Farewell Tony: A New Era

The times, they are changing.

Looks like this will be the last edition of NZTECHO with Tony as editor.

Tony has been doing the job for nearly eight years now, so it’s understandable that he feels it’s time for a change. Tony took over the mag from Tim Pope and has built it into an informative and widely read industry voice. Thanks heaps for all your hard work on our behalf, Tony, and I hope we can continue to have your input into the mag.

What else is changing?

I’ve just shot my first ‘digital’ feature film; that’s definitely something new for me.

Not my choice of medium I can assure you, and I certainly would not go with digital rather than film if it were my choice.

Leading into the project I checked out three options for digital cameras and wrote up lists of pros and cons. I found advantages and disadvantages with all of the digital camera options when compared to each other, but when I included film in the comparison I could find no disadvantages to shooting film, and many distinct advantages from my point of view.

It’s been suggested that I should write a full report on my experience with ‘high end’ digital, and I intend to do so. It may not be for publication in this mag, and it certainly won’t be a promo piece! In my opinion the cameras just aren’t there yet, but I guess it won’t be long before the digital world becomes totally dominant.

More potential change.

It seems the government is looking into alternative ways of assessing work permit applications from foreign crew people. Processing these applications makes up a major part of Fritha’s job, and David Madigan has put in years of work rationalizing the process on behalf of the Techos’ Guild and the industry as a whole. Largely thanks to David’s input, we have developed a very good working relationship with the Immigration Department. Unfortunately, other industry organizations have not always been as on-to-it as the Techos’ Guild has been and now this government is looking at changing the way things work. We can only wait and see what they come up with.

And the permanent change which comes to us all.

Over the past month, two more old colleagues have died.

The singer Beaver, who was a friend from my school days in Wellington, died after a long illness.

And the pioneer Maori film maker Merata Mita, whom I worked with on Patu! as did so many of us in 1981, died suddenly.

Death comes to all of us sooner or later, but still it often comes as a shock.

Having written about dear departed Paul Leach for the last edition of NZTECHO, I was pleased to read what others wrote about Paul for OnFilm magazine. I was particularly interested in what Mike Nicolaidi had to say, since he had known Paul from before his time in Canada. Mike clarified Paul’s earlier days, which I’m sorry to say I misreported due to ignorance. I was intrigued to read about their early film-making endeavours, and delighted to read that Paul was self-taught and took an inventive approach to their early film-making.

... Albol