El Editore Raves...

Reading Albol’s ‘el presidente’ in the October issue set me thinking about what it is that I enjoy about working in the screen industry, and the end of another year seems a good time to reflect on that.

A couple of things occurred on sets this year that led me to ponder this some more. One was when I did something that I don’t do often these days; I took a job as an actor in a guest role on Shortland Street. I thought it might be kinda fun to play a bank manager during a robbery, and it was! But what struck me most in those three days was this: I was sitting in the waiting room talking with some of the extras playing bank staff, and one woman commented on the way the crew treated each other and ourselves. She told me she worked in the office area of a timber mill, and that all the staff there not only used ‘foul language’ a lot, but most often in an aggressive and competitive way. She noticed that we film people use crude language a lot as well; but at the same time everybody was always saying please and thank you to each other, and how nice it was to see people simply being considerate of each other, as a natural part of the process. It struck me - yes, that’s true. We often work under intense pressure, and yet we’re generally pretty calm and relaxed; and on a good set things flow gently and smoothly with no fuss.

This was reinforced when I was firsting a small film recently, a Film Commission-funded shoot titled The Winter Boy down in Hawkes Bay. A local film school asked if they could send some students along to watch us at work. We saw no problem with that; we were filming in a public space after all. By the way, Napier’s National Aquarium is a wonderful location to be able to use, and the whole city made us extremely welcome.

(A real shame for the film’s budget that Kelly Tarlton’s in Auckland refused permission - surprising, given that years ago I filmed there more than once. But personally, I always enjoy going to shoot in a location away from home!)

The film school students turned up and stood at a distance until they were invited a little closer. They very respectfully stood and watched, quietly murmuring to each other on occasion. After the shoot I met one of them in the foyer of a local cinema. This lad said he was compelled to tell me that the thing that impressed him most about the way the crew worked was how quiet and harmonious it all was, how everybody was obviously very busy and efficient, yet relaxed.

Compared with other areas that I’ve worked in in my youth, one thing I’ve noticed that’s different about working on a film crew (also true of jobs in the other life I have as a theatre director), is that there’s a real harmony of purpose. We might compete to get the jobs, but once we’re on a crew everyone pulls together. Each person has their specific role to fulfil, and so we’re quite relaxed in helping each other, without the strict demarcation that can sometimes be a pain in the proverbial in other countries. Ultimately, it seems, everybody, from director to runner, has the desire to be able to say at the end of a shoot, be it a movie or a TV reality show, TVC or whatever, ‘In my little way, I helped that be good.’ In Maori film productions, it’s what’s described as the ‘whanau feeling’ - but the great thing is that it’s not just limited to Maori crews!

Yeah, that’s what I love about this industry.

Tony F.