Honour for camera career
The idea crystalised into a career prospect.
Waynne Williams started a lifelong relationship with film in a Wellington picture theatre, working as a tray-boy at 12 years old. He’d walk the aisles selling icecreams, sweets and popcorn – and catch a few films when the lights dimmed.
When Williams visited a Wellington film studio on a school trip, the idea crystalised into a career prospect, and Williams decided this was the place for him.
‘‘The moment you walked on to the soundstage there, with the lights on, the cameras, I just thought this is what I want to do.’’
He left school at 15, and got a job at the studio working behind a camera.
Fast-forward five decades, and Williams, 69, is now one of the country’s top cameramen.
Today he was recognised in the Queen’s Birthday Honours, as a member of the New Zealand Order of Merit, for services to the television industry.
Williams has worked in television through the moon landing and the protests of the Springbok tour. At 18, he was filming on the ground in Vietnam during the war.
He was standing behind the lens on a New Zealand protest boat as the French army conducted its first nuclear tests in the Pacific. In his 54-year career, Williams has worked on around 10,000 news stories, and is still on the job, working as a stringer for TVNZ in Christchurch.
He’s also witnessed huge change in the industry. When he started out, working with the TV crews ‘‘wasn’t considered serious work’’.
‘‘The older guys at the time thought TV wouldn’t really last the distance, so those jobs did go to the younger guys,’’ he says.
When he started out, the international television news was flown in to reach Kiwi screens days after the fact. When the United States sent the first man to the moon, Williams recalls the film being flown over on a high-speed bomber plane from Australia, to be shown here just a few hours later.
The way journalists work has transformed too.
‘‘The manners of the business have changed,’’ he laughs. ‘‘Back then we’d have huge arguments about whether a crew would go to intrude on someone, and nowadays we don’t really mind intruding.’’
Williams has also been involved in training the next generation, teaching at New Zealand broadcasting school and training up numerous young camera crews.