“I love mixing my life with art, music, storytelling, acting, exploring, experimenting… I feel very lucky to be a filmmaker. And to share the films I’ve made.” – Florian Habicht
With over 10 years experience and six feature films, writer/director Florian Habicht is continually exploring new ways to tell a story. From fable WOODENHEAD to music documentary PULP, Florian seduces his audience into new worlds, allowing them to fall in love with the beauty that captured his eye.
Join us to hear Florian Habicht talk to Robyn Malcolm about how he has developed his creative process over the years, working intuitively and collaboratively to make his films.
Tuesday 21st April, The Classic, 321 Queen Street. 7pm drinks, 7:30-8:30pm talk. $5 koha appreciated.
Now that we’re back at The Classic, make sure to stick around afterwards for a slice of pizza on us!
Screen Australia’s Enterprise scheme contributed to the success of companies like Matchbox Pictures and Porchlight Films, who currently create some of the most compelling content in Australia while growing strong businesses.
What opportunities will our version of the scheme create for our much smaller industry?
Script to Screen hosts a special industry discussion with producers from three of the companies supported by NZ Film Commission’s new Business Development Scheme (BDS).*
Join us to hear producers Matthew Metcalfe (GFC Fightertown), Richard Fletcher (Libertine Pictures) and Victoria Spackman (Gibson Group with Blueskin Films) talk to producer and lecturer Christina Milligan about the challenges they face, the opportunities they see for the New Zealand landscape long-term, and what their creative focus will be going forward.
This is an unmissable opportunity for producers, writers and directors to hear from some of those at the forefront of the film business in NZ. Come and have your BDS questions answered.
Tuesday 31st March, The Loft Q Theatre. Join us for drinks in the lobby at 7pm for a 7.30pm – 9pm talk upstairs (including 30 minutes of question time). $5 koha appreciated.
*The Business Development Scheme (BDS) aims to “grow the screen sector and ensure New Zealand stories can continue to be told while fostering the development of businesses with the scale and connections to attract more private and overseas investment.” Read more on the NZ Film Commission website here.
Script to Screen and the New Zealand Writer’s Guild proudly present our first Wellington Writer’s Room of the year. We are joined by BAFTA and Academy Award winning screenwriter David Seidler.
David is a prolific writer for stage and screen who won Best Original Screenplay at both the Academy Awards and BAFTA’s in 2011 for THE KING’S SPEECH. He will speak to writer/actor Loren Taylor (EAGLE VS SHARK) about his journey as a writer and the story behind his current magnum opus.
Tuesday 3rd March, 5:30pm drinks, 6pm-7pm talk, Ngā Taonga Sound and Vision. $5 koha appreciated, includes a complimentary glass of wine.
Join us afterwards for a slice of Heaven Woodfire Pizza.
David generously gave his time and expertise to mentor at our inaugural Writers’ Lab Aotearoa. Applications for this year’s Lab are now open and close on April 20th.
After an astounding year for local film, New Zealand is enjoying a strong presence at international film festivals. How can we make sure film festival hype equates to real outcomes for our films and filmmakers?
The producers of three recent festival successes delve into their experience taking the film to an international audience including how they dealt with media, buyers and critics to get the film the best exposure they could.
For our first Writers’ Room of 2015, hear from New Zealand producers Tim Riley (Turbo Kid), Tom Hern (The Dark Horse) and Paula Jones (Hip Hop-eration) as they talk to producer Julia Parnell (Loading Docs) about growing and maintaining international interest in their three very different films.
Tuesday 24th February, The Loft, Q Theatre, 305 Queen Street. Join us for a drink at 7pm in the main bar for a 7.30-8.30pm session. $5 koha appreciated.
NZ-Canadian co-production Turbo Kid, a post-apocalyptic action comedy has been an instant hit. The film had its world premiere at Sundance Film Festival last month and is due to screen later in the year in the Midnighters section of SXSW 2015. The film is written and directed by Montreal-based filmmaking trio Anouk Whissell, François Simard and Yoann-Karl Whissell, and produced by Ant Timpson (NZ), Tim Riley (NZ), Anne-Marie Gélinas (CAN) and Benoit Beaulieu (CAN).
Written and directed by James Napier Robertson, The Dark Horse is an inspiring true story based on the life of a charismatic, little-known New Zealand hero, Genesis Potini, played by Cliff Curtis (Once Were Warriors, Whale Rider, Boy). The film had its world premiere at the New Zealand International Film Festival and won six awards including best picture, best director, best screenplay and best actor at the New Zealand Film Awards. It had its North American premiere at Toronto IFF and went on to screen at the prestigious IFFR in Rotterdam where it won the Audience Award, and became the film with the most votes on record in the history of the film festival.
New Zealand feature documentary Hip Hop-eration follows Waiheke-based hip hop crew Hip Op-eration (aged 65-95) as they prepare to attend the World Hip Hop Dance Championships in Las Vegas. The film had a successful local theatre release in late 2014, and won best documentary, best director and best cinematographer at the New Zealand Film Awards. It screened in competition at the prestigious IDFA in Amsterdam, where it was the fourth most popular film of the festival, and went on to win the Audience Choice award at the Santa Barbara Film Festival in February 2015. The film is directed by Bryn Evans and produced by Paula Jones and Alex Lee.
“Housebound manages to balance consistent, fantastic comedy with a properly eerie mystery and what should be a star-making turn from lead Morgana O’Reilly.” Samuel Zimmerman, Fangoria
With so many elements to juggle to get a film to shine, it’s a feat when a low-budget first feature gels. Escalator funded horror-comedy Housebound has been hailed as a remarkable accomplishment by US reviewers after its SXSW festival debut earlier this year, where it was praised for freshness of voice, strong performances, carefully handled script, and the perfect dose of NZ’s dry humour.
Join us for a special NZ International Film Festival Writers’ Room with Housebound’s writer, director and editor Gerard Johnstone (The Jaquie Brown Diaries) and producer Luke Sharpe (The Jaquie Brown Diaries) as they talk to filmmaker Jackie Van Beek (Go the Dogs) about the challenges of writing and making this stellar debut feature.
Join us afterwards for some nibbles on us and a drink.
Tues 29 July, The Wintergarden (Civic Theatre), 7pm drinks, 7:30-8:30pm discussion, free.
Note: There will be spoilers!!
Housebound screened at the Civic in Auckland at the New Zealand International Film Festival on Sat 26 July at 9pm.
The first Writer’s Room for 2014 featured kiwi-born producer Helen Bowden (THE SLAP) in conversation with producer Philippa Campbell (TOP OF THE LAKE). Helen spoke about her experiences developing and making high-end television drama in Australia for Matchbox Pictures, with particular reference to the Emmy-nominated drama series THE SLAP (2011), the tele-feature UNDERGROUND (following the early life of Julian Assange) and her latest six-part mini-series DEVIL’S PLAYGROUND.
Helen’s work pre-Matchbox began in 1993 when she started producing shorts, documentaries, feature films and enjoying the privilege of working with some great actors like Cate Blanchett. “Like many New Zealanders I went to London after university. I shared a flat with a young Israeli director. She asked me to produce her film … and that was the beginning, a trial by fire really, but I loved it.”
After a four-year stint in London working on short films and waitressing, she made the move to Sydney and began a career making educational and corporate videos. It soon became clear to her that she was in the wrong ‘groove.’ “I realised it was just sucking up my energy. I knew I wanted to do drama.”
And so Helen began a gradual shift into the world of dramatic series and feature films. “I was a ‘suitcase producer’. I was essentially making one thing at a time and keeping my overheads very low. That was the only way to make things viable.”
In spite of the uncertainties that came with this territory, Helen enjoyed the ‘suitcase’ life. “You could do what you really wanted. Sometimes I had bigger overheads, an office, an assistant … but then there was often the pressure of trying to keep the cash flowing. This type of approach can be lonely at times, but I loved it anyway. You’re very mobile and can join forces with others. However you can be seen as being ‘successful’ – but after each project, you’re back at ground zero again. Disheartening, but that’s the nature of being part of a small industry.”
Then in 2008 the Australian government introduced the ‘Producer Offset’. Put simply, it is a tax rebate for producers, offering 20% of the total budget for television and 40% for film projects. The rebate is claimed back once the entire budget is spent, so you have to borrow against it to make the show.
A number of companies had been finding it hard to be viable prior to this initiative but the Offset meant that if a film made money, its creators would too, something that did not happen before. This form of financial support from government gave Helen and four other producers the certainty they needed to establish Matchbox Pictures in 2008.
Matchbox was set up to produce television drama, documentaries and some feature films. Friend and colleague Tony Ayres (Melbourne-based writer/director) approached Helen, asking if she would like to do something with him and his longtime producer Michael McMahon. The time was right with the Producer Offset. They asked Penny Chapman to come on board and she brought Helen Panckhurst with her as a ‘package deal’.
It was about this time that THE SLAP came into the frame, a book written by Christos Tsiolkas. At a suburban barbecue, a man slaps a three-year old boy (not his own child) across the face. The child has been misbehaving with no intervention from his parents and the book explores the reverberations of the incident through the voices of eight characters, each with their own chapter. The characters range in age from two year 12 students to a 71 year old man, four male and four female, and the book itself offers up an insightful portrait of contemporary Australian society.
“I ran into the office one day not long after we started Matchbox,” Helen said, “waving this book saying ‘I’ve found it! This is what we should do next!”. Tony and Michael were good friends with writer Christos and both agreed the book would make a great television series. There was stiff competition from others who thought it would be better as a film. We had to develop a presentation based on why we thought it would suit TV and how an eight-part series would do justice to the book. Fortunately Christos understood and agreed with us. When we secured the rights, ABC was in touch with us right away. The book was already making a splash and several networks wanted it.”
Helen and her colleagues knew ABC was keen. “We were lucky because ABC had received new money for drama. They’d been starved of funding by successive governments and the end result was no money for drama. They’d cut back from 100 hours a year to only 6 in 2007. Shameful … but Mr Rudd and a new government gave ABC a lot of money for drama and we were one of the first projects to benefit from that. The ABC wanted to do something multi-cultural and contemporary, so the timing was perfect.”
The pitch was a ‘dream’. “It was an easy pitch to make when I went off to raise the money. A man slaps a child that is not his own … the story resonates so widely because it is an urban one about child rearing that people really engage with … a child no one wants to deal with, and then a line is crossed. It’s very exciting when you have a strong idea that you can pitch. It makes your life so much easier – and the fact that potential financiers can then pitch it up the line too, is also really good.”
There were five writers on The Slap and Christos had input into the creative process too. “He was very good to work with, very modest and wanted to learn more about screenwriting and be involved. Tony and I met a lot of writers and eventually put together a team of five that we felt were a good mix for the novel and who showed a real willingness to collaborate. We wanted people who would put the project ahead of themselves and not think solely of their own episodes – some did one episode and others did two – but rather of the whole story. The book was ideal and inspiring, constructed around eight chapters and eight different points of view.”
To kick-start the process, Tony, Helen, Christos, a script editor and the five writers participated in a three- week workshop. “It was an expensive exercise,” said Helen, “Australian writers are quite heavily unionised, so workshop fees are high, but it was a fantastic thing to do. Essentially, we paid the writers to sit in a room and have their ideas go into a general pot, because then those ideas belonged to the company and the project. They received a ‘brainstorming fee’ which was different to their writing fee. Christos was very supportive of the workshop process. At the end, we had a storyline and a series outline and the writers went off to start first drafts. We then had another two-week workshop before starting on second drafts. We had a luxurious time frame for the writing because we wanted to do it well and give the writers enough time to write.”
With financing in place and the scripts at a certain point, the Matchbox team met with directors, once again looking for those who were the most collaborative in their approach. They then selected people they felt were best suited to the episodes. “Our set up director was Jessica Hobbs (another Kiwi), very accomplished, open, clever and thoughtful. She became a key member of the team in terms of setting up the series and working with Tony and me.”
The workshop approach was used with the directors too. They participated in a successful four-day workshop, arguing and talking around the table, generating ideas and discussing style and tone. “There was huge excitement from everyone. We felt we were making something special and important about contemporary life.”
Casting director Jane Norris rose to the challenges, finding ‘the most incredible people’ for every role. “We wanted good actors, of course, but we also wanted to be authentic to the culture portrayed in the book and to surprise people. It was great to find cast members that Australian viewers didn’t know.”
The series was not shot completely in sequence and each episode took approximately 7 – 8.5 days to shoot the 55-57 minute hour. “Christos was often on set. He was very trusting and had many useful things to say.”
Helen credits Tony with the idea for Underground, a tele-movie about the early life of Julian Assange. “He is like this fountain of ideas! I then started working with journalist Mark Davis who had done the most interviews with Julian over the years. He told me about the book Underground about hackers in the 1980s, written by a friend of Julian’s who was part of the Melbourne hacking scene. The book contained a few stories about Julian’s early life. We wrote up a two pager for the networks and pitched to the Head of Drama at Channel 10. They were interested but wanted a longer outline. This didn’t exist so we started working on it right away, got it into a form the Head was happy with and he agreed to make it.”
Once given the ‘ok’ the project grew wings and took off, something Helen felt it needed to do because of the nature of the story. “We had a three-day workshop in Melbourne. Matchbox had commissioned some research, which we often do, and that person did a breakdown of the book’s contents, a timeline of Julian’s life, and sourced some additional information. We started working on a storyline.”
While they were making the tele-movie, Julian’s real-time life ‘got crazier’ with the WikiLeaks issues and the accusations from Sweden. “It was mind-blowing,” said Helen. “Julian’s mother was very upset about the making of the film. Director Robert Connolly is a very ethical person, politically aware, left wing, and he found this quite distressing. We had heard she wasn’t happy and then she called him, talked for over an hour asking, ‘what are you doing?’ and ‘this is not going to help – it will damage him! Live your own life and leave us alone’. Robert was very diplomatic but she would not step back and wrote to the papers, saying she was unhappy and the truth wasn’t being told.”
The movie was completed, went to air, received good viewer numbers and was later released as a feature film which raised some money for Julian. “Julian’s mother did speak with us after that, saying she loved the film, it was the best one done about him. As a young man, Julian was very idealistic. His ideas have stayed the same but his life has become far more complicated, so telling the story of his early years was easier than trying to deal with the complexities of his later life.”
Helen said she has always felt very fortunate being able to bring important stories to the screen and the six-part mini-series Devil’s Playground is no exception. The series is a spin-off from the 1973 Fred Schepisi film which tells the story of a young boy growing up and going to school in a Catholic seminary, and realising that the priesthood is not for him. Helen explained that whilst the film shows an ‘affectionate’ portrait of the Church, there are hints that all is not well. In the series, Simon Burke returns to his role as Tom Allen – he is now a psychiatrist who is asked by the Church to counsel priests. Simon was also an executive producer on the film.
“The process to find the story was long,” said Helen. “We wondered what had become of Tom after he ran away from the Seminary. We wanted to know where he is now, what is he doing and explain why he left. It had to be something that people would turn on and watch, so the story also had to go into the contemporary problems within the Church but not overwhelm with those stories. Tom is like an ‘everyman investigator’ going into the world of this incredible institution.”
The series is yet to air on Foxtel but Helen is keen to see this happen before people become fatigued by the number of stories currently circulating about the Catholic Church.
In 2011 a 60% stake in Matchbox was sold to NBCUniversal and the remaining 40% was purchased in 2013. Helen said this was much needed and a very positive thing. “It gave us the money to develop projects and put in more infrastructure. Universal has huge distribution and they look for high-end drama throughout the world. We couldn’t believe the purchase in 2013. That we had started, built up and sold the company in such a short space of time, was amazing. I decided not to continue once the company was 100% American owned, so I left after Devil’s Playground and will move on to something else now.”
Written for Script to Screen by Jane Bissell
Join us this month for a Wellington Writers’ Room with Australian director and academic Robert Marchand. Robert will talk to story advisor and acting coach Brita McVeigh about the relationship between filmmakers and actors in the process of character-based improvisation.
Emerging filmmakers can feel bound by the orthodoxy of the filmmaking process. How can writers and directors get to the heart of the story by engaging their actors earlier on in the process? This discussion is aimed at writers and directors, as well as actors.
Join us from 5:30pm for a glass of wine and stay afterwards for a slice of Heaven Woodfire Pizza on us.
Wed 27 August, Nga Taonga Sound and Vision (formerly The Film Archive), 84 Taranaki Street, Wellington, 5:30pm drinks, 6-7pm talk, $5 koha appreciated, includes a glass of wine
Robert Marchand is currently in New Zealand working with co-writer/director team Andrea Bosshard and Shane Loader (Taking the Waewae Express; Hook, Line and Sinker) on their new film The Great Maiden’s Blush. Support their BOOSTED campaign here!
Join us for a discussion delving into the creative process of low budget feature films as experienced by recipients of funding from the NZ Film Commission’s Escalator scheme. This is an opportunity to feed into the NZ Film Commission’s discussion around different options for low budget funding moving forward.
Writer/director Max Currie (Everything We Loved), writer/director Paolo Rotondo (Orphans & Kingdoms), writer/director Gerard Johnstone (Housebound) and writer/director Guy Pigden (I Survived a Zombie Holocaust) talk to producer Tui Ruwhiu about how being part of the scheme shaped and changed their filmmaking process.
The Escalator low budget funding scheme was an initiative of the New Zealand Film Commission which ran from 2010 – 2012. Over three years, eight teams were given production funding of $250,000 to make their first feature film.
Join us afterwards for a slice of pizza on us and a drink.
Tues 2nd September, The Classic, 321 Queen Street, 7pm drinks, 7:30-8:30pm talk, $5 koha appreciated.
For our last Writers’ Room of the year we are thrilled to welcome award-winning Australian showrunnner, writer and director, Tony Ayres.
Tony talks to Fiona Samuel about his career as a creative dynamo, and his involvement at the helm of some of the most critically and commercially successful high-end television to come out of Australia (The Slap, Nowhere Boys, Maximum Choppage). Lauded for his skills in story development, Tony delves into the processes behind Australia’s recent high-end television success.
Thurs 30 October, 7pm drinks, 7:30-8:30 session, The Loft (upstairs), Q Theatre, 305 Queen Street.
A full bio for Tony Ayres can be found on the Matchbox Pictures website.
Half-day seminar: Creating Compelling Drama for a Young Audience with Tony Ayres
Tony will also share his expertise and insights on creating compelling and relatable screen drama for young people in a half-day seminar on the morning of Saturday 1 November. Whether you’re writing drama specifically for a young audience or want to develop children and teen characters in your drama, this is an essential session to attend. More details here. We’re proud to be able to deliver this session in partnership with Kids on Screen.
Presented by Kids on Screen and Script to Screen.
“Writing and directing for young audiences has been one of the most challenging, yet gratifying facets of my career. Not only are young audiences today far more savvy in terms of story, but they have a vast plethora of content options to choose from. This is what makes it so rewarding when you get it right.” – Tony Ayres.
Award-winning showrunner, writer and director Tony Ayres will share his expertise and insights on creating compelling and relatable screen drama for young people. Whether you’re writing drama specifically for a young audience or want to develop children and teen characters in your drama, this is an essential session to attend.
This intensive seminar will explore developing ideas into stories and making them relatable to different age groups – from writing authentic characters, to powerful, relevant themes, and crafting compelling drama that hooks the audience.
Tony is currently working on the second season of Australia’s teen drama Nowhere Boys. Series 1 of this award-winning drama series has just been nominated for an Emmy and has won an AACTA, Logie, and a Prix Jeunesse International 2014 Award.
Where: St Columba Centre, 40 Vermont Street, Ponsonby.
When: Saturday November 1st, 9.15 for 9.30 start, 12.30pm finish.
Tickets: $15 concession, $20 full price*
This seminar is brought to you with financial support from the NZ Film Commission.
* concessions available for industry guild members, students, and senior citizens with identification.