Missing in Action

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There’s a coalition government in power now whose focus is on the economy and righting what they see as the wrongs of the government before.

I decided to go trawling to see if there was any hope for the arts, culture and heritage or the media and communications sectors in the government’s communications.

A visit to the National Party website—some of which is still worded as if they haven’t won the election yet—didn’t turn up anything. I reviewed the Eight Point Commitment Card, the Fiscal Plan, the 100-Day Action Plan and the 100-Point Action Plan. Nothing.

Next, I took a look at the NZ First Website and the NZ First National Party Coalition Agreement. Nada.

So I went to the Act Party website and their coalition agreement with National. No rays of sunshine there.

I took a look at what our Ministers, Melissa Lee for Media and Comms and Paul Goldsmith for Culture and Heritage, have been saying via speeches and press releases. A couple of warm fuzzies but not for the screen sector from Minister Lee. And from Minister Goldsmith, some press releases from his other portfolios.

Getting desperate I went to the Ministry of Culture and Heritage’s (MCH) website and read the Overarching Briefing For The Incoming Ministers for Arts, Culture and Heritage 2023, and the Briefing For The Incoming Minister For Media and Communications 2023. At last something positive. Sort of.

The briefings are documents to inform the incoming Ministers about their portfolios. And some hopes from the Ministry on what they would like the Ministers to consider and do, in light of the government’s priorities as outlined in all the plans and coalition agreements mentioned earlier. Which of course had nothing to say about arts, culture and heritage, and media and communications. But as the government has made it very clear what its priorities are, MCH has, where possible, linked those priorities directly or indirectly to the portfolios.

A few things stood out to me.

  1. MCH did bring up copyright around content, a revenue generator.
  2. They also spoke to the possibility of a streamer levy to assist with the production of local content—a way to add to government investment.
  3. There was mention of the New Zealand Screen Production Rebate as a possible source of funding for a ‘skills levy’ or to develop and implement a ‘skills plan’. Another way for the government to utilise non-government funds for a positive outcome.

DEGANZ spent a considerable amount of time and some money seeking to get our views heard when the Copyright Act Review was live and active. We want directors to share in the copyright with producers for cinematographic film and audiovisual content. The Review was halted but it will definitely come back, particularly with AI being such a big issue now.

We have long advocated for a streamer levy, and when SPADA announced towards the end of last year that they too wanted to pursue it, we were pleased. Good to see MCH talking about it.

In the New Zealand Screen Production Investment Review, we welcomed the possibility of a levy built into what was then called the Screen Production Grant and is now the Screen Production Rebate. But we want it to apply only to international productions, not domestic productions—the last thing we need is for another new line item to chip away at what are already miserly budgets.

Although the government is certainly missing in action at this point when it comes to the portfolios that impact us directly, it’s good to see that MCH is pushing some things we have focused on in which this current government could see value. Now we have to get the Ministers to see it and get behind it.

 

Tui Ruwhiu
Executive Director

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Still Crazy After All These Years

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You’d have thought things might have settled after the COVID years. But, no, it’s still crazy. And what a year it’s been.

The long mooted merger of TVNZ and RNZ finally fell over.

The $60 million taken away from NZ On Air returned with an additional one-off $10 million.

The New Zealand Screen Production Grant, after months of uncertainty, while MBIE and MCH tried to figure out what to do, ultimately with a few tweaks became the NZ Screen Production Rebate.

New NZFC CEO Annie Murray replaced the missing-in-action David Strong and kicked off a major shake-up at the commish, appointing a Change Manager in Dana Youngman.

The writers’ and actors’ strikes in the U.S. that essentially paralysed Hollywood and shook up the global screen industry for half a year were resolved, with the actors’ membership just ratifying the deal.

We now have a three-party coalition government with Paul Goldsmith as Minister of Culture and Heritage, Melissa Lee as Minister of Media and Communications and Economic Development, and Brooke van Velden of the Act Party as the new Minister of Workplace Relations and Safety, from whence the Screen Industry Workers Act sprang.

DEGANZ became the talk of the town with its opposition to a British director directing ‘New Zealand’ film The Canyon, which tells the story of a woman who finds herself in peril traversing the Grand Canyon. It went ahead despite our protests.

And the television of unease that has been After The Party has concluded to rapturous acclaim. It seems our now eschewed, uniquely strange and dark film industry traits have permeated Kiwi telly to good effect.

Just some of the things making 2023 a momentous year. So what’s coming up in 2024?

I’m aware of at least four international productions arriving on our shores over the next few months, so if you are looking to hire experienced crew for a scripted production, good luck. If you are a graduating film school student or someone looking for a job change, however, a below-the-line crew job probably won’t come any easier.

A $6 million budget cut at NZFC doesn’t bode well for NZ film unless the board gets off its chuff and finds more money for the org. to make films with. Perhaps SPADA’s about turn on the idea of a streamer levy might inspire the NZFC board to look further than government coffers.

NZ On Air is full of enthusiasm about its role as a multi-party and gap financier for New Zealand productions with international finance partners and the opportunities that might bring, thanks to the Screen Sector Investment Review. Quite how this fits with its focus on making content for New Zealanders first and with a free-to-air remit is going to be an interesting watch.

Warner Bros. Discovery and SKY seem to be finding their mojo while TVNZ still seems a bit aimless with no replacement for former CEO Simon Powell in sight. How to make a commercially-driven,  public-broadcasting behemoth into a lean and fit, profitable fighting machine amidst a world of declining advertising revenues is going to be a herculean task for anyone in 2024.

As I’ve mentioned previously in this column, the international streamers are going to make you pay for the pleasure of watching advertising on their platforms. This seems to have inspired local streamer Neon to up its prices and announce the introduction of advertising. We’ll find out how Kiwis respond to that.

At the same time, the mad rush of streamers to make original content and own it is now on the downward slope, with licensing programming the new mantra. After ten years of peak TV drama internationally, we seem to be just finding our feet locally with shows like Far North and After The Party (two Premium Drama projects). As we never got in on the international streamer commissioning act except for the long ago Dark Tourist, licensing might prove to be our saviour.

At the Guild, we have a new board in place filled with enthusiasm for the work in the year ahead. There’s going to be a lot.

Undoubtedly, the changes coming at NZFC will not suit everyone, and there will be discussions to be had. The ever-changing marketplace for content brings both opportunities and challenges for our members and our industry that will require our attention. The need to remain financially viable in these tough economic times for everyone, demands our focus, too. Then of course there’s the new government and what that will mean for our industry. And once again, thanks to NZFC, we have a comprehensive professional development programme to roll out in the coming year.

It’s important though to take stock of where we are at right now.

We have improved membership numbers, though we still need more to help us do our work. We have good working relationships with the funding bodies and organisations that impact our sector. Collaboration with the other guilds and associations has grown over the last few years to a point where we communicate and cooperate effectively, even with our differences.

We have many dedicated people both on and off our board who give time, expertise and knowledge voluntarily—a special thank you from me and the organisation goes out to them.

Thanks also go to the New Zealand Film Commission, New Zealand On Air, the Australian Screen Directors Authorship Collection Society and Screenrights who have contributed financially to our operations and the work we did over the last year, and some, many years. While accounting firm VCFO, Resene Paints, and now Madman Entertainment make in-kind contributions or offer discounts or products that members can take advantage of.

I also wish to thank the staff who have helped me in 2023—Maddie Payne our Events and Marketing Manager, Izzi Hoskyn our Membership Coordinator, and our recently departed accounts person Caroline Harrow, who has seen the guild through three EDs in Anna Cahill, Fiona Copland and me across her 13 years working for us.

Things are crazy busy and will continue to be so for us here. We hope the same for you and that success will come with your mahi, however, it manifests itself.

We also hope that you find the time during the festive season to enjoy, rest and replenish your energy for 2024.

Ngā mihi o te wā

 

Tui Ruwhiu
Executive Director

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Director Josh Frizzell: How I Got Started in the Industry

I was expelled from Penrose High in the fifth form after getting caught wagging for a month (I faked the absentee notes from Mum and Dad). I ended up going on the dole (unemployment benefit) for a year. At the dole department you had to show signs of actually seeking work and when they asked me what I would like to do for a living, I said, “A film director” and she looked at me like I was mad. She gave me a French Polishing apprenticeship instead, of which I never attended. Anyway, I showed her!

After a year of bumming around, a friend (Matt Palmer, who also became a director) suggested I go to Auckland Metropolitan High School, an alternative school in Mount Eden which basically accepted high school dropouts from hippy parents. Metro is where I finally met like-minded people and made lifelong friends. I met Matt Noonan at Metro (later to become my first producer). It was after passing the University Entrance and sticking around Metro for a seventh year (then called a Bursary year) that I discovered ‘The Film Industry’.

Early in that seventh year at school, I got a job as an extra in a period coal mining TV drama called Heart of The High Country. I’d never seen a film set before, it was a real eye-opener, lights, actors, 1st AD’s smashing radios in fits of rage. It was a lot of fun. I loved it. I befriended the standby props guy, Al Ford, and he let me do the smoke pots for background smoke texture. I actually made friends with a lot of the crew and at the wrap party offered my services on the next production. A few weeks later I was on an epic Hong Kong Feature film called Aces Go Places, as standby props assistant, choppering up the Shot Over River in Queenstown with prop machine guns on my lap. I never went back to high school and have been working in the film biz ever since.

Josh working as Art Department Assist on ‘Never Say Die’. He’s standing under the ‘W’ with Robin Murphy; Matt Murphy (Art Director) with Matt Palmer (Stand-by Props) are in the bottom right holding the white dots / Photo: Supplied

I moved to Wellington and Matt Palmer and I became a bit of a hot shot art department team working on commercials and films in the hay days (or the end of the hay days) of the Wellington film and TV commercial industry. Working on projects with some of New Zealand’s top directors, Geoff Murphy, Lee Tamahori, Barry Barclay, Gaylene Preston, Geoff Dickson and Fane Flaws to name a few. Matt was an art director and I was standby props. 

My brother was in a hip-hop band, Mc OJ and The Rhythm Slave, and they received one of the very early NZ On Air music video grants and asked us to make it. Matt Noonan produced it, Matt Palmer directed it and I art directed it.

It was hugely successful, and we went on to make a few more (with our company Hip Operations) until Matt Palmer got picked up by a commercial company to direct ads (with Fane Flaws and Jeff Williams at Black Stump Films).

With Matt Palmer busy making ads, that’s when my break came. I art directed a few more music videos with various artists. I was always good-ish at illustration and had been storyboarding the videos. One video in particular for the band Head Like a Hole (for a song called Fish Across Face), was really well received and I had storyboarded the whole thing. They were my shots and my ideas. I was like, ‘Hang on, I’m doing all the work here’. So, when they asked me to storyboard/art direct the next one, I said to them (and I remember this moment very clearly as I had to really pluck up the nerve to say it), “Not unless I’m directing it”. 

Josh on set of one of his first big ad campaigns for the NZ Electoral roll with Darryl Ward (DOP) and Rob Marsh (AC) / Photo: Supplied

And that’s how I got started.  

Here’s the Head Like A Hole clip, my directing debut. Not that it did huge things, but I was asked back and went on to direct multiple award-winning videos and ads. The Emma Paki video won a lot of awards. Then I followed up with a Shihad video for ‘Stations’ which won Best Video at the Film and Television awards that year. Certain projects catch people’s attention and simply generate more interest. I shot a huge campaign for the NZ Electoral role on the back of this, my first big proper ad campaign. I made a commercial for Sony Home Theatre Systems out of Singapore which made the cover of the Shots Magazine, with the commercial in the first dozen showcase ads (Shots Magazine was the international benchmark trade rag back then and the mail-out VHS showcase was everything). My international commercial career really took off after this.

Left: Josh showing the actors what to do on set for Shihad video ‘Stations’ with Darryl Ward (DOP) in a clay pit with one of the old Arri ST 16mm cameras. Note there is no video split/feed! Right: The final shot of the video / Photos: Supplied

My first break in drama came when I was asked to pitch on a Colin McCahon doco, but I didn’t get the gig and I said to the producer (Fiona Copland) that documentaries weren’t really my thing but I would love to do drama, and she suggested I give Greenstone Pictures a call because they were producing a kids action hero TV show called Amazing Extraordinary Friends. It was super low budget, but super fun. This was at the height of my commercial career and I had to take a significant hit on my earnings, but I really wanted to shoot drama and this was my chance. The people I worked with then on AEF are still the people I am working with today. Dave Cameron was the DOP and he shot my first tele feature years later, Ablaze. With the success of my work on AEF, I was picked up by Chris Bailey at South Pacific Pictures where I worked on multiple shows and really cut my teeth and learnt the craft. Getting a chance to direct a block on Westside, a legacy NZ show, was a real highlight. I was also a finalist for the NZTV Awards’ Best Director for The Brokenwood Mysteries in 2017. SPP has really helped a lot.

So, a lot of luck, a lot of sacrifice and a lot of hard work. I am currently in post-production on a six one-hour TV mini-series called Friends Like Her, produced by Great Southern TV. A show I am immensely proud of, so keep an eye out.

About Josh Frizzell

Josh Frizzell is one of Australasia’s most well-known drama and commercial film directors. Since starting out in the art department after dropping out of high school, he went on to direct a run of music videos in the 90s before moving into film and TV. Frizzell has gone on to helm episodes of Under the Vines, The Brokenwood Mysteries and Fresh Eggs. In 2017 he was nominated as Best Director for his work on The Brokenwood Mysteries at the NZ Television Awards’. In 2019, he was a finalist for the Huawei Mate30 Pro NZ Television Awards’ Best Director for Fresh Eggs. Ablaze was nominated for Best Tele Feature at the 2020 NZ Film and Television Awards. His advertising work has won multiple awards both in New Zealand and abroad.

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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The Levy Ain’t Dry

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I’m personally thrilled to see SPADA coming out strongly for a levy on streamers recently. It’s something I’ve been advocating for in this column going back four years, ‘Show Me the Money’, ‘Time for a Reset’, ‘An Answer to NZ’s Broadcasting Industry Dilemma?’ and most recently this year in this Stuff article here.

Across the Tasman, the Australians are still pushing for a 20% levy on streamers, but you need to look to Europe to see what can be achieved by countries who truly understand the contribution that their own screen industries make to their creative, cultural and financial well-being.

Rather than write about it, I have included this table compiled by The imec-SMIT-VUB research group in September 2022 (the latest comprehensive data I could find). There’s a lot of food for thought here for SPADA and the rest of us.

Tui Ruwhiu
Executive Director

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What’s the buzz, tell me what’s a-happening?

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NZ On Air’s Where Are the Audiences Survey 2023 confirmed what previous reports have been warning of—the death of linear television in New Zealand. (WATA research here.)

Three telling points were highlighted in the document that attest to this:

• All traditional media continue to show consistently declining audiences, with TV no longer attracting the biggest audiences during its traditional peak time of 6-10.30pm.
• For the first time the study is showing significant declines in traditional media use among 60+ year olds, and 40-59 year olds are now at the cross-over point where digital media audiences overtake traditional media.
• 2023 also represents the cross-over point when New Zealanders overall start to spend more time using digital media than traditional media.

I’m in one of those older demographics, and I can tell you that I spend more time watching YouTube than I do watching broadcast TV.

If you look at the most popular channels, sites and stations graph, you can see that I’m one of the people who has in 2023 made YouTube the biggest attractor of New Zealand audiences each day at 44%, with Netflix sitting just behind at 42%. TVNZ 1 has gone from 48% in 2014 to 34%, while TVNZ 2 doesn’t even do well enough to get on the graph, at 11%–a death rattle if ever I’ve heard one. TV3 is the bottom player on the graph, going from 34% in 2014 to 17% this year. The rising TikTok sits two percentage points above at 19%. No wonder NZ On Air is throwing money at TikTok in pursuit of the elusive yoof audience.

New Zealand’s bastion of commercial TV media, our public broadcaster TVNZ, after a post -COVID advertising recovery under the canny watch of former CEO Kevin Kenrick, is in throes of its own. With a projected loss of $15.6 million in the 2023/2024 year due to slumping advertising revenue, the belts there are being severely tightened. Head of Drama and Scripted Comedy Steve Barr got the push under a restructure, and now Chief Transformation Officer Kate Calver (Slater) has left to take up the CEO role at Great Southern TV. A positive for TVNZ is that TVNZ+ on the NZ on Air graph has seen its audience reach grow from 14% in 2016 to 32% in 2023, sitting just under TVNZ 1. I think some acknowledgement for this needs to go to former TVNZ CEO Rick Ellis and his digital strategist Simon Aimer, who drove TVNZ into the digital era with their “Inspiring on Every Screen” strategy. With an interim CEO still in place after the departure of Simon Powell following the collapse of the RNZ – TVNZ merger, and a new chair in current NZFC Chair Alastair Carruthers, there’s undoubtedly more transformation to come in that balliwick.

Back at the NZFC ranch, Dana Youngman has been appointed Change Manager by new NZFC CEO Annie Murray, to bring about transformation that the filmish screen industry has been baying for, for years. Change there is also driven by the recent budget cuts NZFC has suffered or will face in the near future. We shall find out what comes in this space in the not-to-distant future, but for the time being we’ll just have to wait… like we’ve been doing since Annabelle Sheehan departed in 2021.

Competition has seen Netflix and some other streamers on the advertising-driven bandwagon for some time now. Netflix has just introduced title sponsorships and binge ads to its advertising offerings. At the same time, its subscription prices for their ad-carrying service and their ad-free service have gone up in the US and will soon in the UK, France, and undoubtedly elsewhere. It’s ironic when you think about it: you used to get advertising for nothing on Free to Air TV. Now you have to pay for it on advertising-carrying subscriber services.

Consolidation is coming in the streamer world is the catch cry we hear more and more these days. We are also being told that peak TV is over, with streamer budgets and commissioning shrinking. Not only has NZ completely missed the Golden Age of Television Drama globally, but it’s become increasingly harder for us to play catch up with the same old or decreasing domestic budgets–we shall see if the New Zealand Screen Production Rebate changes this.

Exacerbating the uncertainty for the NZ screen industry is the ongoing SAG-AFTRA strike. I’ve heard international productions are backed up, wanting to get into NZ to shoot. Yes, the writers are writing but nothing can be done without actors. The actors’ down-tools has gone past the 100-day mark with no real end in sight. Both the guilds and the studios while still talking do seem to be at considerable loggerheads.

I guess the only thing to do at this point is to smile and sing a little tune:

Try not to get worried, try not to turn on to
Problems that upset you, oh
Don’t you know
Everything’s alright, yes, everything’s fine…

Tui Ruwhiu
Executive Director

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