Where’s The Work?

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While everyone angsts about what the New Zealand Film Commission is or isn’t up to—and frankly I still don’t know either—I thought I’d take a look at the work situation for directors and editors with television/platform content.

Now I’ve been hearing anecdotally that there are a lot of directors and editors out of work, so I looked to what NZ On Air and Te Māngāi Paho have funded this year so far.

According to their websites, in 2024:

NZ On Air funded:

22 Scripted Projects to a total of$26,982,203
10 Factual projects to a total of6$6,186,872
22 Non-Fiction projects to a total of$8,542,922
9 Returning projects to a total of

NB: Genre wasn’t defined but look all Factual

$10,673,286
6 Aotearoa New Zealand Pacific Regional Media Fund projects to a total of$1,859,996

NZ on Air (60%)/TMP (40%) funded:

5 projects to a total of$10,020,333

TMP funded:

8 projects (no info. on genre) to a total of$7,237, 871

 

All up, that’s 82 projects to a total of $71,503,483

 

Even though it’s nigh on impossible for a director or editor to make a living in feature film (shorts—foget about it), I thought I should also include what the NZFC has according to its website greenlit for production equity investment so far in 2024:

2 narrative features to a total of$3,687,602

But back to TV/platforms.

So for the half year we have 82 projects across all genres with budgets totalling $71, 503,483.

If we guesstimate that on average at least three directors and three editors will work on each project, that’s 246 jobs for directors and 246 jobs for editors coming out of those projects receiving NZ On Air or TMP funding this year to July 2024.

Let’s imagine that the same number of projects will get funded in the second half of the year so that’s all together 492 jobs for directors and 492 jobs for editors across 2024 with funding from NZ On Air and TMP.

Now we know that a director or editor generally needs to work on at least 2 – 3 projects a year to have any kind of sustainable income.

We also know that not every project happens at the same time, so a director or editor working on one project in 2024 could also be working on one or more projects in the same year. And we know that there’s a contraction in the domestic market going on.

What I’m getting at here is that while it might seem like there’s enough work to go around, there’s also anecdotally a good number of people out of work. The simple deduction from this is that there isn’t enough work for the number of directors and editors out there.

So what’s the answer here? Less directors and editors? Or more work?

Of course, all of us will advocate for the latter. The conundrum is: Where is the money going to come from to fund the work?

NZ On Air thankfully survived the government slashing of budgets with its baseline funding remaining unchanged.

TMP also went into this financial year with an unchanged budget from 2023.

However, Whakaata Māori has announced a decrease of $9.5 million in funding available over the next two years.

The freeing up of the New Zealand Screen Production Rebate (NZSPR) to allow funding from our funding bodies for all genres of content to be combined with the NZSPR is meant to be one solution to creating more work and delivering more production by combining domestic and international financing. The verdict on this is still out.

International productions coming in offer very few work opportunities for our domestic directors and editors.

So what to do? Find more money, right?

I’ve looked at the strategic documents from NZ On Air, TMP, and the NZFC. There’s lots of corporate language about vision, mission, objectives, values, etc. And lots of statements about responsibly managing the money they are given. But nothing about getting more money to disperse.

Nobody is talking about finding more money. Even SPADA’s mutterings about a Love Local campaign around which to build momentum for a streamer levy seems to have been jilted.

More money for domestic production means more work for directors and editors.

It’s pretty clear we need to find new sources of funding to make this happen. And fast. Or we’ll all be looking for below-the-line jobs on international productions, which seems to be happening more commonly now.

 

Tui Ruwhiu
Executive Director

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Editor Francis Glenday: How I Got Started in the Industry

My earliest, real childhood memory is being about 3 years old. I’m sitting in front of an electric heater, one of the old fireplace-mounted ones. It has two bright orange electric resistors. In my left hand, I have a toy; a silver metal cowboy gun with white plastic handgrips. And I can remember thinking very clearly “What if I put the barrel of my gun between those two glowing bars?” As I am thinking this I am slowly inching the end of the gun barrel forward, forward toward the point of contact….. 

When I was older my mother told me that the heater basically exploded and I was thrown back across the room. What the hell was I thinking? Well, maybe it wasn’t formulated this clearly, but it was something pivotal to my creative process: What happens if I put THIS between THOSE? And to me, that’s editing; creating a story by putting things together and watching sparks fly.

As a kid, I was forever making forays into the world of narrative. I spent weekends watching countless old movies with my grandmother, I’d while away endless hours drawing and was obsessed with making comic books. In the mid 80’s my father bought an old computer and taught himself how to program in machine code. He showed me how we could reprogram letters on the keyboard into custom art, and then write programs to animate them. I was making my comic book characters move. 

By the mid 90’s I was enrolled in a painting course and painfully coming to the realisation that I just wasn’t good enough to make it as an artist. But I did really enjoy the film elective I’d taken out of curiosity. The comic book stuff, the endless old movies, the knowledge of how to use a computer as a creative tool, and the sense of timing and rhythm I got from playing music in my teens all kind of clicked together in my head.

After swapping my major to film and graduating, I moved to Auckland. I knew that being able to cut student films on Avid wasn’t the same thing as knowing how to edit, so I was going to have to start at the bottom somewhere and grind my way up. At that time TVNZ seemed like a good place to start, so I pestered the head of operations and after a few weeks of almost daily phone calls they gave me a job as a tape opp. After a year though I was restless so I handed in my notice. One of the older hands told me that a small production company was looking for an editor for a new kid’s TV show and asked if I was interested.

I did that job for 4 years, first cutting Tumeke and then the follow-up show Pūkana. Every week I made hundreds of individual edits, and all those cuts added up to a tremendous bank of knowledge. And there was a huge amount of freedom too; we made music videos, comedy skits, I introduced claymation into the mix, and one torturous night with a show a minute short of duration, 2D animation.

From ‘Social Distancing,” an animated web series Francis made during lockdown from his perspective of the COVID-19 pandemic / Photo: supplied

By the time I’d left that job, I’d really learned what being an editor actually is. I was fortunate – I got to edit comedy, music videos, history and science documentaries. I set up my own suite in Auckland in 2004 and having that facility meant I also got to make things that might not happen because of budget, happen. I got to go to Singapore and cut a big documentary there. I learned a lot about editing when working with the director on that project, about how to put disparate shots together on the basis of a similar element. Like cutting a tracking shot through an ancient stone arch in rural China to a matching tracking shot in a tunnel in the science museum in Shanghai can be a perfect edit.

Through this period I also worked on my own projects and wrote and directed a short film in the mid-2000s that screened at festivals all over the world, including Clermont Ferrand.

All those thousands, probably tens of thousands, of individual cuts add up, but a push is what’s needed to take you to the next level. Tearepa Kahi, who I’d first met during my days on Pūkana asked me in 2015 to have a go at finishing off his doco Poi E. I remember after our first screening him looking at me and saying “It’s better, but it’s still not good enough.” Together we hammered at that work, and the film became something really great. Since then I’ve worked on a bunch of exciting movies; drama and documentary, including the HBOMAX original  No I in Threesome. It was just a small film when we started, but the director and I really gave it everything we had and when it went to market, it blew up. Seeing something you’ve edited reviewed in every major publication in North America is a hell of a thing, and I’m intensely proud of it.

From ‘There is No I in Threesome’ edited by Francis

The next big push for me was working on the America’s Cup, a completely different challenge to the doco or drama I’m used to. I suddenly find myself in Barcelona with a very fun mountain to climb. When racing starts and there are helicopters and chase boats with cineflexes tearing around gathering mind-blowing shots every day, it’s hard not to feel excited. And privileged. I’ve made a lot of edits throughout my career, but I still find the work exciting, visceral and fun. After 25 years of this stuff, I feel like I’m really getting the hang of it.

The biggest thing I can say about editing is this: trust your gut rather than your brain and don’t overthink it. If you find yourself in front of a metaphoric wall heater with a cap gun in your hand wondering what will happen if you put the barrel in between those two glowing bars. Go ahead and do it. Something really exciting might happen.

About Francis Glenday

Film Editor with 25 years of experience cutting feature films for theatrical release and streaming (including an HBOMAX original), premiere documentary for international TV & loads of New Zealand and Australian documentary & factual TV, as well as a bit of drama. On top of that, tons of TVCs for some of NZ’s biggest companies (LOTTO, Vodafone, KFC, Samsung etc etc). He was lead editor for the 36th America’s Cup and is back again in 2024 for the 37 iteration of the iconic event. Francis is also experienced in animation and VFX. He created the award-winning animated web series Social Distancing during the COVID lockdown and has created VFX, animation and motion GFX for most of the feature films and a lot of the TV he’s cut.

How I Got Started in the Industry is a guest blog series from the Directors and Editors Guild of Aotearoa New Zealand (DEGANZ). Our members reflect on how they made their way into assistant editing, editing, and directing—with no two stories the same. They offer advice for those starting out. Get in touch with admin@deganz.co.nz if you’re a member and would like to share your story.

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TVNZ Spotlights Our Media Mess… Again

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The financial woes besetting TVNZ with a projected loss of at least $28 million, again highlight the inaction of the current government to address the issues with broadcasting, brought about by the severe negative impact international digital platforms are having on our local media companies. TVNZ advertising revenue is down nearly 16% in comparison to the same time last year. Read about it here.

This diminished advertising revenue is at the heart of the problems with all NZ media companies; screen, print and online.

Labour’s Aotearoa New Zealand Media Bill was intended to help address this but went west with the change in government.

Former Digital Media and Communications Minister Melissa Lee was supposedly formulating a response to the shutdown of Newshub and the reduction of News and Current Affairs at TVNZ as part of the new government’s response to the issues. There was even talk that she was looking at revising our antiquated Broadcasting Act. Then she lost her job and PM Chris Luxon appointed Paul Goldsmith to take over. Nothing’s happened since.

Meanwhile in Canada, the government there has after three years of back and forth passed Bill C11, the Online Streaming Act. The contentious law is intended to address the disruption of content distribution and monetization models that result in a global media market through amendments to their broadcast act. C11 targets social media platforms and streaming services such as Netflix, Crave, Spotify, Amazon Prime Video, Disney+ and YouTube and seeks to subject them to Canadian content requirements and regulations comparable to traditional broadcasters. Read about it here.

The global digital platforms and streamers fought C11 tooth and nail, citing amongst other things the trade agreements the law supposedly contravenes.

As I’ve written about previously, the Australian Government has been going through its own hand-wringing exercise about what to do, with a touted commitment to introducing a streaming quota by July of this year. The Australian screen industry has been pushing for a quota on the streamers to help protect their own domestic industry.

After years of walking the government corridors in both Australia and New Zealand, lobbying against anything that would affect their businesses, the studios/streamers, represented in our territory by the Australia and New Zealand Screen Association, has come out publicly declaring that content quotas would contravene the US-Australia Free Trade Agreement.

Screen Producers Australia have rejected this claim and stated their case for why it should happen. Read all about it here.

We can expect the same fierce reaction from the global platforms and studios/streamers to quotas or levies in NZ. They will undoubtedly haul out our General Agreement on Tarriffs and Trade and World Trade Organisation commitments—There are certainly views here that these are not insurmountable.

The New Zealand government is in the enviable position of seeing how other countries are dealing with this issue: Canada and Australia being two useful examples for us, while in Europe a number of countries already have quotas and/or levies already in place.

Our problem though is that past governments have essentially done little or nothing about it, as exemplified by the parlous state today of our broadcasters and media organisations.

By the look of things, I don’t think we are going to get anything better from the current lot.

 

Tui Ruwhiu
Executive Director

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Director Hweiling Ow: How I Got Started in the Industry

A forty-five-second short horror film, garnering 16 million views online, propelled me into a dream I didn’t know I desired.

Life is a game of random chances. You put in the work and hope the universe aligns. For me, the creative professions were distant stars in the constellation of ‘What you could be when you grew up.’ For good reason. My parents grew up in extreme poverty. There were days when my father’s dinner consisted of just two mouthfuls of food. My mother studied under the light of a kerosene lamp. Surviving life in the thick political humidity of Malaysia, they rose above it all and won national scholarships that turned them into local beacons of hope, elevating their lives to the middle class. This was what made me resist committing to filmmaking for the longest time.

My first memory of watching a movie is time-stamped between the ages of two and five. Perched on my dad’s lap, tightly shutting my eyes and covering my ears in an attempt to shield myself from witnessing the eerie metamorphosis of a man to a werewolf.

My life was filled with any movies I could get my hands on: Hong Kong movies, Bollywood movies, Hollywood movies – I was agnostic. It didn’t matter whether it was good or bad; it was my escape from the stifling Malaysian life. I wondered about my sliding door moment if I never came to New Zealand. Because New Zealand is my enabler.

Hweiling directing on the set of ‘Vaspy’ / Photo: supplied

When Ant Timpson ran a competition for his ABCs of Death anthology. Our team, consisting of Peter Haynes, Johnathan Guest, and Nick Burridge, entered with T is for Talk, a horror concept that I came up with. This was my creative awakening. For the first time, I experienced what it was like to see something my brain cooked up translated to screen. And it was watched, ripped, re-uploaded by others. I believe the true viewership count is in the millions.

From this short film, three things happened almost simultaneously: we received Skip Ahead funding; CryptTV, a digital studio, reached out looking for short horror bites in under a minute; and I received the New Zealand Film Commission’s one-off Women’s Short Horror Film Fund.

We pitched ten ideas to CryptTV, and they selected the two I came up with. I knew nothing about directing and insisted that I needed to direct at least one of the short films we pitched to CryptTV. The Tattooist climbed to 16 million views within the first year.

Hweiling directing on the set of ‘Vaspy’ / Photo: supplied

Being a migrant in this country is challenging. Social nuances are different. I was still looking for my tribe. I had gotten so used to being on the outside. This is where I met my second enabler. A chance meeting with Mia Maramara, where she made me giggle about eyeballs floating in fish guts; we would cook up ideas and enable each other, propelling us into various places. We shared many values. Along the way, we combined forces with the amazing Morgan Leigh Stewart and created MHM Productions with a shared vision to work on genre films and collaborate with cool people.

Homebound 3.0 was another random chance encounter. When NZ On Air called for Asian Pacific web series, I rallied everyone I knew to apply. I had just come off directing Sam Wang in a play and he pitched his idea to me and I immediately saw its potential. It didn’t get into that initiative, but it won the SPADA big pitch 2019 and caught the attention of Kevin and Co. Empowered by friends, I asked to direct a couple of episodes, and thankfully, the team said yes.

Hweiling directing on ‘Vivie’, her latest short film selected to premiere at SXSW Sydney / Photo: supplied

Since then, I have been phenomenally grateful for all the opportunities that have come my way. With the support of the New Zealand Film Commission, I was able to direct and write my short films Vaspy (horror), ChengBeng (Unreal), and Vivie (Kopere Hou). I co-wrote and co-produced Albularyo with the MHM team, which was part of Beyond the Veil on TVNZ. I received the New Zealand Writers Guild Seed Grant and co-wrote the feature horror Grafted with Mia Maramara, set to release later this year. Additionally, I received another Seed Grant for a feature comedy about a nihilistic Asian grandmother.

 My advice to cut through the noise? Utilise the free online soapbox to your advantage. Popularity and external validation literally count. You will be asked what your voice is. And I challenge you to look for the uncomfortable truth within yourself, the one that makes you feel vulnerable. That is likely your authentic voice that people want to hear and see. And then ensure you are supported by a team of people (definitely do a background check no matter what their credits are – hahaha) who will care for that heart as you journey through baring your soul naked to the world.

About Hweiling Ow

Upon arriving in New Zealand, Hweiling Ow was bitten by a radioactive Weta that made her fall stupendously in love with film-making. She has since developed muti-hyphenated skills in the areas of producing, writing, directing and acting, and has been taking the world by storm with her online digital series and short horror films that have garnered millions of views. She has also successfully received New Zealand funding for numerous local productions. Like a moth drawn to a flame thrower, she is attracted to telling genre stories with a migrant twist. Her quirky cheery view of the world influences the type of projects she is captivated by. She is the recipient of the 2020 WIFT Women to Watch and participated in DEGANZ’s Women’s Filmmaker Incubator in 2021. She is currently one-third of MHM, a collaborative production company between her and fellow creatives Mia Maramara and Morgan Leigh Stewart.

How I Got Started in the Industry is a guest blog series from the Directors and Editors Guild of Aotearoa New Zealand (DEGANZ). Our members reflect on how they made their way into assistant editing, editing, and directing—with no two stories the same. They offer advice for those starting out. Get in touch with admin@deganz.co.nz if you’re a member and would like to share your story.

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New Zealand Film Is Alive And Well

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I watched Loren Taylor’s directorial debut The Moon Is Upside Down the other night. For me, it’s a well-crafted film with quirky characters, very smart dialogue (both scripted and improvised), and comedy and depth in abundance, woven into an intriguing story.

It was a 125 film, being a film financed at $1.25 million through an initiative for female filmmakers instigated by former NZFC CEO Annabelle Sheehan, and funded as part of an initiative to celebrate New Zealand’s 125 years of universal suffrage.

This kind of film is extremely difficult to get financed these days. There are no A-list stars although Jemaine Clement, Rachel House, and now Robyn Malcolm who appear in the film amongst other stellar cast have excellent international profiles.

It’s a quintessentially Kiwi film with a very European sensibility—understandable when Loren cites Before the Rain by Macedonian director Milcho Manchevski and German director Maren Ade’s Toni Erdmann amongst her inspirations.  It’s no wonder then that Moon was selected for the highly regarded Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival in Estonia, where Loren won Best First Feature. But it wasn’t easy getting it produced.

One of the things that allowed the film to be made according to producer Philippa Campbell, who was in the Q & A after the screening, was that Moon didn’t have the typical NZFC requirement on it to have an international sales agent who was putting up some funding through a minimum guarantee.

Finding a sales agent willing to put up money today for a New Zealand film is a difficult thing to do. They don’t want drama unless you’ve got A-List international stars. And even then it can be tough. But they do want genre. Or something like a name director or an indigenous story, preferably with genre elements, that elevates the film above the myriad out there clamouring for funding. The international market is exceedingly tough for indie films, and all NZ films are considered indie, no matter the genre.

Moon is a genre film in that it’s categorised a comedy on IMDB, although it’s a comedy drama in my view as it’s a comedy with heart and soul, more akin to an art house film than something like the slapstick Cocaine Bear. And it’s in art-house film where NZ has excelled in the past, whether it’s Christine Jeff’s Rain, our last film to get into Cannes, or the high hopes held for the recent New Zealand – Australia coproduction Went Up The Hill, directed by ex-pat Kiwi Samuel Van Grinsven, which has been positioned as a horror/thriller with seemingly arthouse smackings. We have in the past, and do now, though, have genre chops, too.

NZFC CEO Annie Murray has praised Went Up The Hill as a film deserving of NZFC investment. She has said that NZFC won’t look just at box office potential when deciding to fund films—films with A-list festival potential are also worthy of NZFC funding. She’s also told us that market interest, being distributors and sales agents (and maybe streamers) who are willing to put up money because of potential commercial returns will have a key role in deciding which films get funded. And she’s highlighted the importance of audience eyeballs on our films. There’s a seeming dichotomy here, so I look forward to the funding model being revealed that allows for a breadth of New Zealand screen storytelling that can generate critical acclaim, box office success, or both.

In the meantime, I’ll relish the experience of having watched The Moon Is Upside Down, because it tells me at least that New Zealand film is alive and well.

 

Tui Ruwhiu
Executive Director

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