All Blog Posts
The Future of (NZ) Film
BlogWhen Bob Iger of Disney speaks about the future of film, it’s worth listening. Why? Because amongst the hundreds of companies that sit under the Disney umbrella are 20th Century Fox, Lucas Film, Marvel, and Pixar. Brands number in the…
Is It Time for TVNZ to Revert to Public Broadcasting?
BlogMy op-ed this week is devoted to personal musings in the lead up to the NZ Screen Sector Strategy hui, and the changing nature of the screen industry as we know it. Colin Peacock on the Radio New Zealand website wrote on the weekend about…
Where to From Here?
BlogThe Screen Sector Strategy has announced the dates of its intended hui in 3 locales to gather industry input into a strategy document for the New Zealand Screen Industry. This will be taken to Government in the first half of 2020. This is…
Are We Missing the Streamer Boat?
BlogIt’s hard not to bang on about streaming services when they are continuing to upend the screen industry as we know it. Media intelligence service FilmTake recently reported that Disney, WarnerMedia, and Apple are expected to spend between…
Pictures Worth a Thousand Words
Advocacy, BlogIn my last blog editorial I wrote of Fair Remuneration and the meetings DEGNZ President Howard Taylor and I attended in Tokyo at the General Assembly of the International Confederation of Societies of Authors and Composers (CISAC) and Executive…
Fair Remuneration Efforts
Advocacy, BlogLast week, Guild President Howard Taylor and I attended the General Assembly of the International Confederation of Societies of Authors and Composers (CISAC), and the Executive Committee meeting of Writers & Directors Worldwide (W &…
Cannes: Is it All it’s Cracked Up to Be?
BlogEvery year, tens of thousands of film industry people gather in Cannes for the world’s pre-eminent display of film industry gauche and sublime—the Cannes International Film Festival. Or at least that’s what used to happen. According…
The Realities of a SVOD World
BlogI’ve been watching the debates raging across the Tasman as the Austalian screen industry seeks to ensure the future of Australian content in the face of the realities of SVOD. Research company Roy Morgan reported in March 2019 that nearly…
More on RoVE
BlogOne of the things we are doing at DEGNZ at the moment in response to the Reform of Vocational Education (RoVE) that I wrote about two weeks ago, is to map the pathways for directors and editors into the industry. For editors, we have already…
Educating Rita… Hemi, Raj, Liwei, Carmen and Others for the Screen Industry
BlogThe vocational education system for all industries is undergoing massive reform right now. It’s come at a time when the New Zealand screen industry has been suffering from a lack of experienced workers due to the high levels of domestic and…
New Beginnings
BlogMark Jennings, co-editor of online news platform Newsroom, and former head of News at TV3, has penned an article on Discovery’s plans for TV3. As Jennings writes, after Discovery’s merger with WarnerMedia., TV3 is now part of the second…
Documenting the Woes
BlogThanks to the Doc Edge Festival, I was able to attend their opening night film The 7 Years of Lukas Graham, a story about Danish pop sensation Lukas Graham’s lead singer Lukas Forchhammer’s wrestle with fame. It got me thinking about the…
What is Success for Screen Content?
BlogGo back fifteen years and it was pretty easy to figure out what success was for screen content. For the small screen it was the Nielsen ratings. For the big screen it was the box office. The show that knocked it out of the ratings park or the…
Never, Rarely, Sometimes, Always
BlogI was listening to a podcast this morning in which Eliza Hittman, the director of the feature film Never, Rarely, Sometimes, Always was being interviewed. It very clearly highlighted to me that she is a talented filmmaker, although I have yet…