Lifeline for NZ screen
NZ’s advantage is it’s ready for business now, says woman behind a global campaign. By Melanie Carroll.
New Zealand could turn its fight against Covid-19 into a win for the local screen and creative technology sector if a global campaign starting tomorrow attracts work.
The aim is to offer a worldclass New Zealand production hub to art directors still sitting in lockdown overseas, with projects to finish and no way to get people together to do it.
The target is smaller productions such as commercials and children’s programmes, not big studios like the makers of The Lord of the Rings.
Called ‘‘Your Creative Business Can Happen Now’’, the campaign will roll out in Australia, the US, Canada, Ireland and the UK, most of which are still trying to contain the coronavirus.
New Zealand’s advantage was that it could do business now, said Sam Witters, one of the drivers of the campaign.
‘‘Every city and territory and country has certain skills they’re very good at doing. I think New Zealand has a good legacy of cinematic effects courtesy of Weta Digital and Peter Jackson.
‘‘We’re saying our offering here, our capability from virtual reality to commercials to motion capture to games, is all available. We’re a day ahead, we don’t need humans flying in – what we want are jobs coming in.’’
The campaign is driven by the AMO group, a collection of Kiwi creative production and technology companies, whose chief executive is Witters. She is also a board member and investor of tech and creative media start-ups in the US and New Zealand.
Auckland-based Witters often worked overseas, and was just about to leave for three months in New York when the lockdown happened. Instead, she has spent the past few months in Gisborne.
Before the pandemic, New Zealand’s interactive games development sector was on track to be worth $1 billion a year by 2025. Successes have included Grinding Gear Games, which began in a garage in West Auckland in 2006 and was bought by Chinese tech giant Tencent in 2018 for more than $100 million. But New Zealand’s creative technology sector has struggled to attract investment, and the country failed to even appoint a chief technology officer two years ago.
Only 21 companies in New Zealand’s screen industry make more than $10m a year, Witters said. ‘‘It’s really expensive to market yourselves offshore. Going to the US you’re going to the biggest, best, largest, most competitive environment, but there’s something in New Zealand ingenuity, or the tyranny of distance – we’re very good at R&D, and we have amazing creative talent here.
‘‘It’s about time we decided, right, this is going to be a robust sector for NZ Inc.’’
The campaign was an invitation for companies to work together to keep jobs and create revenue, after many saw income flatline during lockdown.
Treasury forecasts suggested that without government help, the cultural sector would be hit twice as hard as the rest of the economy, and 11,000 jobs could be lost within 12 months.
‘‘We’ve got to put food on tables – we’ve gone from a health pandemic to an economic pandemic so each of us has got to do what we can to keep people in jobs,’’ Witters said.
‘‘We’re not going after the Hollywood big guns – our New Zealand film sector is doing that perfectly well for themselves in great ways.
‘‘It would be incredible if, for example, Audi in Germany said we’re doing our latest car commercial campaign, we’re unable to do some of the AR [augmented reality], VR [virtual reality] and special effects, there’s a small part of it that’s worth this much, if we provide you with this brief could you answer it quickly and finish it here.’’
The campaign featured a website offering a directory of New Zealand screen production and creative tech businesses and organisations for potential overseas customers.
The lockdown had halted production for film studios and content producers around the world.
‘‘You’re going to see a gap appearing, and Netflix and the main streamers are trying to solve that so we’re on the right track,’’ Witters said.
New Zealand Trade and Enterprise, Chorus, and Callaghan Innovation had provided funding, and networks such as expat organisation Kea had also been supportive, she said.
It was not about New Zealand offering cheap labour.
‘‘It could well be that the opportunity’s actually right now, and that it dissipates a bit as companies and production services come back on line, as levels of alert during Covid reduce around the world.
‘‘New Zealand has the first mover advantage right now though, and that’s what we’re trying to take advantage of.’’
‘‘We don’t need humans flying in – what we want are jobs coming in.’’ Sam Witters