Sale. Page 2
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Ed: But they can still do that if they want to try something out. On the site, they can get an idea of what’s available and what the price is and then come in for a “hands on” test? Chris: Yes that’s true and that’s why we’ve taken so long to do this, because we’ve always believed that we’d rather talk to the customer face to face and show them the options, rather than just have them do their research and go “I want that black box please.” But we realise that there are a lot of people down country and a lot of people who are not awake when we’re awake and vice versa, so we need to offer them the service of being able to get on the web, order it, know we’ve got it, and ship it out. We started with consumables – with lamps and tape and all those sorts of bits and pieces that you need, the Leatherman and Gerbers and the new shiny whizzy stuff. Now, in terms of specials at the moment, we’ve got a bit of excess stock on some of the Matthews kit and we’re looking at a price rise next month courtesy of the Orange Fool’s tariffs into the US … you know, unfortunately, the aluminium and steel tariffs he put in place are going to start striking all of us in many areas – and God knows what other tariffs he’s going to put on. So much of our stuff or componentry comes out of China through the US that I can see, down the track, there’ll be price rises on a lot of product. On the entertainment side of the business, we’ve started seeing price rises there too because of American sourcing and American routing of product, and so it will impact us unfortunately. Ed: But why would you have your own Web Store when I’m sure all of your suppliers have their own sites and you could just direct people to those sites? Chris: Yes, some of our suppliers do but most don’t. Some have very good web presences but most of them are not offering e-Commerce, because they’ve realised that they’ve got to support, not only their dealers in their home countries, but also all their distributors around the world. We need to have stock in New Zealand to offer backup for our customers and quickest possible supply. We’re very conscious of competition with overseas vendors because it is a global marketplace. When you’re sitting at home in your underwear, you can go looking everywhere, and people do. But, at the end of the day, it’s about us being here with spare parts and backup and why does it sometimes cost a little more … because we’ve got bricks and mortar. It’s the same as going down the road to Newmarket to look at your new frock or your new shoes or whatever, and then going and buying it from a Web Store. New NZVN Online Advertising Rates ( excluding GST ) from July 2018. A4 one $130 ....... more @ $100 A5 one $ 80 ....... more @ $ 60 A6 one $ 50 ....... more @ $ 30 Page 4
Ed: But also, it’s the support you provide, especially for products in the lighting category where you’ve got to have those spare parts … a fixture’s no good without the right bulb … and also choosing that right product for the right purpose? Chris: Totally, and that’s where we think our advantage is. It’s about “service” – not “box” moving and the fact that we do keep spares of those things and we are conscious that people will always break stuff. You know you can’t help it, no matter how good a product is, if it gets dropped from a great height or run over by a car or whatever, it ain’t going to be working. Ed: You’ve got a particular product line that you’re specialing at the moment in the Web Store I understand? Chris: Yes, as I say, there are a few Matthews stands there which we’ve got a good stock on, and also Lowellighting in a lot of their incandescent range, because that’s slowed down for us. This is not to say that incandescent is dead, there is a lot of life in this technology; it is still way better than a lot of the cheap LED out in the marketplace. So we’ll be running a special on some stock along with a couple of kits. Ed: What sort of discounts are we looking at – 5% or better? Chris: Better than that Grant. I know I only do 5% for you … but no, no there will be substantial variable discounts because we have also been looking at our pricing and adjusting our pricing over the last few months to make it competitive with what’s out there. So there’ll be some decent discounts. Have a look for yourself www.kelpls.co.nz NZVN Mike Symes – AVA Christchurch It is with much sadness that I pass on the news of the passing of Mike on September 1st. I was fortunate to know him through his involvement with NZVN, and I enjoyed Mike and Sheryl’s hospitality on a number of occasions when I visited Christchurch. He is a great loss to our industry and will be missed by me and many others who knew him. Farewell Mike … Ed Page 5
The Work and Thoughts of Swami Hansa continues. Last month, we began our interview with renowned cameraman Swami Hansa as he was on his way to the USA – now we continue to follow his work and hear more of his insights into the story-gathering aspect of our industry. Ed: Now this shot here, you’ve got Mike King in the picture. What was going on there? Hansa: I did a series with Mike on following various copies of the Treaty of Waitangi around the country. We followed each copy of the Treaty (there were 9 I think) and we talked to ancestors of the people who signed it and the people who took it around. This photo was a bit after that … he did a comedy show in formerly the Blackball Hilton Hotel and I was just there doing it for him really. That one wasn’t for a production, but I did a lot of production stuff with him. That’s the Hilton where Hilton US tried to sue them so it’s now called “formerly the Blackball Hilton Hotel.” Ed: So you’ve spent quite a bit of your recent career with Mike King doing productions in New Zealand and overseas? Hansa: I didn’t do a lot with him, but we were a good year on that. I think there were 6 half hours on the Treaty series ( it’s called Lost in Translation ) that went on Māori TV. Not many people ever saw it, but it was a good series. That was I think just after we’d been to Afghanistan a bit. Then we went to Afghanistan to see what all our soldiers were doing there, and played around with them, and he was doing comedy shows for them. Yes I spent a lot of time with Mike – a couple of years really.
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Ed: What sort of camera did you choose to take to Afghanistan? Hansa: An EX3 that I bought specially for the job. Ed: You didn’t want to carry anything too big? Hansa: No, I was getting past it by then! The EX3’s quite good, but it’s been surpassed quite a bit by now. Ed: Right and here we’re in a studio – we’ve got a setup with Wayne Alexander? Hansa: It was his place where he worked on motorbikes and the like. I was just setting up the light there with him and a production assistant took some pictures and that was one of them. I thought she did quite well on that. Ed: So what was the programme that went to air? Hansa: Extraordinary Kiwis – Motorcycles and Mountaineer’s Legs. It was about Wayne Alexander and the director was John Bates who I did several documentaries with. Wayne made the revolutionary artificial legs that the mountain climber Mark Inglis used to ascend Mt Cook and Mt Everest. I was shooting around The Hermitage at Mt Cook when he was helicoptered off the mountain where he lost his legs from frostbite … it’s got a helluva bite, that frost. Ed: Now there’s some pictures here out of the back of an aeroplane – it looks like a Hercules, you’ve put down the back door and you’re shooting out of the back of that? Hansa: The Asian Development Bank put up money for producer, Steve Griffiths in Singapore who contracted the Heartland crew ( because he loved what he saw in Heartland ) to do a 6 part series about water problems throughout the Pacific and Asia. It’s in the Gilbert Islands and we were just getting some aerial shots of the Page 8
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islands. Atolls have a unique thing with water; how they get it is the ground water goes down and it makes a kind of bubble underneath the little islets around the atoll and it doesn’t mix with the salt water for some reason – I never quite understood why. Ed: It’s lighter – one fact I do remember from University. Hansa: It makes a bubble under the atoll apparently and they put drills down and draw fresh water. The islanders used to shit off toilets out at sea – they have a platform going out and the pigs would eat it and it’d go out to the fishes. When the missionaries came, they said “oh no, you’ve got to have flush toilets” and naturally the flush toilets all went into the bubble. Ed: Score zero for the missionaries. And these others? Hansa: That is in Cambodia – also part of the water series. Because of Pol Pot and all that stuff, they had massive structural problems and they were renewing all the piping and all the systems in … Ed: Phnom Penh? Hansa: Phnom Penh, thank you. It’s good to have someone who can remember things! Ed: I’ve never been to an ashram. Hansa: I can tell you about that later. Ed: I think that will be another interview. Hansa: But they were doing these boat races, they came from all over Cambodia … Ed: … a dragon boat race? Hansa: Dragon boat races – see you know that too. F*ck you’re a smart bloke. Ed: We’ll put that in big print. Hansa: This photo is in Gujarat in west India, again water problems. They had lots of droughts, they just weren’t living very well but they were making this really big lake area to store water in. You can see John and I in the bottom corner there, but these women walked for like 2-3 Page 10
hours every day to come to this lake, fill up the bowls and walk them home. They’d do 2 trips a day, it was just terrible. They needed some pumps and a pipe, that would have done it all. This one is in Fiji – Fiji wasn’t intended to be part of the Gilbert Island story, but the two got combined. Ed: That’s really getting up close and friendly with the locals there? Hansa: We were actually filming some stuff out in the sea, but the kids just loved it, being local. Ed: From all your time as a cameraman, what was the production that you’re most proud of? Hansa: Probably the one on James K Baxter with Bruce actually. It’s called Road to Jerusalem. Ed: And you never actually got to film J.K Baxter himself? Hansa: No, never – all re-enactments. Ed: So what makes it your favourite? Hansa: Just the kind of shots we got and how we went about them. Bruce organised that mostly and production manager Yvette Thomas, she’s great. It wasn’t so much a free-flow with me, my usual kind of shooting, although some scenes we did that, but he arranged funeral pyres and we had fire brigades out making rain and all sorts of drama type production detail. It’s an hour and a half programme and it’s just magnificent, mainly because of the poetry and we had quite a lot of Sam Hunt in there … Ed: He’d be a very good image to capture, I would say, with his expressions? Hansa: What I remember about Sam more than anything though was his mind, his memory. We were around Otaki somewhere on the beach … Waikanae just north of Wellington on the west coast. We were wandering along the beach with Sam and he talked about this letter that he’d written to James K and he got an answer back. They were all poems of course, and this poem – it must have been about 20 minutes long and Sam started reciting it, and he went through the whole thing. Just unbelievable, all from memory. Ed: Can you look at that and say that the shots you got made that programme what it is to you? Hansa: To me, yes. Ed: You talk about the “feel”, so was it the interviews that you got, the feeling from the people who were talking to you, or was it the scenery around Jerusalem on the Whanganui river? Hansa: We talked with various Māori people there and some of the Irish nuns from the nunnery there. I can’t place it exactly, but it was just the combination of everything. Bruce Morrison, John Patrick on sound and me – the combination Page 12
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of those 3 and Ken Sparks as editor who wasn’t with us that much ( he was occasionally) – the 4 of us somehow had an amazing little team going. It was just magic … And after a long pause … There’s also a short film I did in 1968-69 while at the National Film Unit called Outsider. It was an experimental film, 10 minutes long, shot on an ARRI IIC, 35 mm black and white. It was about a school girl, Anita Olsen who’s a bit of a dreamer, not so great at her school work. The first and last shots are hand held with the 18mm wide angle following her around the classroom and at the end shot, out walking on the street where she meets a kindred spirit, Jeanne Frater, they connect and then go off into the distance. All the shots between are on very long lenses and show the subjective view of Anita drifting on her way home. Most of those shots were reflections in shop windows. Very black and white images. I was often standing on the footpath filming someone moving next to me while the camera was pointing across the street and getting the reflection from a shop window. It was used for some years by the mental health services in Dunedin as a case study. I’ve tried more recently to find and catch up with both Anita and Jeanne without success. I’d love to see them again some 50 years on. Ed: You must have developed a formula where you’re going to interview someone, you’ve got to get there, you’ve got to set up, but then you’ve got to get this person relaxed and to talk to you in the way that you want them to tell you this story? Hansa: We did a lot of interviews on the fly. We gave no warning about stuff and we would just start filming. We’d be walking along and start filming and someone would ask questions. In those sorts of situations, it would be Bruce Page 13
and we wouldn’t show him, but for Heartland, it was usually Gary McCormick. That was another thing … in Heartland, a lot of people I think tried to copy it afterwards, but they made the mistake of doing setups that were more drama like techniques, I feel … because, with us everyone was prepped. A researcher went there first and talked to everyone and we worked out who might be interesting to go and see. So they all knew to some degree what was happening, but we would just turn up at their door and Gary got into this very much – Gary would go and knock on the door and I would go in on his shoulder, so that we saw his point of view. What a lot of them do is they’re inside and see the interviewer coming in, and what’s the point of that. We actually know what Gary looks like, we’ve seen him already, we’re going to meet this new person and the door opening and then “oh, oh you’re here, what!” and surprise. Then suddenly you’re in the door and filming. We actually did it as it happened like that. There were certain preps so they knew we were coming, but they didn’t know how it was going to happen and what we were going to do. We didn’t know until it was happening either. Ed: Well this nicely segues me to the “grumpy old man” segment. You’ve been doing this for a long time, you’re obviously good at your trade, what do you see on television now or in the movies that upsets you? Hansa: After another long pause … Camera people not understanding lighting. I remember with Mike King, when we were filming the Lost in Translation series, we would set up interviews with people and depending on where we were and how we were doing it – because I tended to not use a lot of light, I kind of like working around natural light and I would position people so that the light worked on them. Ed: So it was really light and shadow? Hansa: Light and shadow yes, you’ve got to work on that. You can move someone 6 inches and change the lighting enormously … Ed: And the shadow? Hansa: And the shadow … well your light without shadow is nothing, you’ve got to have the shadow. Ed: We were also talking about focus and cinema cameras that are all the rage these days with their single chip and very short depth of field? Hansa: Oh yes, and that single chip, narrow depth of field is fantastic if you’re doing real setup stuff, but if you’re doing stuff on the fly it’s really difficult to work with that, you need a bit of depth of field. Ed: Unless you want to live without an in focus shot, which in some television I see these days, they do? Hansa: Well I’m getting more into out of focus shots, but not because I mean to. There was a shoot where someone tried to get me to use a still camera setup. I worked out that there would be no depth of field and there was no means of changing the aperture. You couldn’t even stop down to get a bit of depth of field. I said to them “well, I’ll be doing interviews and you’ll have one eye in focus and the other eye out – you realise that don’t you?” and they said “oh, really.” I mean it’s just insane, it’s such a small depth of field and especially if you’re shooting wide open, you’ve got nothing to play with at all. In certain situations, I think that works really well, but not in moving, free-flowing kind of filming. It’s just insane, you need a bit of depth of field. I’m used to the 35mm ARRI’s – you didn’t have a lot of depth of field ( or you did if you were Page 14
really wide angle and stopped down a lot ) but on a decent lens, the depth of field wasn’t much, but they’re even worse now, some of them. Ed: You can sometimes fix that with your lens can’t you … and I’m taking you back now to Afghanistan and your choice to use EX3. Not only was it small but it meant that, if you kept that at wide, everything was in focus all the time, so you could hit that button and you knew that you could use the picture from the first frame? Hansa: If I didn’t wobble too much, yeah that’s right. I didn’t tend to use that so much, I’m not a great fan of some of the wide angle. You see a lot of interviews, they do very wide angle … this is a gripe that I’ve got, there’ll be 2 people and they’re both in the shot, it’s emphasising one person and then the other person starts talking and they pan. It’s still a 2 shot, so it means the editor can’t even cut because there’s nothing to cut to; you know you’re cutting from a 2 shot to a 2 shot. What the flip is that about, that doesn’t make any sense at all to me. I like getting in close, I’ll use the length of the lens a lot, so you don’t have depth of field then but you can get single shot, single shot, donk, donk – I’ll move around a lot. Ed: And you just get a couple of nodding heads? Hansa: The Noddy shot, yeah. With Mike King, we shot these interviews and usually I’d shoot the person he was interviewing and not have him in at all, and then do the questions after. But sometimes it felt like it was such a scene that I could actually shoot one person and move a bit and then pan to get the other person – because I hate these shots that a lot of them do, that you see the side Page 15
of the face. To me, when you’re interviewing someone, I want to look in their face, I want to look in their eyes, I want to see what’s going on with this person, and you’ve got to move, you’ve got to be right over the shoulder of the person it’s from. So I can pan and move to get a front on view and that works really well. When we did Afghanistan, the director had an EX3 as well, we had 2 cameras. There was one particular policeman we talked to at one point and I was getting the guy Mike was interviewing and Marcus Clayton on the 2nd camera was getting Mike. I fortunately had Marcus to the left side of me and, because I keep the left eye open a lot when I’m filming, I could actually see that, if he was pointing down at a stomach, I knew he was getting a wide shot; if he was pointing at his face I knew he was getting a close-up. It was really simple. There was no communication, but I knew. But if he was getting a closeup there I would match it or I would get the 2 shot, and it works really well with 2 cameras. I could do it to some degree with the one camera, but you have to move more. Ed: Have you ever missed a shot? Hansa: Many, many. Ed: What one sticks in your mind? Hansa: There have been some classics! With film cameras, you have to get the lens calibrated to the camera, and this is a major hassle. I did a shoot on the Waikato river by myself, travelling around with an ARRI IIC and a stack of film. I got into this wide angle … it was a 25mm lens which I did lots of stuff with. When I got back, I found it wasn’t calibrated properly. They were all wide angle shots, but it didn’t hold the focus, it was just bad. The first Heartland I did was Gore with the Golden Guitars going on, and there was a lot happening around the Golden Guitars; I was filming away, Bruce was behind me, John was putting the mic in there. Anyhow, I was filming and Bruce was trying to tell me something, I couldn’t understand what. I could hear him but I couldn’t see him, and there was something going on that I hadn’t clicked to. I thought it was still through this doorway where I was looking. Bruce grabbed me by the shoulder and spun me round and then “oh, that’s what it is.” And I hadn’t seen that. Usually I’ve got my left eye checking everything while I’m filming, but this time he spun me round to it. That was brilliant. Ed: So you got the shot then? Hansa: I got the shot then. So that wasn’t one I missed. A really embarrassing thing I did once – when I was working for The Evening Star with the Speed Graphic … I’m not a sports person, rugby’s not me really. Ed: Anyway, carry on … Hansa: I got this shot of these guys getting a try and it was a really great shot for those times. They put it on the front page which was 3 maybe 4 columns I think, so it was quite a big picture on the front page. When I was printing it off, I thought “these guys are staying in the hotel, I’ll go round there and give them a copy of it.” So I printed off a second copy, took it round there, and there was a stunned silence. I thought that’s really weird, and then afterwards I found out it was the wrong team I’d given it to! When I finished work … it was an evening paper, so you worked in the morning more and I was going home about 3 o’clock … I was walking up George Street in Dunedin back to the flat and I was thinking to myself, I’d shot this shot, developed it all up, gone round and taken the wrong person the print, and I’m walking home and this piece of newspaper Page 16
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trundles across the footpath, and there’s the picture. And I thought, I’ve been out taking that picture, processed it, it’s got printed, someone’s bought the paper, read it and thrown it away and here it is wandering down the street. I thought that was pretty amazing. Ed: Yesterday’s news. But that brings me back to “style” – what did you learn from those days of taking photographs? I hope you say “framing” because it’s something that seems to be a lost art for some people – they can’t actually set up a frame? Hansa: Yes, framing’s what it’s all about really I think. Ed: Framing and lighting? Hansa: Yeah I suppose … well they’re both fairly instinctual for me I think. I don’t think that much about it. Bruce Morrison started out as a studio cameraman in Dunedin too, so he knows camerawork quite well, and when we were on some locations on that Heartland series , we would be set up on the tripod pinging off shots around the town or wherever we were, because we’d have a bit of time sometimes. I’d say to Bruce “show me your frame, what did you get” and he’d get a frame and then I’d show him mine, and it would be almost identical. He had a good eye too. A lot of people don’t have much of an eye; it’s just as long as they’ve got the person in the shot, it’s enough. The frame is so important. But again, I’d grab a camera and click, got that frame. Ed: But now you can fix the frame in post? Hansa: You can fix most things in post yes, but it’s not the same. We were very fond of saying cheekily to the director if something went wrong with a shot, “fix in post” and then do it again. The skill of being a cameraman is not the same as what it was. It’s gone. You had to really work at what you did, whereas now it’s mostly done in camera. You can record for hours without thinking about it, and the poor old editor has to go through all that shit and more often than not they don’t, they just take the first bit that works and don’t even look at the rest. That’s the interesting thing, working with different directors, they put a different perspective on things, and they want different things. I have a definite style that I like using, but I also like finding out what kind of style the director wants and work to that too. I’m not fixed on how I do it, I’ll go any way and I think that’s how cameramen learn more. One of the main things I think for a cameraman is to do some editing, and then you actually understand what you need to get. Many of them don’t do that. I love this work, I’ve been very satisfied doing camera and it’s suited me with, as I think I’ve said, not really NZVN being a word person. May the dance continue … Page 18
Last of the MTP Conference 2018 Presentations The future of Artificial Intelligence in broadcasting by Nick Morgan from VSN A.I is a computer simulation of human intelligence, with the ability to learn and solve complex tasks. How does this work in the media technology industry? MPEG media is uploaded to the Cloud and then is returned to your device or system with extracted metadata added to the content. This includes video/audio analysis and cataloguing metadata. Google, Microsoft and IBM provide this service currently. It offers automatic data extraction; scenes are extractable by many types even emotions like crying, laughing, movement – whatever – users submit an A.I request and the service identifies these elements for you. If the algorithm provides a false-positive, for example with facial recognition, you can change the name or description and the system remembers that you’ve identified that face or object with a new name. Your MAM system can store this information in its database so if it identifies the same object or face in future it will reconcile that with the same face or object you correctly identified or renamed earlier. Given any shot, it will suggest categories and concepts that are related to the uploaded image clip, as well as providing a transcript that can be translated into quite a number of languages. Page 19
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t: +61 415 048 521 t: +61 417 663 803