In My Day

From rigging a coconut tree to pioneering equipment innovations, lighting guru Chris McKenzie reminisces with NZTECHO on over four decades in the film and TV industry.

It was 40 years ago in February that I started my paid career in lighting. At high school I had done stage lighting for school, local drama and musical societies. In my one and only year at university I followed my passion and did too much lighting and not enough study. In February 1973, I joined station WNTV-1 of the New Zealand Broadcasting Corporation (NZBC) as a technical operator (trainee) and this gave me great grounding in TV and film work. Along with learning from Adrian Obern, I had the honour of working with some great people like Warren Lepine, Stu Murray, Iain Hill, Fred Williams, Wayne Williams, Gerry Eady and Chris Loates to name but a few.

As a studio lighting operator, I worked studios, OB, film drama, and various radio roadshows around the Wellington region. Most of my time was spent at Waring Taylor Street studios or at the OB garage at the Avalon site, where the studios were just finished when I was seconded to head office engineering to help with commissioning. It wasn’t unpacking crates and putting plugs on but designing patch panels and cord sockets amongst other things. I was also moonlighting at The Opera House and St James as a stage hand and in electrics. A great learning experience from old time theatre hands such as Doug Hoy, Pat Shields and Wilf Conroy. In 1974 I worked on the Commonwealth Games in Christchurch with the NZBC and then at Channel 10 in Sydney as a studio lighting technician. Because of a union stoush soon after I joined, I was promoted to junior lighting director, mostly because I could operate the lighting console in Studio A (no one asked if I could actually light the show – it was just assumed as I could drive the console!) Working a live-to-air variety show and a soap on alternative weeks was another learning curve. Channel 7 followed with a diet of sports and news/current affairs and Romper Room was me for the next two years.

The original (and real) Vidcom pulled me back to NZ in 1977 and I stepped into Jim Bartle’s very large empty boots to become lighting director/lighting cameraman. Vidcom was totally cutting edge at the time with brand new video technology and shooting Toyota and Nissan commercials. It was also the only video-post house in town. It introduced me to many leading players in the burgeoning film industry. Roger Donaldson, Sam Pillsbury and Geoff Dixon all shot at Vidcom and Geoff Murphy came in to do special effects for Roger. Again this was a huge learning experience for me to stand alongside these people. James Bartle, Ib Heller, Sig Spath and Albol, to name a few great cinematographers, all shot at Vidcom – what great shoulders to look over!

Our lighting kit in those days was fairly simple, but Jim had left a legacy of a very well set up studio for us to work in. I had used the brand new Sirio 2.5kW HMI fresnel just before I left Sydney, and convinced management it was vital for the continuing improvement of our kit. Two of these units allowed us to get away from using six lite minibrutes for daylight fill – we thought we had the brightest light of all time! In this period I also discovered the joy of real C Stands. I bought six, sight unseen from Matthews and started a 35-year association with Ed Philips and his team. Shooter Howard had made a very passable version of the arm with plastic gripheads, all good, until you got the 5k too close!

I joined the freelance world in 1982 and threw my hat in the ring doing commercials. I started by dragging four redheads, two blondes and a couple of Mole Inkies around in the back of my Renault 12 along with a cricket bag of stands, C arms (Matthews of course) and gels. Terry Fraser was gripping and set building out of his ute. I think Don Jowsey still had his Bedford Dormobile and Stu Dryburgh his VW Combi. It was about this time I got together with Hugh Kenderdine and we set up Professional Lighting Services (PLS). I had hired gear from Hugh over my time at Vidcom, mostly theatre kit, but always suitable for our modified usage. We slowly invested in bits and pieces of kit for film and TV work, a lot of it through the good graces of Ron Minihan at Kerridges.

My first break into features was with Silent One. James Bartle was to be the DOP, but withdrew after the location recce (Jim will have to tell that story) and Ian Paul took up the role. Talk about into the deep end! I had never worked on a feature – I knew the lighting and logistics role well, but nothing of the onset protocols (and politics). My life saver on this project was TK Bedford, as best boy (he was the primary person along with a heap of backup from Mr Rat and Turtz). What a team to have with you on your first one out! TK and I had a couple of local hands to help. One had worked on Mr Lawerence in Rarotonga, but the other was the son of a local chief. Both were absolutely brilliant with local knowledge and crafty ways of doing things. Ask me sometime how to rig a 4k HMI 60ft up a coconut tree!

Our lighting package was a 4k HMI fres, two 2.5k HMI fresnels and a couple of 1200W HMI fresnels, along with a small tungsten package. We had a 65kVA genset, which at one point was more power than the whole island had. The real challenges were the night hurricane sequences (refer the HMI in the coconut tree). We were ably helped by Ken Durey with flamebars, but disabled by his dump tanks and the DC-3 aircraft as a wind machine!

After this brush with features, I stuck with commercials whilst the other freelance gaffers were working their way through the 80s boom of local and overseas films. Gear was slowly building up, but I remember standing at the back of Don Jowsey’s new (to him) Morris Commercial three tonner at the start of BRD and saying, “I don’t know how you are going to fill that up Jowz”.

Over the intervening years I worked on a few US projects starting with Jim Bartle on a couple of telefeatures, Angel in Green and Brotherhood of the Rose and then moving on to the original Hercules. I stayed on for a couple of years as rigging gaffer for the TV shows Hercules and Xena, but then this grew into a complete department so I backed away to focus on my full-time role at PLS.

Hugh and I progressively bought more gear, some for dry hire and some to add to my ever growing truck, first a 3.5-tonne jumbo Bedford, then a 7-tonne Bedford and finally a 15-tonne Hino (leased from Henderson Rentals.) I had learned reasonably early on that the truck part of the equation was a mug’s game and leasing was the way to save big investments in trucks and keep it for the money earning kit. The gear increased in leaps and bounds as new HMIs became available and more cable and bigger stands were needed. We had decided that generators were not our bag and best left to people who wanted to stink of diesel!

Over the years we have pioneered a number of lighting and grip equipment innovations into NZ, along with some of the gaffers. Most of the technical production facilities available in NZ are because of gaffers, grips, camera departments putting their hands in their pockets and their houses on the line to provide kit that is cutting edge. Film Facilities, Dolly Shop, Rocket Rentals, PLS, Kenderdine Electrical, Nutshell and Niche to mention a few. These days I look after PLS and Kenderdine on a full-time basis and only make guest appearances to light TV shows for a couple of my favourite producers.

The things I have most valued in our industry are the friendships and working relationships that I have formed along the way. I now have the benefit of my global business contacts to increase these friendships. I constantly feel there are not many towns in NZ and around the world that I can’t lob into and organise a beer with just one phone call. I am undyingly grateful to all of the people who have shared their knowledge along the way and feel that it is my responsibility to keeping passing it along to the next unsuspecting participant!