Dunedin Screen Industry Update
Hello and thank you for giving Dunedin our Industry voice! We may be small but our city’s been busy and we’re grateful to share all the happenings with the rest of the country.
Last quarter we broke a record with 3 productions (The Royal Treatment, One Lane Bridge S2 and Under The Vines), all shooting simultaneously in the Otago Region. I don’t think that’s ever happened before? This gave us a great opportunity to showcase our talent with 50% being crewed by locals. Film Dunedin, Film Otago Southland and Film Queenstown Lakes are now working together to facilitate further training for crew in areas where shortages were noticed regionally so watch this space if you’re wanting to get into the industry or upskill / retrain within departments.
Additionally a debrief following The Royal Treatment, identified a range of Dunedin businesses that can provide services for future film productions. This includes engineering, electrical services, catering, accommodation, recruitment, offices, lifting equipment and collections of props and classic cars. Resources are being developed to provide introduction to these businesses for future productions.
Workshop opportunities have also been a plenty with the first ScreenSafe /SWAG Screen Industry Professional Respect Training Project to hit our city (bring it back please!). Rodney Cook brought us a weekend Stunt Workshop. Dunedin's own Dan Eady and Cindy Diver offered a Screen Ready Workshop to help local cast get the best tools for screen testing while Dallas Synott in conjunction with Ara Toi/ Enterprise Dunedin have created a series of free workshops to help anyone in the Arts/Creative Sector reboot / upskill their working practices in a post-Covid world.
Although we have said good bye to The Royal Treatment, Dunedin continues to tick away down here on a range of projects. Moving forward fiercely on the factual front (say that 5 times fast) Internationally acclaimed NHNZ was one of five selected for the first Premium Productions for International Audiences Fund (Te Puna Kairangi Premium Fund) to produce the second season of Our Big Blue Backyard. We also congratulate Craig Meade for his new partnership with Australian company Wildbear Entertainment to form WildBear Aotearoa. We locals look forward to the crewing that will follow as Productions progress.
Dunedin based filmmaker Ollie Luck will have the New Zealand Premiere of his latest Docu Drama Comedy Feature “There is no “I” in Threesome” in the upcoming NZIFF in a couple of months, having already had great success overseas. FOS will be supporting Ollie to take up Writers residency for his next script.
Legal Fiction Films Producer / Director duo Tess Whelan and David Hay recently completed their 2nd short Canvass. Scripts developments for a Feature have also been underway.
Oh yes and Emmy’s were won this quarterly! A shout out to the ARL (Animated Research Limited) team who were responsible for delivering StatCast 3D to the Major League Baseball network celebrating the network's George Wensel Technical Achievement Award at the 42nd Sports Emmys for StatCast 3D.
These are but a few as Film Dunedin engage with several Dunedin based screenwriters who between them have 17 feature film and television projects in varying levels of development. Fingers crossed we see further successful funding rounds coming to our city.
Outside of what the locals are doing there continues to be a multitude of enquiries for feature & television projects considering Dunedin and Otago as their base. Dunedin has had double the amount of enquiries as it had last year.
All of this bring a lot of discussions around possible studio builds, new businesses, training platforms, intern placements for future Productions ready to set up shop.
Rebecca Rowe
