MEET THE MAN WHO FOUND
Director and location scout David Comer brought some on our most spectacular landscapes to the screen. Three years after his death, his partner has written a book celebrating his life and the country that inspired him. Debbie Jamieson reports.
THE film Ata Whenua – Shadowland shows Fiordland at its most powerful and raw – a love song to a slice of New Zealand.
Produced by Queenstownbased writer Peta Carey, and directed by her partner Dave Comer, the film was their first and only professional collaboration. Carey describes the process as a disaster – her with her meticulous, scripted, stick-tothe-budget style while Comer kept everything in his head. Eventually she relented and went with his approach. The result was brilliant.
Now, three years after Comer’s untimely Christmas Day death, Carey has undertaken another collaboration of sorts with her husband. Using her words and his photos she has created A Place for the Heart – a beautiful book dedicated to their daughter Billie which captures his life as New Zealand’s first film location scout, his love for Fiordland and their Martins Bay home, and Carey’s journey through grief.
‘‘Comer had the material for beautiful books but he was such a bloody perfectionist he would never have done that and he was so modest as well. He would never have put himself forward,’’ she says.
The material was certainly there. Comer was a brilliant and sensitive photographer who captured Fiordland at its most stunning. Later, his ability to see, even to feel, a landscape led him to the film industry where he became known as New Zealand’s first location scout and the man who found Middle Earth. A quiet and gentle man with a passion for conservation, he was never in the spotlight but led the way for the burgeoning film industry to develop in a collaborative and sustainable way.
This story begins (and ends) in Fiordland. Having studied fine art and photography at Canterbury University, Comer ended up driving jet boats on the Hollyford River before joining the pioneering venison helicopter recovery industry – the ‘‘Deer Wars’’, as it came to be known.
‘‘He wasn’t one of the hero pilots or even a hero shooter he just sat on the periphery but he got a huge amount of respect from those guys,’’ says Carey.
In 1986 Comer ‘‘emerged’’ from Fiordland and picked up work shooting stills behind the main units of commercial film work around Queenstown. Soon his knowledge of the landscape and understanding of film requirements saw him sought to find suitable film locations.
He effectively became New Zealand’s first location scout but more than that, he also introduced New Zealand to many New Zealanders – redefining and reintroducing our iconic landscapes. Think of the 1990’s commercials for Mainland Cheese, Barry Crump’s Toyota ads, National Bank’s black horse, the horse musterers and fireside bravado of Speights beer and the DB Clydesdales, the Welcome to Our World of Toyota. All landscapes ‘‘discovered’’ by Comer.
Comer once wrote: ‘‘What I seemed to offer was not only a photographer’s eye, but also a logistical and geographical sensibility. I knew the terrain but I also had a curiosity. What seemed to be useful was a beachcombing mentality; finding treasures. There was a certain amount of intuition needed as well. But the key thing was to be able to relate to what a director needed or could use.’’
But he was more than just the man who found the landscapes. He was a relationship builder, working with farmers, landowners and the Department