Industry Shifts and Optimism

The last three months have been a medley of busy versus quiet weeks, with television commercial production in and around the Auckland area seemingly fragile.

Budgets don’t seem to be as large as years gone by, and this has been reflected in crew sizes this season. We’ve also noticed a sharp drop in line production work since summer, and no sign of any new line production commercials in the pipeline at the moment. However, drama, television series and local long-form work is bubbling away nicely, employing the majority of available crew (thank goodness) on relatively lengthy stints, enabling crew to stash up for winter.

We were all saddened to hear of retired key grip Geoff ‘Rat’ Jamieson’s passing on 24 May, as hundreds of crew throughout NZ will have had the pleasure of sharing his sense of humour and wit over the last 30 years. He will be sadly missed by all that knew and worked with him.

The talk of a studio build in Auckland hasn’t ceased, and Film Auckland are still working very hard with potential investors, Auckland Council, and with middle government to try and make this a reality sooner rather than later. But in the meantime it seems that productions are pulling out all the stops and turning alternative buildings into retro-fitted studio spaces, enabling productions to continue to make use of our talented crew and equipment, which is fantastic.

As the weather turns colder we can happily remind you that it’s only a matter of days before our days will begin to get longer again, which can only be a good thing in our books.

Sioux Macdonald, Guild vice president and executive committee member