Screentalk

Ngila Dickson is an Academy Award-winning costume designer who has been involved in some of our biggest film and TV projects. Her first film experience was on User Friendly and since then she has designed for Jack Be Nimble, Heavenly Creatures, Crush and The Lord of the Rings trilogy. In television, she made a name for herself designing costumes for Xena: Warrior Princess and Hercules: The Legendary Journeys. Dickson has also worked on a range of international movies.

In this ScreenTalk, Dickson talks about: 

• Creating costumes for acclaimed period piece Heavenly Creatures
• Learning a life lesson from Peter Jackson on the film
• How Xena: Warrior Princess provided her greatest learning curve ever
• Avoiding an obsession with Tolkien on the Lord of the Rings trilogy
• Creating specific design features for each of the story elements
• How winning an Oscar for Lord of the Rings has given her traction in the American film industry
• Trying to achieve perfection on the set of The Last Samurai
• Learning the limits of CGI technology on movie Green Lantern
• The frustration of working on a lot of films that never get made

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

Award-winning actor Sarah Peirse is best known for her portrayals of two very different mothers — the ill-fated Honorah Rieper in Heavenly Creatures, and the disaffected sophisticate in Rain. Peirse’s first film was the 80s short Queen Street, followed by tele-feature A Woman of Good Character. More recently, she has appeared in tele-movies Bliss: The Beginning of Katherine Mansfield and Aftershock.

In this ScreenTalk, Peirse talks about:

• Having an intense acting journey in A Woman of Good Character
• Playing the gloriously named Vivienne Wallop in Sylvia
• Being heavily pregnant on the set of The Navigator
• Her experience of working with director Vincent Ward
• Being told not to watch Peter Jackson’s previous films prior to working with him on Heavenly Creatures
• Dreaming about the character she played in the film
• Finding the story in the feature film Rain compelling
• Perspectives on her character’s grief and self-destruction
• Playing a 'constrained and compromised' mother in Bliss: The Beginning of Katherine Mansfield
• Not knowing whether or not her work on the Hobbit films will make the final cut
• Feeling blessed to have been able to do roles integral to many films

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

Kiwi production designer Grant Major has worked on many of New Zealand’s biggest films such as An Angel At My Table, Heavenly Creatures, the Lord of the Rings trilogy, Whale Rider, and King Kong. In 2004, Major won an Academy Award for his design work on The Return of the King. In this ScreenTalk, Major talks about:

• Working with Jane Campion to design An Angel At My Table
• Creating highly detailed sets for Heavenly Creatures
• How plans for the Lord of the Rings trilogy changed over time
• The challenges of creating the hilltop Edoras set for The Two Towers
• Trying to find the right ‘feel’ for the look of Whale Rider
• Why King Kong was a true production designer’s film
• Advancing his international career by designing The Green Lantern