Reaching for the stars:

Kiwi cinematographer makes waves in a galaxy far, far away.

Winning an Emmy for his work on The Mandalorian was not something Baz Adoine ever imagined when he began his career operating a photocopier at Television New Zealand.

“Back then I wanted to make films to educate and change the world. I had no idea I’d be doing what I’m doing at the moment,” says the cinematographer, on the eve of the debut of the series’ second season on Disney+. “But I have to say my career is a whole rolling wave of high points.”

Papatoetoe-born Adoine had worked behind the camera on dozens of movies – often alongside big-name directors such as Clint Eastwood, Stephen Soderbergh and George Clooney. He then went on to win this year’s best cinematography Emmy – in partnership with Aussie Greig Fraser – for the Star Wars spin-off series The Mandalorian.

But the journey from Papatoetoe to Hollywood was a long one.

“I came out of high school and

I knew I wanted to work in the film and television industry, so I harangued Television New Zealand for a job for six months until finally they said, ‘Please come take this job’ and it was running a photocopy machine,” Adoine says. “I did that for just over a year and then I left to work on a film (Sylvia).”

In the mid-80s, he headed to London but got waylaid in Sydney for eight years, working on several films before being asked to head to the US to work on Waterworld.

“I did the hard yards. I was a camera assistant for many years, but still working on good projects,” says Adoine, whose resume includes films Erin Brockovich, The Bourne Legacy, American Sniper and There Will Be Blood.

In 2016, he worked on the film Rogue One: A Star Wars Story with Fraser and when the Aussie asked Adoine to join him on The

Mandalorian he jumped at the chance to be a bigger part of the Star Wars franchise he had loved since his teenage years.

“The original Star Wars, I’m pretty sure I saw that at the Starlight (Cinema) in Papatoetoe and like the rest of the world I thought it was fantastic,” he says.

“I was a young teenager and I didn’t understand anything about film theory then, but I knew it was a great rollicking adventure and I loved it. I then watched every single other Star Wars movie that came out and loved that universe.”

Baz Adoine wanted The Mandalorian to live up to that legacy.

“It is a fervent fan base and a massive proportion of the population loves the films. It wasn’t a concern or a worry, but in Mandalorian we really wanted to be faithful to the idea of Star Wars, the ideology of Star Wars, the canon of Star Wars, so that was part of that story, that it could slot in, that you could watch it and feel like it wasn’t a weird remake or spin-off or something like that,” he says. “When you pay respect and homage like that to the original films, it keeps that fan base quite happy.”

The Mandalorian, set five years after the events of Return Of The Jedi, follows bounty hunter Din Djarin (Pedro Pascal) and his exploits beyond the reaches of the New Republic. The cast includes fellow Kiwi Taika Waititi, who not only provides the voice of the droid IG-11 but also directed the season one finale. In season two, another

New Zealander, Temuera Morrison, reprises the role of Boba Fett, the character he played in Return Of The Jedi.

Bringing the series to the small screen threw up technical challenges for Adoine and his team, not least the problem of how to create the other worlds where the story was set.

“The movies were filmed in all sorts of locations around the planet – Jordan, Morocco, Iceland, Norway – but it’s pretty difficult on a TV budget and schedule to travel a film crew around the world, especially now in Covid where it’s impossible, but with the technology we used we didn’t need to go to those locations. We could shoot everything on the soundstage in LA,” he says.

“It was revolutionary. What we had done had never been done in that fashion before. It was extraordinarily difficult to pull that off, but we did and that’s one of the reasons the show looks so fantastic.”

Adoine says all those involved knew the series would be good.

“When I was shooting the Child (aka Baby Yoda) I knew that character was special but we didn’t realise how it would explode around the world, that everybody would love it the way they did. It’s fantastic that it’s so popular because it’s such a good story.”