ScreenTalk

Award-winning singer and actor Annie Whittle has tried most things in the entertainment business and has been successful at all of them. She has appeared in a range of home-grown TV shows including A Week of It, The Makutu on Mrs Jones, The Billy T James Show, Heartland, Shortland Street, and Outrageous Fortune. She has also graced the silver screen in the feature films Trial Run and The World’s Fastest Indian.

In this ScreenTalk interview, Whittle discusses:

• Having fun playing ‘token bag ladies and tarts’ on A Week of It
• How a skit caused Air New Zealand to change its in-flight safety demonstration
• Training with runner Allison Roe to take on the lead role in Trial Run
• Loving her character Barb Heywood in Shortland Street
• How the audience confused her with Barb
• Being on her best behaviour with Anthony Hopkins on the set of The World’s Fastest Indian
• Not having the courage to tell the star he had a ‘wind’ problem
• Feeling superfluous as a guest character on Outrageous Fortune
• Having to reign in her personality for her role in Piece of My Heart
• Struggling with a lack of self-confidence and learning from it

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

Rocker Ray Columbus, OBE, has been a headline act since 1961 when he appeared on Time Out for Talent at the age of 18. Since then, he has performed on or hosted a huge range of music and light entertainment TV shows including: Club Columbus, C’Mon, Happen Inn, Personality Squares and That’s Country. With his band Ray Columbus and the Invaders, he had two number one hits with ‘She’s a Mod’ and ‘Till We Kissed’.

In this ScreenTalk interview, Columbus talks about:

• How all tapes of his early days on TV in Club Columbus were destroyed
• Being squeezed into the newsroom in Christchurch to tape the show
• Bringing a TV studio to a standstill by dancing the ‘Mod’s Nod’
• The excitement of appearing on C’Mon and working with Pete Sinclair
• Why lurid costumes and psychedelic lyrics led to changes on Happen Inn
• How a damning TV review led to the axing of My Name is Ray Columbus
• Fearing the reactions of fans to him hosting That’s Country
• Selling the show to the Nashville Network in America
• Being grateful for his TV career

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

Rachel Lang has been one of the driving forces behind some of New Zealand’s most popular television dramas. Beginning as a story editor on 80s dramas Shark in the Park and Open House, she moved onto Shortland Street as a story-liner and then as the show’s executive producer for a number of years. Lang collaborated with writer Gavin Strawhan to create the South Pacific Pictures dramas Jackson’s Wharf and Mercy Peak. Later she developed the enormously successful Outrageous Fortune, as well as Maddigan’s Quest and Go Girls. In 2010, Lang helped develop another major TV drama – This is Not My Life.

In this ScreenTalk interview, Lang talks about:

• Enjoying her first acting role and learning to march in Marching Girls
• How Shortland Street changed the face of drama on New Zealand television
• How the soap gave voice to the Kiwi accent
• Loving creating Mercy Peak with its subtle approach to drama
• How initial despondency over network responses to the show led to major improvements
• How a spark of creativity in the shower led to Outrageous Fortune
• Wanting to make the show rude enough that people ‘had’ to watch it
• How Sex in the City influenced the home-grown show Go Girls
• Why This is Not My Life proved to be the most difficult show she’s worked on
• The need for a writer to be involved in the process of casting parts

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

Jason Stutter – director of Ronald Hugh Morrieson adaptation Predicament – has a talent for going for the jugular, yet doing it in style. In Stutter’s movies, the camera plunges headfirst into haunted hospitals, dodgy smalltown dealings, and fight scenes with Pacific Island Ninjas whose parents were unexpectedly half-gobbled by fish.

In this ScreenTalk interview, Stutter talks about

• why he makes films
• his many projects featuring Flight of the Conchords’ Jemaine Clement
• falling in love with the dialogue in Ronald Hugh Morrieson’s novel Predicament
• the lessons that can be learnt from Morrieson’s career
• the bravery of comedians, and why he loves giving them acting roles in his movies
• the genesis of Tongan Ninja, Stutter’s no-budget, three years in the making feature debut
• the unusual way haunted hospital tale Diagnosis: Death was funded
• the importance of staying loyal to the original text

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