Challenges and Opportunities in TVC Industry

It has been a mixed bag for the TVC industry this winter. A slow start with little or no snow created a lot of stress and in some cases jobs cancelled. It meant harder work for the crews and higher cost to the production. There seems to be a trend of smaller jobs as opposed to the larger ones of the past. In my conversations with industry, they put it down to smaller cameras that require less lighting and associated crew and many campaigns are now going straight to the web. Another factor is the strong dollar that may not only be affecting the crew size, but the amount of jobs we are losing to South Africa, South America, Spain, and elsewhere. On the brighter side, we are getting fantastic feedback from the shoots that do make it here and are creating more repeat clients. The feature film horizon seems to be very bright. Since the raise in incentives we are getting a look in on many projects that would not have considered NZ in recent years. The dollar is still against us, but at least we are now back in the game. I had an interesting conversation with a senior US-based producer and asked if location shoots were going to become redundant due to CGI. His view was that it was the opposite, in that although you couldn’t control certain delays when shooting on location, at the end of the shoot, you knew where you stood. He found that in a CGI world, jobs often had unpredicted delays out the back end which caused uncertainty and increased finance costs. For a locations-based industry such as in our region, this is good news. I attended the Techos’ Guild’s safety workshop held in Queenstown in June. This was a great initiative. The thing that struck me was, that amongst senior producers and crew, there is a lack of clarity as to who is liable and/or responsible. We now know what we don’t know. Some attendees were looking for surety, but that is a way off. The only thing that is sure is that with the proposed changes to the health and safety regulations on the horizon this subject is going to become more relevant to all of us. I have had preliminary meetings with the Department of Conservation and other permitting bodies about is this and it’s on their radar as well. This creates a good opportunity for the industry to engage and be involved in this process. One discovery I have made recently after speaking with industry members is that getting insurance may, in some cases be providing a false sense of security. An example of this is that some policy’s exclude vehicles, boats and aircraft. If you shoot in the South Island it is just about a given you will be using one or more of these on any shoot. If you do have insurance, give your policy a good read to see where you stand.

Kevin Jennings, Queenstown branch member