ScreenTalk

Award-winning director Brendan Donovan cast Lee Majors in his debut short film. It was a success. Then after eight years working in New York, the Howick native returned to New Zealand, where he has directed and written for television and cinema both here and in Australia, most recently crafting feature film The Hopes and Dreams of Gazza Snell.

In this ScreenTalk interview, Donovan talks about:

• How he cast Lee Majors (The Six Million Dollar Man) in his debut short film Here
• Details from the making of short film Grasp
• His initial reaction to scripts for The Insiders Guide to Happiness
• Details on how The Insiders Guide to Happiness footage was captured and techniques used to achieve visual effects
• Delightful insights into working with Australian actor Bryan Brown on the Aussie TV series Two Twisted
• Behind-the-scenes details of special effects used in tele-feature Aftershock
• How feature film The Hopes and Dreams of Gazza Snell was created

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

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