800 Words is 50/50
Bosses of TV drama 800 Words pledge an even split between male and female directors, writes Bridget Jones.
Growing up, Caroline Bell-Booth was told she could do anything boys could do. She could run as fast as them, she could be as smart as them, she could try just as much as them. She says there was never the suggestion she needed to sit down and be quiet, never the implication she couldn’t have a go at whatever the world threw at her. Life was one big equal-opportunities playground.
Now she’s a grown-up, that jungle-gym has become a little uneven. And as a grown-up, female, television director, it’s so wonky she and other women in her position need a little help rewriting the rules to give them a boost up to the same level as her male playmates.
Bell-Booth is one of two female directors at the helm of the third season of 800 Words, a joint production between South Pacific Pictures here in New Zealand, and Australia’s channel Seven staring Erik Thomson as an Aussie widower who moves his family back to New Zealand to regroup.
‘‘Woman doing job’’ is usually a bit like ‘‘dog bites man’’, but this season, there was a resolute push from SPP and Seven to have women make up 50 per cent of their directing team – a big step considering the industry-wide imbalance between women and men.
The formal, public pledge for equal gender representation came after SPP chief executive Kelly Martin realised that between shows including Shortland Street, Westside and The Brokenwood Mysteries, the number of women being employed as directors – or lack thereof – was fairly shocking. One statistic Martin shares lays it out in black and white: out of 42 hours of television drama being made by SPP, only two were directed by women.
‘‘I just hadn’t clocked it, but when we did run the numbers, I did not feel good about that,’’ Martin says. ‘‘We weren’t doing a good enough job.’’
It wasn’t something she could just trust to the universe to fix.
‘‘This idea that things are getting better – it’s not going to happen unless if we are continuously vigilant. The older and more experienced I get, the more I see it, and if I’m in a unique position where I can have an impact on a certain area, then I should - because it’s something I actually give a s... about.’’
She’s right to care. Internationally, Reed Morano was the first woman in 22 years to win the Emmy for Best Director in a Drama Series for her work on The Handmaid’s Tale this year.
Here at home, the numbers didn’t make for pleasant reading either. According to the 2017 NZ On Air Diversity Report, women made up just 10 per cent of television drama directors here in New Zealand – a percentage point down from 2016.
NZOA chief executive Jane Wrightson says while a gender balance is not required for funding, they are keenly watching the way the industry approaches the situation.
‘‘We could get to the stage where we consider [a commitment to gender balance within the directing team] as a funding criteria, which we don’t now. And even that would start changing things. It would start forcing the conversations, and that’s the most important thing – getting it on the agenda and keeping it there,’’ she says.
She cites Martin’s public promise to change things as ‘‘another roadblock kicked out of the way’’, and 800 Words is the first production to see the first real impact on the directors themselves, and the wider industry.
‘‘I didn’t have any female role models when I started out. All my directing role models have been male. And that makes me really sad,’’ Bell-Booth says. ‘‘But it makes me really bloody proud that there might be young women, who think, ‘She’s doing it, so I can do it’ about me. I’m incredibly honoured to think that might actually happen one day.’’
Helena Brooks was the other female director attached to 800 Words in the initiative. Like BellBooth, she’s worked extensively as a director, but it’s often been on commercial projects or smaller productions, and often ones they’ve created themselves in order to be able to run the show.
They are not inexperienced newbies the bosses are taking a punt on. However, according to Martin, that’s exactly how some decision-makers see the chance to employ someone other than the status quo.
‘‘These two women in particular have hours and hours and hours of experience in directing and people still think it’s a bit risky [getting them to direct shows like 800 Words]. Men in the same position haven’t been seen as as much of a risk. SOUTH PACIFIC PICTURES
‘‘We have to stop and question if that was a man, would I be so hesitant?’’
Perhaps unsurprisingly, Brooks strongly supports such a formalised step to ensure gender equality isn’t just a pipedream.
‘‘I’ve always been a believer in affirmative action, and it is the case that things aren’t going to change naturally – some things do need help.
‘‘When you have a maledominated industry, whatever it is, as a young woman, if you can’t see your gender doing it, sometimes it’s hard to picture SOUTH PACIFIC PICTURES yourself in that position.’’
From her experience at NZOA, Wrightson says most of the excuses she’s heard for not hiring women range from ‘‘the ridiculous to the somewhat inept’’, including mums not being able to work unusual hours, to lack of experience – ‘‘but these women can get the experience, they are not stupid...it sounds a little like 1965 a bit. But it is complicated - all these issues are.’’
There will undoubtedly be some kickback to SPP and Seven’s joint initiative in an industry as small as New Zealand’s, where opportunities to direct are shrinking rather than growing thanks to smaller funding levels and more people looking for roles. But Martin says the end goal means it has to happen.
‘‘It’s a lovely idea that it should just be ‘the best person for the job’, but that means men doing all the directing forever because they are the only ones getting a go. I don’t buy that, and it annoys me. I don’t think men in this industry are sexist or have actively shut women out; I just think they don’t think about it...they don’t have to.
‘‘And I really respect those guys and the work they do and we will continue to use those experienced directors, but we need some women who are considered experienced, too.’’
Both Brooks and Bell-Booth believe they do see directing slightly differently than their male colleagues – but that’s OK – and given the type of television New Zealand is increasingly making, and how many women watch drama on screen, they say it is ‘‘crazy’’ that more women aren’t telling stories from the female point of view.
But Brooks has come across people who don’t believe she will be up to the job because of some