John Harris - Greenstone and Cream
Posted on 26 April 2011
Credits: Interview, Camera & Editing – Andrew Whiteside
John Harris is the owner of one of New Zealand’s biggest production companies: Greenstone Pictures. He began his television career at TVNZ working in news and current affairs and helped launch
Top Half. Moving into the private sector he produced a number of TV shows including
That’s Fairly Interesting and
Heroes.
In 1994 he created Greenstone Pictures, and went on to produce a huge range of TV shows such as
The Zoo;
Epitaph;
Motorway Patrol; and
Neighbours at War. In 2010 Greenstone acquired the production company Cream Media.
In this ScreenTalk interview, Harris talks about:
- Becoming the Programme Editor on Top Half in 1980
- ‘Marrying’ John Hawkesby and Judy Bailey on the show
- How a pack of dogs ruined the set
- Producing That’s Fairly Interesting for Communicado
- How the show Heroes showed the better side of human nature
- Setting up Greenstone Pictures
- How Epitaph showed a unique side of New Zealand history
- Expanding his business by purchasing Cream
- The ‘privilege’ of telling other people’s stories on TV
This video is
available on YouTube to embed and distribute via a
Creative Commons licence.
NZ ON SCREEN 2013
Comments
by Ken Burns on 28 April 2011 at 9:18 pm
John always had the idea of having fun in production no matter what you did. Great to work for and share ideas with. He has a huge legacy of insight into tv for anyone who wants to know.
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