Shooting Rage
In 1981, protests over the Springbok rugby tour and apartheid divided New Zealand. Independent filmmakers played a central role in the telling of stories about that fateful time.
Thirty years later, as New Zealand prepares to host a Rugby World Cup, Tom Scott (producer and co-writer), Emma Slade (producer), Grant O’Fee (co-writer), Danny Mulheron (director), and David Paul (DoP) orchestrated the telling of Rage – a television drama love story, set against the backdrop of the Springbok tour.
Steve Barr spoke with some key players about how they shot the original tour, and how filmmaking has changed since then.
Part One: Then, 1981
Under the radar of the establishment of the time, a small number of intrepid filmmakers sought to record the chaos and drama associated with anti-apartheid protests triggered by the 1981 Springbok Rugby Tour, from an independent perspective.
Much of the independent footage went to create Merata Mita’s influential and acclaimed documentary PATU! creating an independent telling of what occurred during this period.
Filmmakers Waka Attewell (cinematographer), David Paul (cinematographer), and Gaylene Preston (writer/producer/director) talk about the trials and triumphs of filmmaking during this dramatic period of New Zealand history.
David Paul: In 1981, I was a camera assistant at TVNZ in Wellington. I was never allowed to go out with the news crews; they couldn’t have looked out for me. The sound recordist quite often became the eyes in the back of the cameraman’s head. On the other side of the fence were people like Gaylene Preston and Alun Bollinger, the independents at the time who were out there shooting.
Gaylene Preston: We were independent filmmakers and had to work outside of the institutions. Up and down the country, there were a lot of people shooting film, some of it was… well, we’d get ours from TVNZ… Everybody kind of got their film stock their own way. I was working down here with Waka Attewell and the Vanguard boys [Alister Barry, Russell Campbell and Rod Prosser] and Gerd Pohlmann was involved.
**Waka Attewell: **We were a country that was desperately trying to find its identity. We were close to civil war. There were quite a few of us who established the freelance industry in the 70s. We were living paycheque to paycheque, commercial to commercial. During that time, there was no funding body like NZ On Air, so a lot of people were doing self-funded things. We were of the 70s generation that didn’t think of television as a commercial venture. Never in our wildest dreams did we think that the commercials would become more important than the programmes.
What cameras were you using at the time?
Waka: Actually, the camera I used is in the Archives. A 16mm NPR Éclair. Of course, we were doing our own loading, of 10-minute rolls. There was something really honest about those 10-minute rolls of film. Now, you stick in a P2 card and roll for half an hour, kind of like hosing everything down and not thinking it through. But with the 10-minute limitation, you were thinking in sequences. You’d make a lot of decisions before you turned the camera on.
**Gaylene: **Basically, we used whatever cameras we could lay our hands on. Waka and I always seemed to end up with the worst cameras. There were a few Arris – there are photographs around with cameras – I think Roger Donaldson even picked up a camera.
for the last test up in Auckland. These days, there would be so many versions of it because everybody would be getting it on their cell phones and it would be put up on the internet.
David: We were all shooting on CP16 film cameras, which were our standard news cameras of the day. The TV cameramen weren’t trying to shoot from the police perspective; in fact, they were getting quite upset about how the footage was being used on the news, not showing what was really happening. Wayne Vinten, who was a news cameraman at the time, really took it to heart and wanted to tell the truth. He would drive outside of his regular jurisdiction to get as much on film as he could.
**Gaylene: **We used film stock that we could lay our hands on. Someone had a mate in the news department at TVNZ so a lot of the film stock we used came off the back of a lorry. (laughs) Once we’d shot it, it had to be hidden. If you sent your films to be processed in the laboratory, the police would seize the footage in order to go through it and arrest people. I think Rod Prosser put his film under an auntie’s house. I hid our material in boxes in Jamie Selkirk’s cutting room, with exposed film for the Labour Party commercial. So if they wanted to raid to get our film, they had to raid the Labour Party’s film. I thought that was a bit of insurance. (laughs)
How did PATU! come about?
Gaylene: Merata Mita got in touch with me well before the Tour. As it escalated, it became apparent that she should be given all the footage. I don’t think there was ever any argument about it.
Waka: There were about sixteen different individuals. We all knew of each other, so it became a question of choosing someone who had mana to pull the whole thing together.
**Gaylene: **We had an overwhelming kaupapa that we wanted our footage to go to one filmmaker to make a cinema feature. So that’s exactly what happened. It was an amazing moment when a bunch of independent filmmakers pulled in all of their resources, put it all underground, then put in the same place so that one filmmaker could go away and cut the film she wanted to make. I think that’s a proud moment for the NZ film industry, and that spirit of cooperation is worth remembering and treasuring.
Part Two: Now, 2011
In May 2011 streets north of Wellington City roiled with the sound of actors re-enacting Springbok Tour protests, on location for the television drama Rage. This NZ-on-Air Platinum Fund $2.8m production dramatized those troubled times with the benefit of technology that has improved spectacularly in the ensuing 30 years.
**David Paul: **Rage is a love story, a social statement, a look at our history. It’s a moment in time that was part of shaping who we are as a nation today.
Our opening scene is epic. The movie starts in South Africa, it’s a pretty intense scene because of the implications of it – it’s Steve Biko, dead. The death of Steve Biko was huge, historically. Because of this helicopter rig from Shotover Camera Systems we’ve got this big sweeping shot across the savannah (which is Waiouru but looks like South Africa), with this vehicle driving up a dirt road, and it looks great because the land up there is wide and big. If we didn’t have this chopper mount we wouldn’t have the same scene.
It’s a fascinating rig. It’s a six-axis thing; they can turn it in any direction. I only had 5 minutes to play with it before we shot. I jumped into the helicopter with Brad Hurndell from Shotover. He showed me through it really quickly, we took off. It was such an easy system to use – here’s your zoom, here’s all your controls, here’s a beautiful joystick which isn’t fiddly like a lot of joysticks are. We needed an epic opening, and we got it because these guys. They stepped up and delivered.
How has camera equipment changed since 1981?
David: I did a camera test for Rage. It was clear from the script that it shouldn’t be shot on the Red, because it has a look that I felt was not suited to this film. It needed a look that was slightly edgy and had a little bit of attitude, so we tested the Sony 9000PL and the Alexa. We were blown away at how good they both were.
Waka: The Alexa is the most perfect camera on the planet. You suddenly feel like you’re back to being a cinematographer, where if you’re shooting on the Red you’re spending all of your energy getting the thing to do what you want it to do. With the Alexa, it’s like shooting film. It’s the difference between a German company that make cameras and an American company that started off making sunglasses and decided they wanted to make a camera. There’s something Germanic and solid and great about the Alexa.
David: The Alexa has been a dream. It’s a really good camera, well worth the hype. I’m wary of hype around cameras, but it’s stunning. We had a lot of stuff in the back of a van, in small sets, so camera size was very important. The Alexa has a beautiful low profile, small camera body, and it just sits on your shoulder really well and can fit into tight spaces.
Queenstown Camera Company brought the Alexa in very quickly. It’s a privilege that we have people in NZ who are early adopters of new technology and brought these cameras in, and we get to use it. Rage is benefitting hugely by having this camera.
How will the new cameras change filmmaking?
**David: **With the Alexa, if you’re a bit off with light, you can really rescue the image incredibly easy. We were running out of time for a day scene of protestors being chased by rugby supporters. We had run out of light but we had to shoot. We shot the scene from several angles with incredibly low light, but on the Alexa it still looks like daytime.
The post-production path is different and saves money and time. We created a very simple post process for the Alexa. It goes onto hard drives, we do a quality control sheet, Peter Skarratt puts it into Avid files and bins, sends it straight on to the edit suite. We keep a couple of copies of the raw footage (which looks very flat and milky, like a negative) which we’ll grade from, but the edit suite gets a nice image that has the colours and contrasts back in it. They edit in HD, make an EDL at the end, they’ll do a conform, then go back to Park Road to do a shot-by-shot grade from the original footage.
Any last thoughts?
David: I didn’t understand at the time but now I do: the independent filmmakers were so passionate about telling the truth. A lot of these people, they’re the people we look up to now. They established our film industry for the last thirty years. It’s a real privilege for me to make a film about a period in the lives of a lot of these people I look up to. n
RAGE had its debut on 4 September on TV1.
