Are You Ready?

15 May 2015

An old boss of mine used to say that with great change came great opportunity.

It would seem that the opportunity in New Zealand is finally arriving from the shakeup in the screen industry predominantly driven by new digital models for distribution, the shift of creative endeavour from film to TV, and the increase in content for online consumption.

Due primarily to the revised incentives that saw the introduction of the Screen Production Grant and the five percent uplift, we now have the MTV drama series Shannara in production in New Zealand.

The drama pilot for Amblin TV’s Lumen has come and gone, and may well return for an episodic run.

Sir Richard Taylor’s Pukeko Pictures is plunging headlong into TV drama, having recently announced a co-pro with Australia’s Goalpost Pictures for Aboriginal drama series Cleverman, which already has international sales. We can expect to see more from Pukeko, and closer to home in future.

The New Zealand Film Commission’s (NZFC) Business Development Scheme (BDS) is also opening TV drama doors.

Local outfit Libertine Pictures and Downtown Abbey producers Carnival have announced the Neil Cross written series Bay of Plenty, planned to shoot next year. It’s highly likely that some of the other BDS recipients are pursuing TV drama as well as feature film.

The swing at NZFC to encompass TV is particularly noticeable. Aside from the BDS scheme, the He Ara Maori/Pacifica initiative, the dedicated China funding initiatives and the new BOOST devolved funding initiative all make room for TV drama. These come on top of the efforts NZFC has made alone and together with New Zealand on Air (NZOA) in the feature documentary space, and what seems a clear intent from NZFC to increase the number of features in production annually.

Over at NZ’s biggest drama producer South Pacific Pictures (SPP), co-pro 800 Words is underway with Aussie’s Seven Productions. This in addition to the other drama SPP has on its slate including the Outrageous Fortune sequel Westside Story, Step Dave, Brokenwood Mysteries and others in development.

Rachael Lang and Gavin Strauhan’s new outfit has Filthy Rich underway, while Great Southern’s Hillary must be close to completion.

Mediaworks has supposedly come close to settling on a new soap series, although the likelihood of it getting off the ground remains a challenge for the company.

For online content New Zealand on Air (NZOA)’s digital initiatives are reasonably well established with web series Reservoir Hill, The High Road, The Factory, and Flat 3 having already proven their worth. Another web series RFP has just been issued by NZOA, exhibiting a continued commitment to kickstarting online content.

As I have written about recently, even Maori TV is getting into drama production, seeking to make half-hour broadcast TV drama with five-minute web series budgets.

At the guild we have just completed the selections for the Ash vs Evil Dead (AVED) attachments, which puts DEGNZ members alongside the Starz production. In going through the process, it became abundantly clear to me how much more of a step up Rob Tapert’s latest endeavour is for directors from the local TV drama that is typically made here.

Tapert has been a mainstay of the New Zealand drama scene for over 20 years now. Through his internationally focused productions he has trained many of the people who went on to work on Lord of the Rings and elsewhere. We owe him a lot. Thankfully, he is now no longer alone.

We have to ask with so much activity going on whether or not we have the drama directing and editing skill base to take up the opportunities created and in the pipeline. If not, we will likely see an increase in the number of non-New Zealanders brought in to do the work. For example, should Mediaworks’ soap get up, there’s going to be a dearth of experienced soap directors, which could see Aussies come over to fill the gaps.

The step up from 48 Hours, Tropfest, Fresh Shorts and web series to TV drama is as big as that from short to feature film. Then there is the significant difference between film and TV, where in film the director is auteur, while in TV the director does what the producer and or showrunner pretty much tells them to, all the while running to get the fast turnaround product through the sausage factory and out the door.

At DEGNZ we have a strong professional development programme geared towards increasing the skill base in drama and documentary—a focus driven by the funding we receive from NZFC. Its purpose is to help increase the competency and capability of Kiwi directors and editors.

Take stock of where you currently sit on the talent tree for future opportunities. Make the most of our and other professional development initiatives.

And get ready for the opportunity.

As long as the incentives continue to work and more of our local production companies focus on producing drama content for international consumption, we could well be in for an exciting ride.

 

Tui Ruwhiu
Executive Director

Last updated on 12 March 2018

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Pay Rates

1 May 2015

Pay rates continue to be a hot topic here at DEGNZ.

It’s understandable as the impact of digital technology continues to drive down pricing in many instances.

Just this week I was speaking with a voiceover agency owner who is seeking to maintain the rates she charges for her artists in the face of low-cost competition online.

It doesn’t change the fact, however, that even in the digital world quality remains the key differentiator. There’s no better example of this than TV drama like House of Cards, Game of Thrones, Viking, True Detectives, and potentially Cleverman, tossed into the mix in a co-pro by our very own Pukeko Pictures and Aussie neighbour Goalpost Pictures. The businesses behind these shows understand the cost of quality.

So what to do when a producer asks you to work on their next project for little or no money?

We all know there will be people who will say yes and will continue to do so for a variety of reasons. Amongst them:

  • Downtime between high-paying gigs
  • A credit
  • Help out a mate
  • The experience
  • Networking
  • They desperately need some work

The next time you are asked—and you will be—it may well be worth considering who is really going to benefit from your sacrifice: you, the producer, the production company, the broadcaster, the funder?

Here are eight good reasons why you might want to say no:

  1. You will be paid below current industry standard for your work.
  2. It undervalues your creative endeavour.
  3. The expectations for you to create quality programming will not lower to match the budget level—audiences don’t care how much a programme or film costs to make.
  4. The only way for you to deliver a quality outcome from your work will be at your own self-sacrifice.
  5. Low-cost technology does not deliver quality, high value human resource does.
  6. Agreeing to work for low rates will mean an expectation that future similar projects can be done for the same, without taking into account the sacrifices made to achieve it.
  7. The proposition that you will be paid more on the next one will likely be hollow.
  8. You will contribute to undermining fair and equitable pay rates.

For most of you, your work is your business because you depend on it to survive. If you must work at cut prices, make sure your sacrifice includes benefit for your business and not just someone else’s unless that’s what you want.

 

Tui Ruwhiu
Executive Director

Last updated on 12 March 2018

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What Are You Worth?

17 April 2015

On Tuesday evening the DEGNZ board debated the effect that low-budget filmmaking has had on the pay rates of members.

When the Escalator low-budget feature film scheme was introduced by the NZFC, it formalised for features the methodology used by producers to get short films made—beg, borrow and steal (metaphorically), and get as many people as possible to work for nothing or next to. NZFC sought to counter this by contractually obligating producers to pay a minimum wage and come up with a points system as a further reward for cast and crew. Generally, that minimum wage was a flat rate for everyone of around $200 per day.

Short films were often seen by those with major experience who assisted directors and producers to get them made as a means to get real, paying work when those above-the-line creatives moved on to reasonably financed features. For crew with little or no experience, they add the credit to their resumes to help secure real paying work when the opportunity comes along. And for most writers, directors and producers on a low-budget feature, it’s the credit that’s paramount as well as of course the creative satisfaction.

Escalator was felt by many techos as undermining the opportunities to get well paid work on features—Low-budget features were being institutionalised. Although the Escalator scheme at $250k per feature was wound down, the new $500k initiative at NZFC is up and running. Further, with first time feature directors likely limited to budgets under $1.5 million, an ambitious feature film can only get made with pay rates at the lower end of the scale. Films planned well to work on such budgets have a little more latitude to pay appropriately. Thanks God for the Screen Production Grant and the five percent uplift, many techos undoubtedly cry.

But where does that leave directors and editors? Is TV the answer?

Telefeatures have regularly been made for $2 – 3 million; a budget figure that debut feature film directors can now only dream about. The documentaries that still get to air, the series and the drama that NZ on Air funds have reasonable budgets that generate fair rates of pay. But a look at Māori Television’s (MTS) latest programme initiative doesn’t paint a rosy a picture.

It’s no secret that MTS budgets and production company margins with Te Māngai Pāho (TMP) funding are generally lower than those that production companies usually achieve through NZ on Air. And it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that the production staff work for lower rates as a consequence.

Although MTS has sought to do drama on and off for quite a while, one of the key factors that has kept them from pursuing it has been the cost. Take a look at recent drama funding to see why: Brokenwood Mysteries at just over $500k per broadcast hour, Filthy Rich at just over $400k per broadcast hour, Harry at just under $600k per broadcast hour.

But things have changed. And without Te Māngai Pāho, it would seem.

Yesterday, I attended the Maori Television content strategy briefing by Mike Rehu, the new Head of Content. Mike comes to MTS after 20 years in Singapore, many of those with Fox Television brands. He well knows the real cost of content. As part of Mike’s presentation he laid down a challenge to those producers present – MTS wants two x 10 half hour scripted drama series to be made at a maximum of $45k per episode—that’s $45k per half hour, or $90k per hour—approximately 18 percent of the per hour cost of NZ on Air funded TV drama. My immediate thought was that the challenge was how to get as many aunts, uncles, cousins, friends and colleagues to work for very low or no rates of pay, while trying to craft some semblance of a quality show—a strategy that MTS has employed relatively successfully with the independent production community making other programming for them for the last ten years. Of course MTS is open to producers going out to get additional revenue for the drama production from somewhere else. That’s certainly a challenge, too.

DEGNZ is concerned about pay rates for directors and editors across the entire screen industry. We plan to undertake a survey of directors and editors in the near future to gain a clear picture of what the statistics are before we seek to address the issues. When the survey arrives in your Inbox, we would greatly appreciate it if you would take the time to respond.

Tui Ruwhiu
Executive Director

Last updated on 12 March 2018

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Being Māori

Tēnā kotou katoa.

I have had two very different experiences in the last week that were refreshers on what it is to be Māori in the New Zealand film industry.

The first was when I attended the down-home  Māoriland Film Festival in Otaki from last Friday to Sunday, run by Māori power couple Libby Hakaraia and Tainui Stephens.

The festival is in its second year and brought together a programme of Māori, Aboriginal Australian, Sanmi and other indigenous features, shorts and documentaries for the enjoyment of the predominantly local population, although a number of our filmmaking colleagues attended from Aotearoa, Australia, Canada, Scandinavia, and the U.S. A Māori short I produced in 2013 was one of the films on offer.

Otaki is the home of Ngāti Raukawa, who moved to the area with Te Rauparaha in the 1800s, and the site for tertiary education provider Te Wānanga o Raukawa.

The architecturally stunning Nga Purapura Wānanga of Fitness Facility provided one of the screening venues and it’s where I watched the Māori story The Dead Lands for the first time. (I say Māori story because I subscribe to the Ngā Aho Whakaari definition of a Māori film as a film with a Māori story, and with Maori in the three key creative positions of writer, director and producer.) The other two screening venues were the local hall and the small Civic Theatre.

In this small community from which festival director Libby comes, the aroha, whanaungatanga, manaakitanga and kotahitanga were clearly evident. I felt a part of the Hakaraia extended whānau, welcomed by both whānau and iwi who played an integral part in the festival, and at one with the place and the people, both of the land and the industry. This is the penultimate experience of a Māori event for me. This spirit is not limited just to Māori , though. I felt the same way at imagineNATIVE, the world’s largest indigenous film festival in Toronto, and at the Pacific Islanders in Communications Conference and the Hawaii International Film Festival on Oahu, which I attended last year.

Māoriland is a celebration of indigenous storytelling on screen, and continues a tradition started by the Wairoa Māori Film Festival, which sees its 10th anniversary this year.

The second experience was when I was fortunate enough to be invited to the set on the first day of shooting for The Patriarch, which kicked off on Wednesday.

It’s been twenty years since director Lee Tamahori and producer Robin Scholes worked together on Once Were Warriors. They have come together again to put on screen Witi Ihimaera’s novel Bulibasha, about two warring shearing gang families.

My colleague and friend Brad Haami is Māori consultant on the film in the absence of kaumātua Hare Williams due to illness; Robin my old boss from years ago. I spent the morning listening as Brad engaged with core cast Temuera Morrison and Nancy Brunning over Māori aspects of the script.

Once Were Warriors paved the way for the commercial and or critical success of Māori stories and Māori films to come, from Whale Rider, The Dead Lands and The Dark Horse to Boy, Mt. Zion and The Pa Boys. It also catapulted Lee Tamahori into the directing big leagues of an international career. It was an honour to hear Lee as he addressed the crew, telling them what it meant to him to be returning to filmmaking in New Zealand after all that time to make The Patriarch, a film based on a story from his own rohe. And I clearly saw a Māori director who was in charge of his film and his vision.

Māori stories and films are the unique differentiator for New Zealand film in the international marketplace. And on the domestic scene they make up six of the top 10 box office successes, with Boy sitting at No. 1.

In an interview with Māori Television’s current affairs programme Native Affairs, actor and Sundance Film Festival founder Robert Redford, who is here for the filming of Disney’s Pete’s Dragon, said  that New Zealand is like a country with a smile on its face. In the film world, Māori in front of and behind the camera are increasingly bringing smiles to the faces of domestic and international audiences, filmmakers and film industry people alike.

That’s got to be good for all of us.

Have a happy and safe Easter!

 

Tui Ruwhiu
Executive Director

Last updated on 12 March 2018

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The Digital Landscape

20 March 2015

On Tuesday evening I was fortunate to attend the 25th anniversary celebration of New Zealand on Air, hosted by Broadcasting Minister Amy Adams at Parliament.

The crowd of 300 or so included many producers whose programmes have received funding from NZ on Air across those 25 years; a number acknowledged with awards for their programmes including The Down Low Concept for Seven Days, Whitebait-TV for What Now, Attitude Group for Attitude TV, TVNZ for Country Calendar, South Pacific Pictures for Shortland Street and Moana Maniapoto for the music video A E I O U. Everyone of course was thankful for NZOA support.

In the last newsletter, I made mention of Ruth Harley’s acknowledgment of a misstep, which was over a quota for New Zealand broadcasting. Yet in spite of that, NZ on Air has made a significant contribution to getting a broad spectrum of New Zealand programming on screen. But that’s the past. What about the future?

NZ On Air’s digital efforts have occasioned criticism, but some truly innovating programming has come about because of it. Reservoir Hill went on to win an Emmy Award. Other successful digital initiatives include digital portal Coconet TV, web series Flat 3 by our very own Roseanne Liang and the short documentary platform Loading Docs. NZ on Air’s latest initiative is the Canada – NZ Digital Fund, which will hopefully deliver some innovative digital co-production programming.

What else is happening on the New Zealand digital landscape?

TVNZ seems to have finally woken up to the value of data as you now have to subscribe to their revamped OnDemand service. Spark has upped its investment in Lightbox, which is now freely available to Spark home broadband customers. Sky’s Neon has launched with little real fanfare and nothing much more than a dated back catalogue, and Netflix NZ is almost upon us. But what do these and the other digital offerings mean for dedicated online NZ content? Not much so far, particularly for the pay services with the dominance of offshore shows.

Viewfinder has sought to corner NZ web series on its webserieschannel and by the look of it, it has—you can probably binge watch them all in a weekend. But are web series the answer?

In September of last year, journalist James Rawson wrote in The Guardian about the demise of web series at the hands of Amazon Prime and Netflix.

The success of shows such as House of Cards and Arrested Development on Netflix has some Kiwi programme makers longing for the opportunity to make their New Zealand equivalents, leaving the production of low or no budget web series to others. This could well make sense. In the same Guardian article, successful web drama creator Ingrid Jungermann, of hit F to 7th fame is quoted as saying that: “It’s inevitable that web series will mirror film and split into two camps – indie web series creators who produce and distribute on their own, and “studio” web series creators who produce content for online channels. On one hand, you retain freedom of expression and ownership while going broke, and on the other hand, you exchange vision and voice to make a living.”

With little opportunity for the latter, we could well be left to the penniless former without the NZ On Air digital funds that are helping to create dedicated New Zealand online content .

Tui Ruwhiu
Executive Director

Last updated on 12 March 2018

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