Wellywood hits a winter lull but the goldrush will come again

Wednesday, 27 June 2018

Graeme Tuckett, a film reviewer but also of Crew Wellington and Crew Auckland, says the lull in New Zealand productions is as bad as he has seen.

The good times are past and will rise again but, for now, New Zealand's on-set film workers are struggling to find work.

Graeme Tuckett, who has run crew sourcing sites Crew Wellington and Crew Auckland for about six years, said work right now on film shooting was 'as quiet as it has been in memory'.

The King Kong film set under construction in Seaview in 2004.

While the winter lull was routine, this was more-extreme than usual, he said.

Even experienced crew who had been consistently employed for years were right now between jobs.

Kingdom Come film set at Miramar in 2009.

Taika Waititi tweeted a picture of his 2012 film set from What We Do in the Shadows.

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While there were projects in the pipeline in coming months, there was virtually nothing currently shooting in Auckland or Wellington, he said.

Weta Workshop general manager David Wilks said that while the Miramar film industry was busy with pre and post production - essentially all the work before filming started and after it ended - there was not much currently shooting in Wellington.

Film Commission information shows that it has its fingers in just two currently-shooting projects - with the working titles of Martin Phillipps & The Chills and Ross & Beth - in New Zealand.

There were though nine different productions with Film Commission involvement in post production, a Film Commission spokeswoman said. There were also two New Zealand films in production overseas.

'The production pipeline for the coming 12 months is looking strong, across both international and New Zealand productions.

'Inquiries remain steady and we are currently supporting a number of productions considering NZ.'

And there was light on the horizon with eight films scheduled for principal photography in the second half of 2018 as well as other planned projects.

'While the screen sector has 'peaks and troughs' of production activity its health remains strong,' the statement said.

In the 2016-2017 financial year screen revenue in New Zealand increased by 8 per cent to $3.5 billion.

Expenditure on producing films in 2017 cracked the $1b mark - a 32 per cent increase on the year before while employment in the industry sat at 13,000 or more.