ScreenTalk

Producer Pat Cox instigated Kiwiana classic Footrot Flats: The Dog’s (Tail) Tale and has produced some of New Zealand’s most iconic commercials (including the long-running Speights “onya mate”, Mainland Cheese “these things take time”, and the 100% Pure NZ tourism campaigns).

Cox chats to NZ On Screen about his 40-year+ career in film and television:

• Growing up in Ireland and getting into the business via drumming in bands. He began shooting bands and crewing for docos. Cox recalls “great times” crewing at Ardmore Studios where legendary directors (John Houston, David Lean, John Boorman) were making movies.
• Shooting concerts for bands in the late sixties in the US, then emigrating in the early seventies to New Zealand with his American wife and their one-year-old boy.
• Forging a freelance career in a country where there was virtually no film industry, and setting up Film Editing Services, an independent post-production services company that imported the first Steenbeck editing desk into NZ.
• Teaching film and TV to graphic design students at Wellington Polytech where “we developed a little mini film school”, and where he mentored Annie Collins and Euan Frizzell.
• The growth of the commercials sector in the seventies and working with Geoff Dixon (Silverscreen), John Blick and Tony Williams.
• Production-managing for Williams’ pioneering feature, Solo. Williams reflects on the DIY early days of the industry: where crew were being trained “on the job” and they secured finance from used car salesmen and “by knocking on doors.”
• Getting to grips with New Zealand culture as an Irish-American fresh off the boat by reading Janet Frame and … Footrot Flats. “I saw it as this terrific microcosm of life in New Zealand.”
• On opening the phone book, ringing Murray Ball and proposing a movie of the strip (and being flatly refused). Cox talks of the challenges of producing the project (with John Barnett): “everything was hand-painted and then filmed … it was this big endeavour and I’m amazed we actually achieved it. To this day no one has made another animated feature in New Zealand.”

Check out the ‘making of’ Footrot Flats documentary on NZ On Screen.

This interview is also available on YouTube.

Images courtesy of Pat Cox. Selected images are from Wikipedia Commons, or courtesy NZFC, or The Dominion Post.

Credits: Direction and Interview – Clare O’Leary, Camera and Editing – Leo Guerchmann

Director Tony Hiles talks about over 30 years of film-making, from making television and documenting local history and artists, to his involvement in feature films:

• His beginnings (“the best years of television in this country”) at TVNZ’s Avalon studios in the seventies, where he directed game shows, music, and current affairs programmes.
• Founding production company City Associates with partner Judith Fyfe in 1980, and his experiences making local history documentaries.
• Making films with artists Michael Smither (One Man and the Sea; Flight of Fancy) and Robin Morrison (From the Road), and the fun of small-crew, seat-of-your-pants shooting. The key [to the documentaries] “was to be in at the beginning … where we had no idea what was going to happen the next day.”
• Being brought onboard as consultant producer on Peter Jackson’s breakout splatstick debut, Bad Taste. Hiles was asked by the Film Commission’s Jim Booth (Bad Taste’s producer) to assess the script and figured, “if it makes me laugh it’ll make someone else laugh as well.” Hiles also directed Good Taste Made Bad Taste, the movie’s ‘making of’ story.
• His relationship with Booth and the impact that his untimely death had on Jack Brown Genius: the feature that didn’t fly about a man who dreamed about flying. In the wake of the disappointment of Genius Hiles reflects on the lessons he’s learned over his long career: “if it don’t feel right, don’t do it!”

This interview is also available on YouTube.

Credits: Direction and Interview – Clare O’Leary, Camera and Editing – Leo Guerchmann

Editor Annie Collins has worked with some of New Zealand’s most provocative directors, including Barry Barclay (The Neglected Miracle), and Merata Mita (Patu!) over a 30 year editing career. Collins has also edited key feature films, (Scarfies, Out of the Blue) and was part of the editing team on Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings.

NZ On Screen’s Clare O’Leary visits Collins at her home and Collins reflects on:

• Her beginnings in the industry and being convinced by producer Pat Cox to shelve her design training and become an editor.
• What she requires of directors (“that they’ve done their homework!”)
• Cutting Patu! with Merata Mita: evading the police and becoming conscious of the Springbok Tour Protests’ relevance to New Zealand history and realising the (different) echoes it had for Mita as a Māori filmmaker.
• Working with director Robert Sarkies on Scarfies and Out of the Blue
• The four and a half years she spent working on the Lord of the Rings trilogy and the realisation that despite the “profound experience” of working on such a massive scale project that she needed to get back to New Zealand stories.
• Her consciousness of the power of the edit: “it takes about five seconds for you to destroy somebody in a cut, or edit, on national TV.”
• The ethics of story-telling: the need for the people who are involved in a documentary (or a story where the subjects are still alive) to follow “good process” and the importance of “clarity of mind and heart.”

Collins is currently working on Graeme Tuckett’s documentary about Barry Barclay due for release later this year.

See Annie Collins’ profile on NZ On Screen.

This interview is available on YouTube for embedding and distribution.

Credits: Direction and Interview – Clare O’Leary, Camera and Editing – Leo Guerchmann

Producer Larry Parr talks to NZ On Screen about the business and art of film and TV production. Parr discusses:

• His unconventional path into the industry: “I wasn’t like Geoff [Murphy], Ian [Mune], or Bruno [Lawrence] …” Parr had started out as a lawyer in a bank.
• Early days working to raise the money for, and market, the iconic Roger Donaldson-directed films, Smash Palace and Sleeping Dogs.
• Raising the finance for a slew of eighties features (Bridge to Nowhere, Starlight Hotel, Queen City Rocker, Constance, Came a Hot Friday, Pallet on the Floor).
• The landmark 1989 Māori drama series E Tipu E Rea which he produced and which launched the careers of a remarkable number of Māori filmmakers (Lee Tamahori, Riwia Brown, Rawiri Paratene, Anzac Wallace, Wi Kuki Kaa and more). “The series was all Māori crew and cast except for three DoPs”.
• His time as head of production at TVNZ’s Avalon studios.
• The failure of Kahukura Productions and the “time in purgatory” he served between its collapse, and joining Māori Television in 2005 as Head of Programming.
• Finishing his directorial debut Fracture and helping Taika Waititi complete his Oscar-nominated short film Two Cars, One Night.
• The achievement of Māori Televsion: “creating a receptive audience [for Māori stories].”
• His new role at Te Māngai Pāho and his vision for a bi-lingual Aotearoa and the promotion of te reo on our screens: “just imagine what sort of country New Zealand would be if everybody had grown up since 1840 speaking both languages … we’d be unstoppable!”

Through the ups and downs of a colourful career in independent and network filmmaking Parr reflects on his most satisfying moments, ultimately settling on the 2006 ANZAC Day broadcast on Māori Television, which changed the “social and political landscape and ensured MTS’s place in the broadcasting landscape.”

This interview is available to download or distribute on YouTube.

Also see: Maori Television and Te Māngai Pāho

Credits: Direction and Interview – Clare O’Leary, Camera and Editing – Leo Guerchmann