The recent surprise loss of M2 from the small screen is one event which has brought our own music video industry into focus of late. Another was the British Council-sponsored Resonate seminars which brought a number of European music video professionals to Auckland to discuss the production and placement of videos.

Then there was this week's pre-NZ Music Awards award of Best Video for 2002, which went to Joe Lonie (centre) and Goodshirt for their video to Sophie. Chris Graham (left) was a beaten finalist for his work with Bic Runga on the video for her Something Good single.

Spoiling our own perfect record, Greg Page, the third video director pictured on our cover and at right above, didn't make it to the RIANZ final cut. However, since his showreel features both The D4 and The Datsuns – those two killer Kiwi acts that the local music industry is riding its current credibility wave on the back of – he more than passed the NZM screen test.

These three directors are representative of the current state of our music video industry – underpaid but over-performing. With M2 gone will they become under-played (and in time under-employed) as well as underpaid?

A free-to-air music channel is a very attractive concept from the government's perspective – as demonstrated by the almost $1M of NZ On Air funding (that's a quarter of the agency's total annual music funding) M2 received over its 18 months – but a difficult project for any broadcaster to commit to. When TV2 pulled the plug on the midnight-to-dawn weekend show on March 8, M2 became the latest in a growing history of free-to-air music television false starts.

Music TV was in fact at its peak back in 1997, with close to 400 hours of music videos screening on television in one week. Later that same year regional stations Cry in Christchurch and Max TV in Auckland both disappeared after four year stints – both had been adversely affected by TVNZ adding the MTV Europe channel to its free-to-air roster.

In a move many had seen coming, the government-owned broadcaster later dropped MTV E after less than 12 months on air, citing a lack of advertising to balance its reported $5M per annum running costs.

Juice TV first appeared 1994 as part of the free-to-air Orange channel, which was then broadcast through the subscriber-based Sky network. The channel relaunched as a 24/7 operation in 1997, adding J2 (for the more mature video viewer) in October 2000, then taking the second channel full-time in April 2001. Juice have a self-imposed local content quota of 20%, which they say they don't struggle to fill and do not receive any subsidy from Sky, relying on advertising to generate revenue.

In 2001, NZ On Air included 'More Music Television' in the new Phase Four music strategy, specifically aiming to 'establish a partnership with a music television provider that will increase the opportunities for music videos to play on free-to-air television from 7 hours a week to at least 25 hours a week'. (Source: NZ On Air Statement Of Intent 2001/02).

Ongoing funding was allocated towards establishing a free-to-air music video television channel with no firm idea of how this was going to be achieved. The best plan was to make the established Juice TV free-to-air and talks were well progressed before failing when a broadcast frequency couldn't be secured.
Although still on very amiable terms with NZOA, Juice have no intention of reconsidering going free-to-air says Daniel Wrightson. "It's a tough one for us, as on-going business with Sky is crucial."

While TVNZ's reasons for taking on the MTV Europe channel may not have been entirely saintly (Canwest's youth-orientated TV4 had launched two weeks earlier) back in 1997, Satellite Media Group had started the local music ball rolling with the right intentions.

Satellite was already producing both TV2's Sunday afternoon Squeeze Kiwi music show and the Friday late night show Space, which included a high percentage of local music, when they picked up the NZOA funding for M2. Satellite's MD David Rose had conceived the 'channel within a channel' concept with the intention of building on an initial 18 unsocial (and un-advertising-friendly) hours a week. This, coupled with a self-imposed 33% Kiwi content, was heralded as a significant gain for the music industry all round.

And indeed it was, the early morning hours freeing VJs to play music and show clips that would otherwise never have made it to screen. M2 lasted the length of its initial contracts, but dropped from our screens three months ahead of the next NZ On Air funding round which was all-but guaranteed to continue its massive support. The Kiwi Charter announced for TVNZ just weeks earlier further encouraged many to cry foul at the network's refusal to carry any more of the cost burden until more NZOA funding was made available in July.
The locking of this window for local videos was a hard blow for our music industry which is just finding its feet in the visual department, while in parallel increasingly needing quality local videos to show to the very much interested international market. All eyes on us and we had better be looking well presented.

While it's not one of NZOA's funding goals, NZ Music Manager Brendan Smyth cites examples of videos helping our bands overseas.

"Tom Dalton, The Datsuns' manager told me that the Super Gyration video we funded (in 2001) had helped get them the live gigs overseas that had started the whole Datsuns' ball rolling. So it opened a lot of doors for them - just that one good quality video. There's no doubt about it, the music video is a valuable tool, not only in opening the song up to the audience, but in opening an international market for the band."

Smyth proudly agrees that in the last few years, local music video standards have shot through the roof, with plenty of Kiwi product appearing as slick as the international hits on television play lists. At the publicly voted Juice TV Music Awards last year more than half the categories were taken by NZ artists.
While few Kiwi videos enjoy a half-way decent budget, the best are getting an increasing amount of recognition.

"It's always a catch 22, aye", says Greg Page. "You do it for nothing, but you want to do the best possible job you can do... so it gets played.'"
Page started making music videos to get himself through the workload of a Waikato Polytechnic film course. "I made some dodgy VHS clips for local Hamilton bands by going to parties and filming them playing and just cutting stuff together."

Then, while working on the claymation short film 'Decaff', he attempted a claymation video for the Five Girls' song Food, which subsequently won the (then Flying Fish) NZ music video Knack award.

"Then I went, 'Hey shit, this is a really fun way to do film school'. Unfortunately it meant I failed film school, because in my third year I made something like 10 music videos while trying to be a student!"

Someone has to say to the record companies: 'No, no, you have to pay now, because we are actually quite good at it!' - Greg Page

ailing obviously didn't hinder Page too much. He has made more than 60 music videos in the last seven years, gaining a particular reputation for his rock presentations along the way.

Wellington's Chris Graham took a more focused path – going to New York's School of Visual Arts in 1991 as NZ didn't offer the training he was looking for at the time. When he returned to his hometown in 1997 he had the video for hip hop artist Frankie Cutlass' single You & You & You in his showreel.

"I came out of film school and basically had my teenage dream come true, which was doing a rap video in New York," he says. "It was low budget for New York, US$15,000, which in their minds is nothing. We shot on 16 mm and we made it as ambitious and dense as we could. So I went from that to coming to New Zealand and making five grand videos."

While he has only made about a dozen since, those have included Bic Runga, Rhombus, P-Money and most recently the latest King Kapisi single U Can't Resist Us, featuring Che Fu.

Joe Lonie, didn't study film-making, instead learning on the job. A musician and film buff with no real aspirations to make music videos, Lonie was encouraged to have a hand in Supergroove's You Gotta Know while bassist and co-songwriter in the group.

"The other guys were quite supportive of me. They liked the idea of a band member being responsible for the videos. I probably wouldn't have forced myself into that job, because I wasn't that sort of person, but the guys really encouraged me to take the reins there."

With only a 12 week 8mm film course under his belt, Lonie learnt under the direction of Kerry Brown who was making videos for the likes of Dave Dobbyn and Crowded House at the time. To date Lonie has worked on about 35 videos including five for Goodshirt.

NZ music video directors, they all agree, work because they like music and the visuals they can marry to it. While the international record companies very occasionally cough up amounts as high as the $150,000 rumoured for Bic Runga's Get Some Sleep, the responsibilities usually then go to overseas directors. $5000 budgets are strictly the norm, so it's definitely not the money. Stretching boundaries to make something bigger than the budget can really afford, has always been necessary.

As Graham observes, it's a paradoxical situation: "We do the absolute best we can with $5000 (the NZOA funding amount). It is a labour of love for the entire crew and all the vendors that support us. The result of that is that we make videos that only cost $5000 but they look like $50,000. So then, when we complain that we don't have enough budget (which means we can't do this for a living and we can't continue doing it – we need to get paid, we need to pay our crew and we should really be paying our suppliers), the record companies look at all the great $5000 videos we've done!"

"It would be a little bit horrific, if you actually did the sums," reckons Lonie. "It would be quite staggering if you tried to make a video and paid everybody what they would get for a commercial or something. At a guess it would probably turn a five grand video into 30 grand."

The $5000 NZOA funding is not meant to be the only source of funding for any video, as Smyth has frequently explained.

"We started out with the concept of matching costs dollar for dollar - if we put up five (grand) then the record company put up five. That formula lasted two or three months before it fell apart. That was because smaller record companies came to us and said, 'Well look, we can't pledge $5000 to this music video, we can pledge two and sixpence, so if you're wedded to the matching formula, you put up two and sixpence and we'll make a five bob video'!"

Discouraged by that scenario, or the alternative of only funding videos through the big labels that could afford to match the five grand, NZOA settled on a fixed $5000 per music video – putting the responsibility on the record company to come up with any additional money needed to do the job.

So record companies gaining should pitch in an additional sum towards making a video, but up to 70 - 80% of the videos made by the three directors who we talked to were made for NZOA's $5000 alone – a figure unchanged since '91.

"It's hard to complain about it," says Graham, "because the music industry as well as the film industry is suffocated by the obvious population circumstance of New Zealand. It's like you only get so many album sales and you only get so much box office at the movies, so how can you put more money into the budget when there isn't the population to support it on a local level?"

Reliance on the NZOA video grants alone can mean making a video on little more than thin air and favours.

"The main area that you really feel the limitations are if something goes wrong," says Lonie. "Quite often it's something that's out of your control, like it rains or something breaks. With your five grand you have no ability to throw any money at problems, so you have to do other things to solve problems, like cut your idea in half or cut your shot list in half. I can't complain too much about that, because being able to solve problems with your noodle rather than with cash is one of the things that makes it exciting as well!"

And the budget restraints have allowed our famous No. 8 wire mentality to flourish- how can we do a low budget version of the big overseas ideas, or what can we come up with that won't cost more than $5000?

"I might not have come up with some of those ideas for Goodshirt if I hadn't had so many constraints budget-wise," admits Lonie. "I think all creative people like some sort of boundary to work in, some sort of restriction, it just helps you focus a little bit."

As an obvious by product of the video funding scheme ($0.5M divided among 100 videos annually), Kiwi music videos have improved dramatically over the last decade. Directors and their crews have learnt, then honed their skills on these skeletal budgets.

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.

The Directors' Cut Greg Page:  Born in Palmerston North - aged 30. Musical cred: Drummer for Hamilton band Rumpus Room. Formal video/film trainig: Waikato Polytechnic (failed). First musuc video directed was the Postlethwaites Broke SVHS - no budget! "Probably about five" duff videos before he made a good one. Current music video tally is about 60. Most recent music video completed: Stellar* One More Day. Highest budget: $30,000. Lowest spend: $30! His own personal favourite is the Datsuns' Super Gyration. Latest recognition: Knack Award for Rumpus Room Big Boy (2001), many others on his mantelpiece - see www.flyingfish.co.nz Introduced Kiwi muppets to our screen with Pan Am's Long Grass. Chris Graham Born in Wellington - aged 31. Musical cred: Bedroom DJ. Formal video/film training? BFA from the School of Visual Arts, NYC. First music video directed was Frankie Cutlass You & You & You (1996) in NYC. Won't admit to making any duff music videos - ever! But then he has only made a dozen! Most recent music video completed? King Kapisi and Che Fu U Can't Resist Us. Highest budget $55,000.  Lowest spend $150. His own personal favourites are TrinityRoots Little Things and P Money and Scribe Remember? Recognition received: Empty mantlepiece but numerous finalist rankings. Admirably paid tribute to cult Kiwi classic 'Goodbye Pork Pie' in Rhombus' Clav Dub video. Joe Lonie Born in Dunedin - age 28. Musical cred: Formerly bassist and co-writer for Supergroove, currently tinkering on his own album project. Formal video/film training: 12-week night course in mm film-making! First music video directed was Supergroove's You Gotta Know.  (Which clearly means he made no duff videos before making a cracker.) Current music video tally: 30 or more. Most recent completed: Goodshirt Green (Version 2 for international consumption). Highest budget $25,000.  Lowest spend $5,000. His own personal favourite is Nurture Did You Do It All For Love? (You know - white suits, paint, feathers, fire...) Recognition received: Plenty, including the 2003 Tui for Goodshirt's Sophie. May be remembered for the reverse car crushing scene in Goodshirt's Blowing Dirt video.

This 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."

Little-known fact: Arriving at the conclusion that it would be a good thing to fund music videos, the next challenge for NZ On Air was to decide on an appropriate amount. Brendan smyth was set the task, and asked both big and small record companies how much they spent on videos. "I can't remember which record company, it was one of the independents who said, 'Well it happens the most we've ever spent was $9,900 and the least we've ever spent was $110'. So I thought (halfway between) $10,000 and zero - $5,000 is about right."