“The insights and inspiration I have received have been exponentially more beneficial than I ever imagined.” – Producer Julia Parnell (FilmUp 2015)
Calling screenwriters, directors and producers!
FilmUp returns in 2016, providing talented and tenacious filmmakers an individually tailored development programme to hone their creative practice, and take a step up in their careers.
Now in its fourth year, Script to Screen’s FilmUp offers up to eight writers, directors and producers a place on the eight-month programme. Participants receive 20 hours of one-on-one mentorship with an established filmmaker, regular hub days including workshops and round tables with guest speakers, and tailored additional support from Script to Screen.
FilmUp has gone from strength to strength, thanks to the generosity of our previous mentors: producer Jan Chapman (THE PIANO), director Ray Lawrence (LANTANA), writer/show-runner Neil Cross (SPOOKS), directing coach Brita McVeigh, producer Tim White (SON OF A GUN), writer/showrunner Alice Bell (THE BEAUTIFUL LIE), director Garth Davis (TOP OF THE LAKE), producer Helen Bowden (THE SLAP), director Leanne Pooley (BEYOND THE EDGE), screenwriter/script editor Keith Thompson (THE SAPPHIRES), producer Tim Sanders (LOTR), screenwriter James Griffin (800 WORDS), writer/director Rolf de Heer (CHARLIE’S COUNTRY), writer/director Jackie van Beek (THE INLAND ROAD), distributor Michael Eldred (BOY), and producer Vicky Pope (TWO LITTLE BOYS).
We’re excited to consider applicants with a strong track record for another year in this rewarding programme.
APPLICATION DEADLINE: Monday 14th March 2016, 5pm
Read about our previous FilmUp mentorship pairings here.
Note: FilmUp Script Development will not run in 2016.
FilmUp is made possible with the financial assistance of the New Zealand Film Commission.
Script to Screen returns to Christchurch to present a free one-day workshop for filmmakers with actor, writer, director and producer Jackie van Beek.
This is a highly participatory workshop where participants will be challenged to think about their stories in fresh and exciting ways. We welcome filmmakers of all levels, from beginners to those with experience.
What to bring? Participants must bring two ideas for a short film, with enough knowledge about the story to pitch it very briefly (one minute max). The day will be spent exploring these ideas through writing, acting and directing techniques.
When: Sat 27th February 2016, 9am – 5pm
Where: CPIT Broadcasting School, Television Studio – 171 Madras Street, accessible through the car park on the corner of Madras Street and Southwark Street, Christchurch. MAP.
Cost: The workshop is free
Coffee, tea, biscuits and fruit provided. Please bring your own lunch or buy from one of the cafes nearby.
Registration: Please RSVP to Eloise eloise@script-to-screen.co.nz or 09 360 5400.
This workshop is made possible with support from the Creative Communities Scheme.
Script to Screen and WIFT NZ are proud to present a discussion with prolific Danish producer and broadcaster Piv Bernth (THE KILLING/Danish Broadcasting Corporation).
With a background in directing for theatre and screen, Bernth moved to producing in 1998 at Denmark’s broadcaster DR. Here she produced Emmy-winning NIKOLAJ AND JULIE and internationally lauded THE KILLING, as well as executive producing THE BRIDGE. In 2012 she moved into broadcasting as DR’s Head of Drama, green-lighting titles including BORGEN and THE LEGACY.
Join us to hear Piv Bernth talk to NZ producer and distributor Jill Macnab (BORN TO DANCE/Vendetta Films) about her approach to developing drama. As they pick apart the Danish model, learn how a small nation continues to produce compelling TV drama that finds a global audience. What can we learn from a model that champions writer and story, and is dedicated to giving audiences challenging work?
Tuesday 27th October, upstairs at Studio One Toi Tū, 1 Ponsonby Road (The old ‘Art Station’). 6:30pm drinks, 7-8pm discussion.
$10 koha suggested. Includes a glass of wine before the talk and a slice of pizza afterwards.
DVDs of some of Bernth’s titles such as BORGEN, THE KILLLING and THE BRIDGE, as well as other lauded TV drama such as FORCE MAJEURE and THE RETURNED, will be available for purchase at reasonable prices courtesy of distributor Madman Entertainment. Eftpos available.
Jill Macnab has an impressive and varied career in producing, distribution and marketing. After a stint in theatre management at Edinburgh Fringe, Macnab headed the sales and marketing department at Vendetta Films before aiding their international acquisitions launch. Most recently she has produced her debut feature film, BORN TO DANCE (2015) directed by Tammy Davis.
Proudly brought to you in collaboration with WIFT NZ.
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.
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
Hillary’s successful ascent of Mt Everest in 1953 is one of NZ’s most important and iconic stories, and in 2013 the story comes to the big screen for the first time. Beyond the Edge, to be released 24 Oct, is NZ’s first 3D film and had record international presales.
What is it about the narrative approach of the filmmakers that turned a well-known historical event into a gripping cinematic tale?
Join writer/director Leanne Pooley (Topp Twins: Untouchable Girls, Shackleton’s Captain) and writer (screen story)/producer Matthew Metcalfe (Giselle, Dean Spanley) as they talk to chair Toa Fraser (Giselle, Dean Spanley) about how they found a way into this iconic story and how the use of 3D played a role in storytelling.
Stay afterwards for a slice of pizza on us and a drink.
Tuesday 29 October, 7pm drinks, 7:30 start, The Classic, 321 Queen Street, $5 koha appreciated.
Click here for more details on screening times for Beyond the Edge