Gratitude Amid Growth

Hi everyone

While Auckland experiences water restrictions and drought like conditions (mainly due to years of mismanagement and lack of infrastructure and foresight) I am happy to say our little industry is not suffering such fate. Just like Auckland’s population growth, so too is our industry growing.

We have been very active this year with Screensafe (Covid-19 Action Group), backing up crew working conditions, providing support and counselling contacts for individuals and their families, supporting productions and monitoring incoming work permits of international crew.

We are all used to the peaks and troughs though, and I know that in the back of every freelancer’s mind there is a fear that with every boom must come a bust. This may be true, but New Zealand has firmly placed itself on the international map this year, not just because of any little Hobbits or Avatars running around, or incredible landscapes, or multi skilled crew, or amazing actors, or state of the art postproduction facilities, but because of the way we can contain and remain within our national bubble making New Zealand one of the safest places on the planet to live and work at the moment.

Many have been privileged this year to only experience a relatively short disruption to their workflow (and let’s be honest, we suffered much worse in 2013/2014 without a pandemic going on!) and are now desperate for some form of reprieve from the craziness that was 2020. I urge everyone to take a moment, take some deep breaths and be very grateful for what we have in our country, which is a film community that is small enough to feel like a family, yet large enough to support multiple large and small productions at any given time, and infrastructure that is being worked on to continue to support and prop it up for years to come.

Spend some time on yourselves. Remember we are just making pictures, not saving lives, so our jobs should be fun and rewarding, not be the only reason for our existence. Enjoy the moments you get with your family and friends, or for some of you your film family. Reach out to others and check they are ok too, as sometimes a smile can cover heartache, so your kindness may make all the difference to one of your mates.

I look forward to continuing to see the shiny and new crew get trained up under the older and wiser of you in the coming year, and I continue to feel grateful to watch such genius in action when I see the gifts you create when they reach our screens.

Well done on getting through this year everyone.