CAMERON HARLAND
Funding our creativity
Cameron Harland was always a big fan of the big screen – a film buff from way back. He remembers as a 12-year-old watching Steven Spielberg’s Jaws, in which the mechanical-looking shark was brought to life by that great composer John Williams.
‘‘I watched it in the second form at Tawa Intermediate School Hall on a Saturday afternoon with a small white screen and an old projector. I think the K bars were 10 cents back then.’’
Looking back, Harland, the new boss at broadcasting funding body New Zealand On Air, reckons many of the films he enjoyed gave a real insight into the times he was living in.
The Cold War, recognition of global warming and advances in technology meant that blockbuster films such as Mad Max and
Terminator took a message really wide. Local films like Once Were Warriors and more recently Dark Horse became a real window to some things that were and are happening in society that needed a voice and attention, he says.
‘‘Go back and watch Sleeping Dogs again for a great perspective on [1970s] New Zealand. The idea of fear was writ pretty large.’’
These days, it’s his job to make sure we see New Zealand stories played out on the flickering screen, and hear them in our music and on our radio stations.
Now he’s in charge of the pot of money for local broadcasting content, and he has his work cut out.
Harland was four days deep into his new gig at the helm of New Zealand On Air when lockdown sent him home again. But he says he’s had it easy compared with the creative community he serves.
They’ve been hit hard. Film and television production, theatre, music events shut down as the country locked itself away from Covid-19 at the end of March.
The pandemic forced the industry to stop work on 47 local productions and eight major international films.
A lot of those 4000-plus who lost their jobs were crew on the sets of overseas-based productions – Avatar in Wellington and the
Lord of the Rings series in Auckland, he says. Harland has been meeting New Zealand Film Commission boss Annabelle Sheehan weekly to get things moving on easing border restrictions. Some US film bigwigs have been allowed back into New Zealand to revive productions, such as Avatar, in the past few weeks. He credits Sheehan with this development.
For its part, NZ On Air has shifted deadlines for productions it has funded that had to shut up shop overnight. It is lobbying the Government for more money to stimulate the industry and get people back to work.
Post-lockdown there are so many questions around what shape the various sectors are in. ‘‘We are all trying to work out what the tail of this thing looks like.’’
But people in the production sector are a resilient lot, he says. It’s full of people who want to get back into work and get creating again.
The counter to a lot of this is the potential opportunity New Zealand has as it moves towards stamping out this virus.
‘‘If you look at the main centres of production activity – the UK and the US – they are some way from being able to make content but broadcasters all over the world are still needing content so there’s an opportunity for us, if we can get productions up and running, they could be shown not just on NZ screens but on international ones.’’
NZ On Air spends about $135 million supporting local content on TV, radio and digital platforms. It received an extra $25m to be spread over four years to support vital public media in the wake of Covid-19.
In May the Government gave a further $7.1 million to boost NZ On Air’s new music programmes.
These days, the pot of gold distributed by NZ On Air has to go a lot further with digital platforms, like Stuff, The Spinoff and
banging on the funding doors. That’s a departure from five years ago, says Harland.
‘‘We have definitely embraced a future that is beyond linear TV and radio. But we have a finite amount of money and an increasing need for that money.
‘‘The issue has always been that the money has to be stretched further and further. That was true before Covid. Post-Covid we are seeing all levels of media – TV, commercial, newspapers – anything that was ad-funded has immediately fallen into stress. No question.’’
‘‘What does . . . is vitally important to a democratic nation, so we have to look at what our role is with that but within that we have to try and work out how to manage this finite budget.’’
Harland, 48, beat a commercial path to his new job.
He was chief executive of Park Road Post Production and remains on its board and that of Weta Workshop. He has served on the New Zealand Film Commission board and, until recently, was on the board of TVNZ.
Harland was also credited with breathing life back into CricHQ, a cricket scoring platform.
But it all started with his love of film. The eldest of three growing up in the Wellington suburb of Tawa, where his father built the home they lived in, Harland got an after-school job at a video store.
He watched hundreds of hours of movies at various stores right up till he left university. ‘‘I pretty much watched everything from around the 80s and 90s that came out of Hollywood, but also everything that we produced here – Utu, Goodbye Pork Pie, Once Were Warriors, Brain Dead.
‘‘I loved the escapism, but also the craft and learning about the stories behind the stories. Like the fact the animatronic shark in didn’t work very well so the score from John Williams was emphasised to create tension.’’
He graduated with degrees in law and history from Victoria University.
‘‘I wanted to get a degree that meant I would be qualified to actually do something. But three-quarters of the way through it, I determined that wasn’t what I wanted to do.’’
He came out of university and scored a job with the ANZ Bank and was dispatched to Hawke’s Bay.
He worked in a branch, serving customers, to get to know the business.
While working at the bank he read a book about the changes going on in New Zealand rugby as it moved from amateur to professional.
He thought it would be a fascinating environment to be working in so wrote to the CEO of New Zealand Rugby, David Moffett, asking for a job.
Long story short, he got hired as special projects manager – a more or less made-up job to get him on board.
At the age of 22 he was in Ireland negotiating a million-pound deal with BSkyB for the All Blacks to play an extra test match.
This led to his entry into advertising. Saatchi & Saatchi was hired to work on the marriage between NZ Rugby and adidas and through his connections with management Harland ended up working for Saatchi in London for four years.
Returning to Aotearoa, he went on to run Park Road Post Production in Miramar, Wellington, creating and mixing the sound for films.
Harland, who lives in Wellington with his wife Janelle and their two boys aged 12 and 14, says the level of creative brilliance that went into the work there was amazing.
‘‘I’m hugely respectful of creative people and I have been privileged to work with many over the years. For me, it’s less about the commercial aspect of how you can make a buck and more about the brilliance of seeing an idea on a page turned into something amazing.’’
‘‘I loved the escapism, but also the craft and learning about the stories behind the stories.’’