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.

Rock’n'roll couple Karyn Hay and Andrew Fagan have both had long and varied careers in New Zealand music and media. They are currently night-time hosts on Radio Live, but Fagan spent many years as the lead singer of pop band The Mockers, and Hay was the long-time host of iconic music show Radio with Pictures. Hay and Fagan are also both published authors.

In this ScreenTalk interview, the pair talk to James Coleman about:

• The trials and tribulations of getting a music video made in NZ in the 80s through TVNZ’s “sausage factory”
• Radio with Pictures and the decision to play the forbidden video – AFFCO by The Skeptics
• Hay’s work on her favourite music video of all those she has directed – Hey Judith by The Dribbling Darts Of Love in the 90s
• Fagan’s cameo appearance in the Hey Judith video

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

Credits: Interview by James Coleman, Camera and Editing by Leo Guerchmann.