ScreenTalk

Brendan Smyth is charged with getting more New Zealand music on the airwaves. As NZ Music Manager at NZ On Air, he leads a team that funds and promotes Kiwi music and music videos.

In this ScreenTalk interview, Smyth talks about:

• the challenges of getting Kiwi music on radio during the 90s
• what funding agency NZ On Air does, and how it chooses which music videos to fund
• how English video makers have been impressed by the strong ideas shown in Kiwi videos, including one made for a song by Goodshirt
• how the music video for the hit Bathe in the River (from Toa Fraser movie No. 2) helped win over the enthusiasm of radio, which initially proved resistant
  
• how the music video has found a new life on the internet

This video is also available on YouTube to embed and distribute, via a Creative Commons licence.

Interview and direction by Ian Pryor. Camera and editing by Alex Backhouse.

Even as a schoolboy, Oliver Driver knew he wanted to be an actor. Since leaving school he has had a varied career in theatre, television and film.

Playing the role of male nurse Mike Galloway in Shortland Street made Driver a famous face in New Zealand, but he has also appeared in other homemade TV shows such as The Strip, Serial Killers, and Letter to Blanchy, and the films Topless Women Talk about Their Lives, Magik and Rose, Black Sheep, and A Death in the Family.

Driver can now be seen every weekday morning on TV3’s Sunrise, and is appearing as the villainous ‘Mr Wilberforce’ in the upcoming feature film Under the Mountain.

In this interview, Driver talks about:

• How he left school and jumped into theatresports
• The love he has for directing theatre, and the creative process involved in getting a script to the stage
• How City Life gave him his first and most memorable TV experience
• Hosting Sunrise and the pressure of live television, and whether or not he “sold out” by taking the job
• Playing the role of Mr Wilberforce in Under the Mountain and how a prosthetic face brought him to tears

This interview is available on YouTube to embed via a Creative Commons Licence.

Credits: Interview, Camera and Editing by Andrew Whiteside

The late Barry Barclay [Ngāti Apa] was one of New Zealand’s most respected filmmakers. He directed such landmark titles as Tangata Whenua, Ngati, and Feathers of Peace. Barclay was also a longtime campaigner for the right of indigenous people to tell their own stories, to their own people. Before his death in February 2008, Barclay was interviewed for ScreenTalk about his early days working as a cameraman and director with John O’Shea‘s legendary production company Pacific Films.

Barclay begins the interview by talking about Pacific’s contribution to Māori filmmaking, in particular with the Tangata Whenua series.

He also talks about:

• Pacific’s creative and independent spirit and how inspiring it was to work with director Tony Williams
• Directing the Pacific Films production Ashes – which starred a young Sam Neill as a conflicted priest
• Working on his first feature film Ngati
• Working with Pacific Films boss John O’Shea, and how O’Shea “didn’t really see skin colour”
• And what it was like being “Māori with a camera” in the early days of the Māori cultural renaissance

Note: there are some defects in the footage that come from the original master.

This video is available on YouTube to embed via a Creative Commons Licence.

Graeme Tuckett’s documentary about Barry Barclay, The Camera on the Shore, premieres in July 2009 as part of the NZ International Film Festival.

Credits: Interview and Camera – Clare O’Leary and Monika Ahuriri. Editing – Alex Backhouse.

Scriptwriter, playwright and columnist James Griffin has been writing for most of his life. Since becoming a scriptwriter in the 1980s Griffin has written many of New Zealand’s most well known and best loved TV shows as well as the feature film Sione’s Wedding.

In this interview, he discusses

• His love of writing from an early age but his desire to be a TV director
• Getting “side-tracked” in to script editing and learning the mechanics of how a script works
• The popularity of Gloss and blending comedy and drama
• His surprise that the TV drama City Life flopped
• The rollercoaster ride that is Outrageous Fortune and when its run should end
• Criticism of NZ comedy
• What it takes to make a “hit” TV show

This video is also available on YouTube to embed and distribute via a Creative Commons licence.

Credits:  Interview, Camera & Editing – Andrew Whiteside

Grip Annie Frear trained in television production at the ABC in Australia, and then returned to New Zealand and forged a distinguished film career working on such titles as E Tipu E Rea, Desperate Remedies, The Piano, Hinekaro Goes on a Picnic and Blows up Another Obelisk, and Peach.

Frear was the Grip Co-ordinator for the massive production undertaking that was the Lord of the Rings trilogy. She begins her ScreenTalk interview by describing what it was like working on Lord of the Rings.

She also talks about:

• The importance of the grip’s working relationship with the Director of Photography
• Her first feature film Desperate Remedies and her job as “the skirt lifter”
• The satisfaction of working with Film School students
• The importance of “hands on” training

This video is available on YouTube to embed and distribute via a Creative Commons licence.

Credits: Direction and interview by Clare O’Leary, Camera and Editing by Leo Guerchmann.