Brian Hall
Tourism is so important to the NZ economy and the knock on affect of seeing the NZ landscape projected on screen goes far beyond the film industry itself. As such I believe the Government should provide more incentives to foreign film productions.
How long have you been in screen production and how did you get started?
I started as a professional mountaineer based in the UK, visiting the Himalayas and the Andes on a regular basis. Success gave me the opportunity to give public lectures and write about my adventures, and by necessity, I took lots of stills photos. So I guess a lot of my interest in film has its roots in my photography.
My first real involvement in filmmaking was on the world’s highest peaks, Mount Everest in the winter in 1980, then on K2 in 1986.
I moved to Chamonix, France, and set up a guiding company taking clients climbing and skiing in the Alps. During that time I met Richard Else, producer of Triple Echo Productions, who needed mountain safety for a BBC series called The Climbers. This relationship developed and we have now worked together on over 30 projects. During this time honing my skills in safety, logistics, location scouting, heli ops, and rigging, which led to setting up my company Film and Mountain (www.filmandmountain.com) in the UK, and four years ago, I moved this company to NZ.
What genre(s) does your work tend to come from?
Most of what I do involves filming in the mountains or high-rise situations. Documentaries are my mainstay and take me all over the world. It can be very diverse, for example filming in the Philippines with Karl Pilkington (An Idiot Abroad) on the strange hanging cliff coffins of Sagada, or with Brian Cox (Seven Wonders of the Solar System) filming lava lake activity in the hottest place on earth, in north-east Ethiopia.
A boom in ‘adventure sports’ has led to an expansion of filmmaking in this genre and commercials are increasingly using images portraying this lifestyle. I work on quite a few adverts made around my base in Queenstown. They are attracted by the stunning landscape but also the option to shoot winter adverts for release in the Northern Hemisphere winter six months later. It’s interesting how many feature films require my skills, but Touching the Void was the one that moved me into the industry full time.
Features are the most interesting and best jobs as they are of longer duration which gives time to build a solid working relationship with crew and cast. I have just returned from Italy where we were filming a Working Titles/Universal Pictures feature on the 1986 Everest disaster directed by Baltasar Kormakur and starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Josh Brolin, Sam Worthington, and Keira Knightley. The overall safety was coordinated by Kiwi Guy Cotter of Wanaka-based Adventure Consultants. My role was to lead an international team of 12 mountain guides, splitting into three teams of cast training/safety, rigging, and crew safety.
How easy is it to make a living in this industry/how often do you work outside the screen production industry? How have your rates changed?
My film work is erratic as it is only on certain projects that my specialist skills are required. There is certainly not enough demand for my skills in NZ to give me a full-time job and as a result, I travel extensively.
I have to diversify to pay the bills – and by several means. In the UK, I founded and co-directed the Kendal Mountain Film Festival which became one of the world’s top three mountain film festivals alongside Banff and Trento.
In 2002 I set up the Adventure Film Academy with the BBC. Here aspiring filmmakers coached by professionals introduce all-important new talent into the adventure film industry. With the advent of the YouTube and Vimeo age, adventure sports athletes crave the skills to produce quality short films of their exploits. Each July at the NZ Mountain Film Festival in Wanaka I usually help run their film school.
How does your department work as part of the ‘whole’ that other crew probably don’t realise?
Often my work starts early on in production, advising on locations, seasons, and time frames. Then comes kit, mountain skills, health and safety, and ‘risk assessing’. My core work is making sure the crew and cast are safe on location. For example, making sure the camera team can get on with their job of setting up and taking great shots without the worry of safety in often exposed situations.
In NZ, helicopter operations are often the norm in remote locations. Crew need to be safe and have a survival or exit strategy should the weather turn bad.
What sort of changes have you noticed? Have you noticed any trends?
Yes – the time devoted to location filming has reduced significantly. Technology has made the size and the weight of kit less, reducing time to transport gear into remote locations, prep and set up. Also, we all know that the speed of filming has changed as we moved from film to tape to hard drive.
For key actors, time is precious (and expensive). Often crew prefer to stay at home or in comfortable city hotels, meaning pressure on producers to shoot in a studio where conditions (and costs) are controlled. So ‘outdoor action’ films are increasingly made in the studio which is only made possible by massive increases in technology in post. Two recent Everest feature films saw a lot of the mountain footage shot in the studio.
What strengths do you think the New Zealand industry has? What could contribute to a more sustainable industry?
NZ has an amazing landscape with a special clarity of light. We have wilderness areas backed up by a sophisticated helicopter industry that enables access to some unbelievable places. This is linked to a highly skilled film industry that can supply labor and resources to any size of film production.
However, the strong NZ dollar rules out many production companies using NZ as a base. In 2007 I worked on a UK production of Jack Osbourne’s Adrenaline Junkie in Queenstown and a pound bought NZ $2.80. Now it buys NZ $1.95. I do not believe that this production would be affordable now.
