Just Feel the Weave, Not the Width

Oh New Zealand, you haunt me so with your mystical ways; of darkness and brooding-imagery, your crashing surf and distant horizons; misty windows and time-lapse mountain sunrise; that just-so time of day before the storm, then that pensive calm.

We will delve within this, get to the bottom of it. We will delve within the craft of lens selection, camera choices pertaining to budget and artistic imperative and explore the mysteries of that lesser defined post-production choice.

The jury are in.

Here in the dark and we have only just begun, and already we are committing the cardinal sin… we are watching the movie – sucked within the beauty of it, wrestling with the narrative, relishing the journey… and then, from the darkness, someone speaks – SNAP OUT OF IT!

The voice is godlike – here within the church of surround sound and perfectly wracked pictures – a ‘movie theatre’ – the flicks – the pitches… our tasks are explained again to us.

We are not here for the whole – our day has a purpose, and its focus is for that precise detail, a moment in time, possibly that moment when the light transmutes through the lens and strikes the sensor, behold that texture within the weave… angels cry out! That moment when the ‘now’ is captured forever in ‘time.’

But what will become obvious is it’s not so much about passing judgment but we are here to bear witness.

This ‘Craft’ business is a pesky task at the best of times, and now a deeper purpose is our mission so with all our unconscious bias, prejudice, and personal preferences hopefully put aside, we should see the next two days out – damn I love this business – may the anonymous blind tasting begin; feel the width not the texture… stare deep within the loom, see the individual threads for their beauty and form?

The excitement of being on a judging panel is not to be belittled, but there are rules to adhere to, benefits from the enormity of the process – awash within the forms of light and shade, texture, depth, and meaning, and for a brief moment, the weight of the egregiousness of the funding process melts into the background, and the immediate tasks fall upon us.

Craft and skill abound.

Two judging panels. Drama, current affairs and news, documentary, feature film, TV series, telefeatures, TVCs, internet, web series, soap, comedy – a melting pot of New Zealand’s unconscious bias all in one room. 160 movies of various forms and genres, two days.

Kick’er in the guts Trev!

A plethora of cinematographers gather in Auckland for a weekend of judging and voting – a look beneath the veneer of the craft – analysis of that ‘painting with light’ moment, that instance between that exposure and this choice of angle, and that twinkling ¾ backlight flash of brilliance – a new way to look across distant tundra through the quintessential New Zealand misty window, that meaningful look from the lonely bach on the lonely coastline on the rugged New Zealand shoreline… not depression but just aloneness and thought… in that, give the composer something to do in this movie moment also. Or not?

The aspects surrounding the rules and other discerning choices of judgmental behaviour were quickly explained like you would to a group of people that didn’t have the time to read the fine print, and then the clipboards were handed out, oh yes, there will be ‘forms’ to fill in.

The perils of ‘group think’ were pointed out and then mentioned again, and then we were given a lunch menu as a pre-reward to the tasks ahead. We shuffled off to the assigned theatre – big screen – pencil poised – black coffee close at hand, within the first 30 mins I have eraser bleeding all over the form as I correct and rub out and correct again and again. Having done this before, I am totally confident in the robust process.

Fade to black.

Straight up there’s the student work. Overtly colourful and earnest with great potential and perfectly formed cliché; sub-text is sorely wasted on the youth and yet again proven useless as the placenta is thrown, still warm, upon the dinner table, with more meaningful close ups than an Elizabeth Moss web series.

It’s soon after this that I’m accused of being cynical?

Really? I was hoping to bring a sense of ‘witness’ to the room, a sort of discerning poetry of the situation. It is, after all, a special task that stands before us. I am privileged to be amongst this company of fine technicians.

Cynical – that isn’t intended, in fact, very far from it.

Oh New Zealand, you haunt me with your mystical gaze through dripping-misty-windows. Old; distant tundra and aging glass distorted with time – you said you loved me forever. That low budget look that we’ve perfected out of desperate need and necessity, there you are, my sweet mistress of hope.

Next up, we are comparing homelessness and the suffering on the streets with the despair of opulence, and a group of middle-class women agonise over a facelift or a bum job, and then compare that with the burn scars of the state ward who tried to take his own life; depth of field and lens choice aside, you have to appreciate the challenge here? The bogey-snot-nose in the backlight as a homeless guy cries in despair and rage, the camera chases him to get a closer look at the agony of hopelessness – the light flitting off the BMW as the driver looks the other way (perhaps at a bargain frock in the high street window?), the drone tracking the speed of it all… Rolex, reckless, vibrant – life in the fast lane of the world of TVC and now robber-baron-owned media completes with ‘best suffering’ category, no social solution required… it all melds into one.

Oh New Zealand, you haunt me so with your new platform-neutral demands of funding bodies, where the crown finally chooses what we get to see on our screens; where the robber-baron-owned media is now posing as legitimate, where advertising even more so drives the demand, is this democracy?

How does the crown fit into this space and is there room yet for the treaty? – it’s all here before us in one room, in one movie, in one moment in time… the images become of each other, the thoughts blend into one desperate gasp of whom we are – how we have become this country of half-truth and breathtaking beauty; if you get the light just perfect you can’t see the toxin in the waterways, choose the right tide and the right time of day to hide the depleted fish stocks within, the green paddocks and those Holsteins foregrounded with the perfect mountain just so… a dichotomy of conflicts there in a single frame… now judge that?

Forget the $15 million gigs where you try to compare with the $1,500.00 soaps. The high end confronts the wreckage of the low end of the business. How’s that the case? Yet lower budgets equal better scripts.

Has anyone noticed?

This industry that forces you to think in the same moment about what’s in Harvey Weinstein’s underwear drawer and how you might get a less intrusive (if that is possible) angle of this family of five living in their car, and what might be the best camera kit to follow the privileged climate change student to Parliament... and this industry that then forces you to actually do something about the issues after the hype of the protest – when everyone has gone home to their sheltered worlds where they think a lively Facebook chat is going to make a difference… and then it’s just us and the homeless guy discussing mental illness and how he was abandoned by the system, or the whaling expert who can adeptly discuss 1769 and the arrival of greed, or the truth about that fashion label that exploits child labour.

Oh New Zealand, you haunt me so. Cynical? – Nah – I just know even more why I do this, and I’ll be back next year.