What’s Happening?

Looking out my window I can see pohutukawa blossoms on my tree. Spring really is here. An interesting time to take the temperature on the industry, I thought. So I decided to ring around the other guilds and pose a simple question: What’s happening? Here are the responses I got as well as my own:

WRITERS GUILD
Alice Shearman, Executive Director (ED) of the New Zealand Writers Guild (NZWG), tells me the good news is that membership is up 20%. They are conducting an internal review of their processes for members, and refocusing on their core services around contracts, lobbying, rates and guidelines. They are also reviewing the Seed Grant Funding to ensure its fit for purpose. They’ve got the Screen Writer Awards New Zealand (SWANZ) on 22 September, will be sharing a booth at the Big Screen Symposium with DEGNZ, are launching in the not too distant future a Find A Writer function on their website so that you can easily locate writers for work, and will open the next Call for Applications for the Seed Grant Fund on 23 September. The Government’s Creative Sector Review also earns NZWG attention.

ACTORS EQUITY
Over at Actors Equity NZ, Industrial Organiser/Officer Melissa Ansell-Bridges has said they’ve a number of activities on the go, including:

  • A series of Green Rooms on Self-taping and Showreels in Wellington and Auckland to prepare actors for this growing aspect of auditioning.
  • Finalised survey on Theatre conditions in New Zealand, assessing results currently
  • Beginning preparations for our Graduate Day, an opportunity to welcome new actors into the industry and prepare them with important information.
  • Had a number of great workshops this year through the Equity Foundation including 2 days with Melissa Bruder, Brita McVeigh, Sara Wiseman, Jennifer Ward-Lealand and Stuart Turner.
  • Preparations underway for an Actors Benevolent Fund fundraiser quiz night.

Melissa also tells me that they’ve also announced that Elizabeth McRae is the recipient of the Equity New Zealand Lifetime Achievement.

NZ TECHOS
International productions remain a significant workload for the New Zealand Film and Video Technicians’ Guild, according to Executive Officer, Karla Rogers. There are always immigration issues and with the new Health and Safety regulations in force from 1 April, ensuring H & S compliance, particularly on lower budget shoots coming into the country, is high on the list. Health and Safety Officers are like gold at the moment and will be for the foreseeable future. The volume of production both domestic and international is relatively high, and crew shortages are a real concern, even with the commercials market a little on the quiet side.

SPADA
It’s a busy time too with the Screen Production and Development Association, as ED Sandy Gildea reports. SPADA is leading a joint stand with NZFC at the main TV market MIPCOM in October, providing a branded umbrella for Kiwi producers to work under. They will also be putting into effect an MOU signed with the UK’s producer body PACT that will see some new initiatives at MIPCOM. Their International Training Programme (ITP) with Angus Finney has its third and final module from 21 – 23 November, immediately followed by the annual SPADA conference on the 24th & 25th. The calls for the South Pacific Pictures Big Pitch and nominations for the SPADA Industry Awards are out now. SPADA have also secured a travel bursary from Grow Wellington, now called WREDA, that will support one producer from the 2015 and 2016 years of the ITP to attend the Production Finance Market in the UK… and it’s Wellington’s David Stubbs who gets it. Like NZWG, SPADA is also actively involved in the Government’s Creative Sector Review.

DEGNZ
Here at DEGNZ we continue to address the lack of copyright for directors, and engage with government over the Creative Sector Review as well. We maintain our very close communication with the Australian Directors Guild as they negotiate with the Screen Producers Association of Australia over terms and conditions for TV drama directors. DEGNZ board member and long time director Grant Campbell has now seen in two board meetings as a new board member of the Australian Screen Directors Authorship Collecting Society, and on the DEGNZ board we have recently said thanks and farewell to Richard Riddiford and Costa Botes, both of whom contributed significantly to the governance of the guild. We continue to operate an extensive professional development programme for directors and editors, and we will be announcing a call shortly for a documentary editing mentorship. Next week we will be holding our inaugural Women Filmmakers Incubator with an exciting lineup of experts, coming on the back of three of the guild’s women directors receiving a Gaylene Preston Directors’ Award. And as Alice of NZWG mentioned, we will be sharing a booth at the Big Screen Symposium, so please come and say hello to our board members and staff, or just hang out during sessions. On the DEGNZ staff front, Samantha Caughey, our former Events and Marketing Coordinator, whom many of you will have dealt with, has taken up a bigger workload at the University of Auckland. Replacing her is the highly capable Tema Pua, an intern at DEGNZ during 2016. With Christmas now in sight we have begun planning for the annual Combined Guilds Xmas Party, dates and venues to come.

Hope you’re all enjoying the sunshine after that interminable rain, in Auckland at least.

Tui Ruwhiu
Executive Director

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Post Insights

This weekend DEGNZ is running a two-day workshop with award-winning film editor David Coulson. David has a working relationship with director Niki Caro that has seen him edit her last five films, including her latest The Zookeepers Wife, starring Jessica Chastain and Daniel Brühl.

While looking for background information on David I came across an article from a Script to Screen session that was hosted by DEGNZ member and director Leanne Pooley with David and another DEGNZ member, editor Cushla Dillon.

A few comments that David and Cushla made jumped out at me:

David (on letting the writer into the edit suite):
“The writer and I are fundamentally connected, the two processes are inter-related, but when I am working in the suite, that ends. It would be like inviting a thoroughbred horse into a slaughterhouse because what is going on in there can be mercenary and seemingly destructive.  I take scenes the scriptwriter saw at the end and put them at the beginning. I’ve chopped scenes in half and put them in different places. It’s the last stop before this thing rolls out the door for the rest of its life so you have to be open to some of these seemingly destructive possibilities because new things that might not have been envisaged can come from that.”

Cushla (on rhythm):
“My response is purely to the material,” said Cushla. “The script is just a plan or a draft. I read a lot of scripts and when you read a great one, words just roll off the page and you don’t stop and think about how it will all come together. The writer has written a great script – and here’s a tip for writers! Read good, well written scripts, look at how the writer inserts the details without dictating to me how I will cut a scene. I look at how the images respond to each other, taking time to consider and meditate on all the images and the work of the craftspeople involved in the shooting.”

David (on the responsibility of the director to honour the script):
“We always honour the process,” said David. “Someone has written something, then someone has filmed it and then we need to put it all together. To do that, we have to stand back. The script exists only on paper and it doesn’t have the cadences and rhythms of actors speaking or the extraordinary shots that make up a film. The script is the navigation point and we all attempt to faithfully re-create it.”

Cushla and David (on the boundaries when working with a writer/director):
“The editor’s role is that of negotiator,” said Cushla. “I see myself as the audience’s representative. I’m there to interpret the material I see so that it honours the script and the intent of the director but I’m also there to negotiate with the writer/director. If I think they’re not using the best technique to communicate or are a bit misguided, I’ll tell them. For new writer/directors, there is so much to learn and it is an intimate relationship based upon trust. Leave your ego at the door because we’re all here to honour the film and the story it tells. If things don’t work out it doesn’t mean you are a bad filmmaker but let’s use the skills we have to make the best film we can.”

David responded that it is different when the writer/director is there. “It’s hard to generalise because everyone is different but it can be tricky. Some writer/directors I’ve worked with are obsessively protective of what they’ve written and some are the opposite. We can come to a fork in the road: re-interpret a film and make it a good one, a different one, or do the best we can with an idea that really isn’t the best. Every decision that is made in the room has to be dealt with as dispassionately and yet as emotionally as possible, and that is a weird thing. I use humour in the editing suite, especially if the process is gruelling.”

I felt that these are extremely valuable insights for any team heading into a feature film, particular a debut feature. And they highlight a few of the many reasons why you should get the best editor you can onto your project. Thanks to Script-to-Screen for the permission to reprint these takeouts here.

 

Tui Ruwhiu
Executive Director

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Gender Matters

I was at the Melbourne International Film Festival’s 37 South Financing Market last week when Graeme Mason, CEO of Screen Australia and former NZFC CEO, launched the final two parts of their $5 million Gender Matters plan—a $1 million incentive for distributors to look at and consider quality female-driven projects from the outset, and a fund for placements for women on scripted drama projects that have funding from Screen Australia

Two days later, the Australian Directors Guild held a discussion titled ‘Talking Pictures – Breaking the Celluloid Ceiling’, offering an opportunity to meet the women who challenge the notion that men dominate creative leadership in Australian feature film. The panel brought directors Gillian Armstrong, Jocelyn Moorhouse, Sue Brooks, Kitty Green and Sophie Hyde together to talk about navigating the highs and lows of being a female director in the Australian film industry. I was unfortunately unable to attend this but I did hear some opinions after, including a call for Screen Australia dollar spend to be split 50/50 between men and women.

Here in New Zealand at the guild we held two key discussions together with WIFT to look at gender issues in film and TV. From what we learned DEGNZ developed, got funded and launched the Women Filmmakers Incubator, which will start in September. Through five workshops across a 10-month period, the Incubator provides the opportunity for 10 emerging women filmmakers to develop their knowledge, skils and networks to help further their projects and careers.

To help address the gender imbalance in film, the New Zealand Film Commission launched the JC Cinefem Scholarship in 2015, awarded to cinematographer Maria Innes Manchego. Then in 2016, they announced the Gaylene Preston Directors’ Award, a $50,000 grant fund for one or more women filmmakers to advance their practice.

Behind the scenes at NZFC and in other screen organisations, and outside wherever their funding flows to, there is an expectation that there will be gender equity as much as possible in all things.

The above are baby steps that are seeking to address the systematic discrimination against women and their stories in film and television that has been going on for decades. We need to do more, and at DEGNZ we will continue to look for opportunities to do so.

In the meantime, Guys, get used to the idea that for the foreseeable future you are only going to be able to get a bite at 50 per cent of the pie—a situation for many that is long overdue.

 

Tui Ruwhiu
Executive Director

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A Feast For The Eyes

The New Zealand International Film Festival (NZIFF) is almost upon us. It’s usually my opportunity to catch up on as many films as I can jam in; films that often don’t get a release here but have achieved significant recognition in festivals, often in Europe.

I’ve just gotten back from spending eight days closeted in a Lithuanian hotel with 70 or so almost exclusively European writers, directors and producers, learning about coproducing there. Many European films are made as co-productions. Just look at the country credits in the NZIFF programme to see this. Two, three, four countries receive origin credits on many of the films. Filmmakers have to collaborate to survive in Europe. And they do. Co-productions broaden the potential financing base, allowing films to get made that can’t get up solely in one country.

While New Zealand has official coproduction treaties with 17 countries and counting, we don’t make that many official co-productions. Different regulatory environments, content that doesn’t easily span the divide and cultural differences are just some of the reasons why.

We don’t have a coproduction treaty with Australia, rather a Memorandum of Understanding—essentially the same thing. You’d think that with similar languages and cultures that we’d be working frequently with our Australian counterparts, but that’s not the case, although it’s changing. When our incentive increased to 40 per cent for TV as well as film, a lot of Australians noticed.

Australians like us are dependent on government financing to get films made. Director Niki Caro reminded us when she spoke at DEGNZ Selects last month to appreciate and treasure this government support, which allows us to get films up and out into the world for audiences to see. And that’s an increasingly difficult thing to do.

New Zealand and Australian filmmakers alike struggle to get their own people to watch their films. Of course there are the Wilderpeople and Last Cab to Darwin exceptions, but generally locally produced films in both countries have a hard time at the box office. The same lacklustre results come from our films in their market and vice versa.

It’s no easier for films in Europe. Most of them certainly don’t make their money back either. And they have as much difficulty as we do to find audiences for their films amidst the competition for eyeballs going on.

It is interesting for me to note the difference in filmmaking between Australasia and Europe from my recent experience.

Down here, there is a distinct pulling away from arthouse and toward genre and commercial films. Up there, of the 29 projects at the workshop I was at, 16 were arthouse, 2 animation, 4 documentary, 4 thriller, 2 comedy drama and 1 romcom. And in the genre areas (thriller, comedy drama, romcom), 50 per cent of the projects were from the UK. Arthouse still rules in Europe.

European filmmakers, particularly directors, it seems to me, see film as art. And they very intently use it to make strong thematic statements through macro and micro storytelling. Educated to think in three-act Anglo Saxon story structure, I can tell you it’s been difficult to analyse a 50-page arthouse feature film script from a European writer director who writes pictorially.

In the end, we may have different approaches to storytelling but we are all after the same result—to craft a strong film that has something to say and for it to find an audience to say it to. Arthouse? Entertainment? Something else? Different strokes for different folks.

Thank God for the New Zealand International Film Festival. It has pretty much something for everyone, Hollywood blockbusters aside, and the best of European filmmaking on offer. Make the most of it.

Tui Ruwhiu
Executive Director

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Foreign Imports

A few issues around foreign imports have my attention at the moment.

One is that I am after a new car. I’ve been bidding on cars on auction in Japan, and if successful, it will be sent to New Zealand by boat.

Another is the news that the Tourism industry in New Zealand expects international visitor spending to increase by 48 per cent to $11.1 billion by 2020, with an increase in international visitor numbers to grow from 2.9 million in 2014 to 3.75 million by 2021.

To cope with the expected demand over the next 10 years, New Zealand Trade and Enterprise says we need another 26 hotels.

The numbers for Tourism speak for themselves. But with the unexpected upsurge particularly from China, we are beginning to get swamped, with a corresponding strain on infrastructure. Already, questions are being raised at ground level about how many tourists we can handle, want to, and what the quality of that tourism should be.

Meanwhile in Queenstown, Film Otago Southland head Kevin Jennings (KJ) was recently on Radio New Zealand saying that it’s becoming extremely difficult to find hotel rooms for visiting crews because of tourism demand, and with the cost of accommodation rising because rooms are at a premium, production budgets are blowing out so much that productions are going elsewhere.

In addition to Queenstown, KJ mentioned that Auckland struggles with crew accommodation from time to time. And as many who work in the international production sector in Auckland are aware, the region continues to miss out on international productions while Auckland flounders around from proposed site to proposed site while trying to convince councillors of the value of film and TV and the need to help fund a modern, purpose-built studio precinct. On top of that, with the debilitating effect of the non-competitive film & TV incentives of 2012/13 resulting in many highly experienced crew giving up on the industry or fleeing offshore, there are often crew shortages in key areas.

Domestic production isn’t abating, even with the static funding the industry suffers from—the issue is making it on the funding available when costs have been escalating year on year. Adding to the increase in production activity is NZ content being made with funding from elsewhere and going straight offshore, stimulated by the government incentives.

It’s those incentives that are driving international production here, too. Unless we become significantly uncompetitive against other countries—which could happen—the interest in shooting here will only continue.

It seems at least to me that if everything continues to conspire positively as is happening now, we can expect the amount of production being done in New Zealand to increase.

The New Zealand tourism industry running around intoxicated with its success and still pushing for quantity over quality is only going to exacerbate the woes for productions in New Zealand, domestic and international. A good indicator that a bit of planning could be necessary on our part.

Perhaps it’s time for someone to develop a national film and television strategy that also takes into account the interrelated nature of how we in the New Zealand film and television production sector operate within the overall New Zealand business environment. An overarching strategy should help us head off issues and develop plans that will ensure the New Zealand production sector has a good future as we head toward what looks like a busier one for many of us.

The imported car thing? A bit of a red herring, really. But for information’s sake, in 2015 the Motor Trade Association identified 143,642 used imported vehicle sales. In 2016, I am hoping to add one to the total.

Tui Ruwhiu
Executive Director

 

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