Back Room to Front Parlour
Philip McHale, Channel 2’s Programme Organiser, told us that 90 per cent of the station’s commercials were at present on film, 4 per cent on video tape, 4 per cent on slides, and 2 per cent were flip cards and captions. The figures are approximate and offer no guide to future trends as video tape is an innovation in the recording ok live-action commercials.
....Amongst the producers working with film are Pacific Films in Wellington, Peach-Wemyss Ltd. in both Wellington and Auckland, the Auckland cameramen Harry Reynolds, Rudall Hayward and Robert Steele, and Colour and TV Films Ltd. Mr Steele is a well-known photographer who has produced a number of short features and commercial films for the cinema and TV. Rudall Hayward is, of course, a pioneer New Zealand movie--maker, and is still remembered for his feature-length Rewi’s Last Stand. Harry Reynolds was the first cameraman to make television films for the local market when he exhibited his newsreels on the Bell experimental transmitter. He still makes the occasional newsfilm for Channel 2, but commercials now occupy most of his time. Also working with film of course, are the animation studios the Auckland branch of Peach-Wemyss, Ltd., Morrow Productions in Levin and the independent Auckland animator Merton Lacey.
All these producers work in conjunction with or have their own sound recording studios and all are pri-vately owned. Competition between them is keen but there is a marked de-gree of co-operation between the several branches of the industry. The National Film Unit handles the bulk of their processing work. Animation, of course, is the darling of the trade. As Noel Peach told us, any idea you care to dream up can be animated – “the only limit is a good cartoonist’s imagination.” Mr Peach is a sound recording engineer and had a long association with the Tanza distributors in putting New Zealand musicians and singers on record. In his early career he was an exhibitor and projection engi-neer in the cinema industry, and he put this experience to good use two years ago when he began equipping his studios for flm production. Now he is associated with Stan Wemyss in the making of live action commercials, and with Sam Harvey in animated cartoons.
At pre--sent Channel 2 has a video tape machine in operation and another on order, while the NZBS has also ordered video re--corders for television stations in other centres. The production technique is similar to that used for flm at the story-board stage. The advertising agency must still design sets, hire costumes, have the scenery painted and supply the acting talent. But when all the preparation and planning work has been done, the television studio takes over. The commercial is produced non--stop and the shooting time is reduced to the length of the commercial itself. At present the location is restricted to the station’s own studio and the range of its television cameras, but the technique is still versatile. A film sequence, “graphics,’ live action and slides can
...Channel 2’s charge for one hour of video tape production work is £33/11/-, and this includes rehearsal time, lighting set-up, camera alignment, taping time and playback. In one hour a producer can record a 10-second commercial on video tape which would take, perhaps, a month or more occasional work on film.
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