‘Dunedin Study’ in the spotlight
A Kiwi documentarian hopes his latest series will give an internationally lauded scientific study the long overdue recognition it deserves here, writes James Croot.
Mark McNeill’s latest documentary series gave him the opportunity to speak to Nobel Prize winners.
They were all keen to talk about his subject, a little scientific study of just over 1000 New Zealanders that many of us have never even heard of.
‘‘They’d be going ‘I suppose everyone in New Zealand has heard of this study’,’’ recalls McNeill, whose Auckland-based boutique television production company Razor Films is perhaps best known for its TV work with clinical psychologist Nigel Latta.
‘‘And we’d go, ‘no’, and they’d go, ‘oh, because WE all had’. That was something we heard over and over from scientists that we interviewed – and they were really big-time scientists. You just don’t realise how amazing this is.’’
‘This’ is the University of Otago’s Dunedin MultiDisciplinary Health and Development Study, which, for almost 45 years, has been following the lives of those born between April 1, 1972 and March 31, 1973 at the city’s Queen Mary Maternity Hospital.
With 96 per cent of participants still involved in the longitudinal study (the next phase of testing is due to take place from April next year), it has become one of the most successful of its type in the world, generating more than 1200 research articles, reports, books and chapters on topics are diverse as child health, injury prevention and links between drug abuse and adult psychosis. Such has been the worldwide interest in the study’s findings that they have not only generated more than $12.5m from overseas funding agencies, they’ve also influenced thinking and policy-making around the globe.
A piece quantifying the pace of ageing among the study members was described as the fourth-most important scientific discovery of 2015 by prestigious US magazine Science News.
McNeill admits it was his wife who suggested the ‘‘Dunedin Study’’ as a ‘‘really interesting’’ topic for a documentary. ‘‘We’d seen an interview [director] Richie Poulton had done on TV with Kim Hill and I eventually got around to contacting him.’’
Poulton immediately mentioned the first, potentially deal-breaking hurdle – all of the study participants were off-limits. ‘‘The study works on confidentiality, but, to be honest, I was more interested in what the science had to say about the rest of us – my life or my kids’ lives. And, of course, the other thing is, all the study members are the same age, so that if we wanted to talk about TV watching in 5-yearolds, there wasn’t much point in showing a bunch of people in their 40s.’’
At least five years in the making, the resulting four-part Why Am I? series has overcome a variety of other challenges, including finding extra financing, interview subjects who reflected the study’s findings, deciding when to stop filming (‘‘a couple of times, we thought we had finished and then some amazing new study would come out’’) and the herculean task of turning the screeds of data into something that would entertain and grip television audiences internationally.
‘‘It really took us a while to get our heads around thematically presenting things in a way that makes sense,’’ says McNeill.
‘‘We wanted to cover the stuff that was the most interesting, but also theme it somehow. We didn’t just want it to be – factoid, factoid, factoid – that would make it pretty boring, pretty soon. It took a lot of trial and error and work to end up with a structure we were happy with.’’
It’s one that has already garnered the New Zealand On Airfunded (to the tune of around $750,000) series plenty of plaudits and, just as importantly, sales. Thirty networks (including BBC Asia and SBS Australia) covering 70 countries have already signed up to screen it.
McNeill confesses he always had one eye on the international audience, which is why he sought out Radio New Zealand’s Scottishborn presenter Susie Ferguson for narration duties.
‘‘One of the problems with a New Zealand accent is it isn’t regarded as an ‘international’ voice – people in America, Britain and Australia have difficulty with our accent. However, I also wanted a voice that was familiar to New Zealanders – someone who was one of us. For most of the duration of making the series I would have assumed we would have had a male voice, but when we tried Susie, it just worked really nicely. She’s got a lovely voice – warm and authoritative – and I think the documentary is all the better for having a female narrator.’’
It was a decision that clearly seems to have worked – those who have seen parts of the series so far have come back with an extraordinary response, says McNeill.
‘‘Through an accident of scheduling and delivery, two episodes have been shown on Qantas flights and we’ve had lots of people writing emails and letters to us who really liked it. Our Australian distributor said they had even had 120 people look them up as a result of seeing it once on a flight. It has been really heartening to get that feedback’’
He hopes Kiwi television viewers find the documentary series as fascinating to watch as it was to make.
‘‘I hope they are really interested in what they see and hope they talk about it the next day. This study is something really amazing that we can be really proud of.
‘‘We constantly hear talk about a knowledge economy – well, this is it in its purest form.’’