No Joy Ride on the Street

Knowing where your next pay is coming from, low overheads and job security sure sound good, but how about working 12 hours a day, 49 weeks a year? Working the Shortland Street beat is not as easy as some may think. Carolyn Brooke caught up with crew Michele Priest and Greg Moon about the daily grind as the show approached its 20-year anniversary in May.

Shortland Street runs like a well-oiled machine these days, but it certainly wasn’t always the case. Michele Priest heads up the AD department and recalls the tailspin of cast and crew on the first show. “Producers walking around with no idea what they were doing – those were interesting times as New Zealand had never done a fast-turnaround show like that, having to shoot 30 minutes a day,” she says. “To some degree we made it up as we went along.” Now everyone knows their place and it’s partly why the show works so well, she says. “People are not figuring out what they have to do. A lot of things just happen – there’s plenty of assumed knowledge when you’re doing something every day but it can be quite hard for people coming in from the outside.”

Michele has clocked up 17 years with the South Pacific Pictures show, taking a break in between to freelance on various television series, commercials, and films. “I know in the past there was a bit of division about Shortland Street as it was just this fast-turnaround TV show, but the crew work really hard here and really fast,” she says. “I know freelancers work long hours too but here it is the continuation – it’s essentially 49 weeks of the year, day in, day out.” Two blocks are shot each week with studio and location scenes done over a fortnightly cycle. “It’s like a short feature each week.”

Her typical working day starts about 7.30am and goes through until 6.30pm. Pre-rehearsing scenes the day before saves time. “We pretty quickly get into the swing of camera rehearsing and shooting. It usually takes around 20 minutes to do a scene – it’s pretty fast then bingo, we start the next one.” Despite permanent staff, Shortland Street hires plenty of freelancers with full crews often brought in for locations.

Training others is a large part of her role, and crew progression is key to the show’s continuity. “You’ve got to keep new people coming through. When you look out there, there are a lot of 1st ADs who started here or worked here.” Knowledge gained in her early days working with experienced directors and executive producers was invaluable, and she enjoys sharing it with others. “I think that’s why I’ve stayed for so long. I was lucky to get to work with people like Carey Carter – he was very generous with his knowledge, I learnt a lot from him. I learnt a lot from great directors.”

Some crew stay for years while others get a taste and move on, but there is no disputing that Shortland Street has been a training ground for many. Although Michele says it’s often training in ‘the Shortland Street way’, and past crew are often brought back in for cover. “It’s pretty rare to get a job as long as this where you can get consistency of employment. It allows people to develop in a way I don’t think they can in the freelance world, where you only get one or two days, sometimes a week or if on a long job you might get six weeks.”

Of course, the learning-from-the-bottom-up mantra is as strong at Shortland Street as anywhere in the industry. This can be a shock to newbies coming in as unit crew, runners or 3rd ADs, she says. “It can be quite a brutal thing, sometimes you have to run around and make people cups of tea and wash the floors and do stuff you consider below what you think your value is – we’ve all had to do it and we’ve all got to where we are by doing it.”

She says outsiders may have a bit of a warped perception of the show. “When you see on paper what we have to do, people say that’s not going to work, but one way or another we make it work,” she says. “I’ve had experienced ADs come in and at first say ‘you’ve got to be kidding’. It just looks so daunting, you have two units running, you’re sharing actors, you’re rehearsing scenes in five minutes – it looks like you can’t do it but we achieve it every day. You get addicted in a way.”

Sounds on the street

For the head of sound, Greg Moon, 15 years has kind of “just happened.” There was a three-year break while he travelled and freelanced overseas but like many others he eventually returned to Shortland Street. “They said ‘Greg we need you for a couple of weeks to tide us over to Christmas’ and I said three weeks tops – that was 10 years ago,” Greg says. “It’s a steady income, with freelance work you don’t know where the next cheque will come from.” What helps to keep him fresh is the occasional junket, like a documentary he did with Sir Edmund Hillary in Nepal. “We have a line producer who is very positive about people going away.” It’s important for creative and intrinsic reasons, Greg says, and he appreciates having an employer who supports this.

He agrees it is a good launching pad for crew, although his last boom operator stayed about six years. “It’s a place for people to cut their teeth and get prepared for the outside world,” he says. “They enjoy themselves while they’re here, it’s a real juggernaut but they keep coming back for more. So much money is spent training people and you get to know the job so well. It’d be silly to not welcome people back and have to go through the same rigmarole with the next person.”

Training is also a large part of his job, and he says the lack of it in the freelance world is a worry. “Usually people who have been trained here go on to do really good things,” he says. “They then seem to be able to soak up the pressure in the outside world – there is constant pressure here.”

Finding cover is hard. “Not many sound recordists can come in and cover; I have to train my boom ops to do it.” Previous employees often get called back from freelance work. “We don’t just do hand-held boom; we have this big mechanical machine in the studio.” About one and a half days each week are shot on location, and the rest is in the studio. “We’re shooting three cameras, it’s being cut live if you like, get one full run and you’ve got the whole scene,” he says. “If you’re outside on location you’d be on one or two cameras.”

Live training has its own difficulties, and moments have to be picked carefully. “If a really emotional scene is coming up then we can’t have a trainee on the boom because if we have to go again – it doesn’t look good for the sound department and not good for the actors to have to repeat it,” he says. “Trying to get that trainee to get a certain amount of experience to be accepted into the harder scenes is a pretty hard balance and has to be managed finely.” Every scene presents a new challenge, he says. “How it’s lit, how the director blocks the scene, where the actors are moving.”

He misses the variety of freelance work and the downtime. “All the different jobs you get to do, knowing you might not have anything the next day so you can go surfing or spend time with your family – it’s one of the benefits while it’s one of the downsides.” He says the show has been a constant in the industry with many old employees called in for cover and freelancers brought in on location and second unit days. “There is always Shortland Street to fall back on.”

Not having a sound kit keeps his expenses low, and he likes being able to establish working relationships, which can be harder with shorter timeframes. But it’s not a cushy job by any means – a 60-hour working week is quite usual. “You turn up at 7am, you’re locked down for 12 hours and you go home, have dinner and play with the kids for a bit,” he says. “People might think it’s a bit of a cruisey nine-to-five job but it’s not. We’re doing big hours under stressful conditions and it is 48 weeks a year with no hiatus. But I’ve got a family to feed and an oppressive mortgage – I’m living a sitcom with a little sweetener thrown in every now and then.”