Motivating The Video Makers
Author: Emma Philpott
While it is still evidently possible to make a bad cheap video, we seem to be making a higher percentage of good videos on no budget, certainly compared to the art-to-bullshit ratio of unlimited budget overseas shoots.
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The Directors' Cut
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Greg Page: 
Chris Graham
Joe LonieThis was affirmed in late February at the British Council-organised Resonate seminars which brought UK music industry speakers, including ex-pat Brent Hansen, now CEO of MTV Europe, UK music video producer Pete Chambers and Island Universal music video commissioner Liz Kessler to Auckland.
Perhaps the most enlightening session was when Hansen, Chambers and Kessler commented on local videos that they had evaluated in preparation for the trip, with obvious awe about the budgets we get away with. As Kessler observed, comparisons can't be made to the UK industry where a shoot's makeup and hair budget alone might be NZ$45,000 - that's nine Kiwi videos worth!
Joe Lonie's work, especially Goodshirt's Blowing Dirt video, won high praise from Chambers who commented publicly at the last day's wrap up that he hoped to work with him in the future.
Lonie's account of their plans is typically low key. He says he and Chambers went out with a larger group of people for dinner during the seminar series.
"We were pretty excited and pretty drunk and were talking about how cool it would be to work together. He was talking about maybe bringing some English bands over here to make some videos and maybe getting me over there, but you know... we just have to see what happens."
As pointed out at Resonate, good low budget videos rely on quality ideas and this is where our video makers are more than levelling with the international field. While bands have become more professional and commercially viable, directors have shifted up a mark with them, making the whole package a lot more attractive to record companies which haven't been obliged to spend money on videos since funding was introduced.
Page smiles: "Someone has to say to the record companies: 'No, no, you have to pay now, because we're actually quite good at it!'"
And as for the 100-plus videos now given funding each year from NZOA, there is plenty of expectation that there will soon be somewhere else to play them, something will replace M2 when the NZOA programme funding is available in July, if not before.
Word is that Canwest's pup, TV4, is seriously looking at the possibilities presented. The station, which loses $6M annually, runs a combination of infomercials and teletrader from midnight to mid-afternoon most days. Cheap advertising if you want it. Canwest might finally get its big break into the minds and living rooms of the nation's youth, though for now no-one is saying more than 'maybe.'
"The hope with M2 was that we expand and grow the free-to-air hours and get some kind of continuity and stability so we didn't get that stop/start thing that is characterised with music television in NZ. But that wasn't to be," says Smyth.
There won't be a knee-jerk reduction of support for video making from NZOA. Smyth pulls out his standard line about the demise of M2. "In my experience, when one door closes, another one opens."
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