NZ must invest to get best from film says Cameron
The movie industry is worth billions to New Zealand, but a lack of skilled tradespeople threatens growth. Sapeer Mayron and Tracy Watkins report.
Hollywood heavyweight James Cameron says the multibillion-dollar New Zealand film industry has huge potential to grow – but warns a shortage of skilled crew could send studios elsewhere.
‘‘I think it can grow as much as we want it to grow, but we will have to invest in that growth; what we have now is really highly trained and experienced people; but we don’t have a depth to that bench,’’ he warned.
Cameron, who is filming the Avatar series in New Zealand, is a permanent resident and announced recently with wife Suzy Amis they were now living here fulltime.
New Zealand has generous film subsidies and other benefits, including being Covid-free in more recent times – though Cameron said the Covid ‘‘advantage’’ was waning as the rest of the world opened up.
The Government’s film subsidies were decisive in the decision to film Avatar in New Zealand, and they remained competitive with other incentive schemes around the world, he said.
He regularly engaged in ‘‘outreach’’ with the big studio heads, persuading them of the benefits of filming here.
But he worried that if producers couldn’t get good crews, they would look elsewhere.
‘‘If you have three big productions in the country at the same time you’ve pretty much used up your bench of the most experienced [crew] especially if you have a big production that has a main unit, a second unit, like we did, and like Lord of the Rings did, and so on,’’ Cameron said.
His plea was for an investment in training.
‘‘An enormous amount of capital can be brought into the country if we make a relatively modest investment here; an apprenticeship, or training programme to bring up the next generation of all of these trades.’’
The concerns are echoed by others in the industry.
Netflix hit Sweet Tooth, filmed in New Zealand, brought millions of dollars into the local economy, just like hundreds of earlier productions. But people involved say the film industry is reaching its supply peak, while demand keeps increasing.
Without enough quality studios and sound stages, craftspeople and crew to actually run the everyday needs of film production, word will travel overseas that New Zealand can’t cope, even if the scenery is unbeatable.
Sweet Tooth’s production designer, Nick Bassett, says the routine flood of productions into the country face the same problems year after year, especially as more film-makers come scenery-hunting.
‘‘It’s locations, but also you have to have those studios, you need facilities,’’ Bassett said. ‘‘That is the real key, we need film studios, and we need crew. It gets pretty busy here occasionally.
‘‘Sometimes you can’t get the crew you need if there are big jobs on in town. They tend to come at once and everyone is competing for the same thing, and then it goes quiet.’’
While Sweet Tooth was filming, several other large productions also had the green light to shoot in New Zealand amidst the pandemic, bringing $400 million into the economy.
They were Avatar, Power of the Dog, the Lord of the Rings television series, Power Rangers, Cowboy Bebop and Greatest Beer Run Ever.
‘‘It was actually hard to find carpenters and experienced people,’’ Bassett said. ‘‘But that’s been the history of New Zealand film-making.
‘‘We’ve often worked without the right facilities but if you want big shows to come
here they do need places to film in that are soundproofed, and big spaces to build in. With that you can attract shows but without it, it’s hard to bring the big films here.
‘‘They’ll come for different reasons but there is a point where you hit saturation, when you are kind of maxed out and the word gets back quite quickly to the rest of the world that it feels like New Zealand is full.’’
Stefan Knight was Sweet Tooth’s hair, makeup and prosthetics director. He said he was never surprised when big budget movies and shows wanted to film in New Zealand, because it keeps proving how good it is, and how professional the talent is here.
‘‘The thing that really holds us back is facilities, studio spaces. We have a limited number of studios, and productions want to go where there are sound stages and facilities to work in,’’ he said.
‘‘I know there are plans to have facilities like that built so once that happens, pretty much the sky’s the limit. It’s pretty exciting.’’
Given the cost of building, and New Zealand’s ‘‘boom and bust’’ cycle of extremely heavy to very quiet production periods, it will take a while to sort out the industry, Screen Auckland manager Jasmine Millet said.
‘‘This is an ongoing conversation that needs to be had about demand and supply, and we’ll probably never stop needing to talk about it, and keep looking for solutions,’’ she said.
‘‘But the cool thing in Auckland’s case is that we have always found a way of housing a great range of productions.
‘‘The kind of demand for studios is always there, it’s always been there even when we’ve had new studios come online, and that is the case around the world and I can’t see that changing.’’