From the New Zealand TV Weekly January 2, 1967
Dull, talkative N.Z. documentaries on television exasperate Russell Reid of Wellington, at one time a film-maker with the National Film Unit.
So far as I'm concerned, technically the NZBC performs daily miracles. A short time ago I would have had to say "nightly" but we're moving on. Now, you can't make bricks without straws I know, and TV hasn't changed that despite performing the occasional miracle. When you come to look at staffs and studios in New Zealand and reflect on the same things in London, Ottawa and New York and you also look at the resources available in Ottawa, New York and London combined with all points west land east you can't help being amazed at what IS done in New Zealand-not that it is done well but that it happens at all. Nightly I sit there waiting for the NZBC to tall flat on its face. They do at times but more and more it's only at times
. So do other TV services in other countries-often bigger countries with long experience of the medium. The screen blows up in your face, as it were. This doesn't concern me much.
What does concern me is the material that gets on to our screens.
Now, in order to have the thing functioning regularly at all New Zealand has to import some of that material. We can't unfortunatly in a way, expect to make it all ourselves right here at home. Neither can London nor New York. I'm not sure l would want us to. They have to stuff their programmes with something. What many an average viewer doesn't seem to be aware of is that the field of material available is limited in all sorts of ways. This is Where we come up against things at times that drive some of us screaming from the room. Some of us of course, still sit there entranced. (You want to observe my taunt Kate!) You can't please all the people all the time and so on and on and on. It's just the same in London, Ottawa and New York- except for the fact that you can there turn to another station. Maybe that day for New Zealand is not far away. But I wonder if it will make things any better. We can't be certain.
Give or take a little on staff and resources, the NZBC does well resources when it comes to reporting on the local scene -on something that is happening here and now. All in all TV in this in New Zealand is no better nor worse than TV anywhere else.
But when it comes to a programme piece made right here at home, that's another matter. Studio stuff, Compass and the like are fair enough if you overlook the fact that someone somewhere in them omits to ask the question that only you, you believe; can ask. Some questioners are more skilful than others which must always be so. Some producers are more imaginative than others. Many discussions rarely get anywhere but I don't know that I expect them to and they do sometimes inform, The quality of their information is sometimes open to question but we can't answer back, only kick our chair in rage. This is TV and it will probably go on being like this. But I've been taking more note of background stuff, if you like to call it that. This is where I explode, having stopped kicking my chair in rage-I explode!
I've been looking long and hard at the so-called documentary features written, shot and edited here in New Zealand. They always appal me. They could do so much not only to excite us but to provide us excitingly with a better understanding on which to make our own judgements, This is the real job TV can do and it isn't doing it. Most of the efforts I see are as self-conscious and so sure of themselves as the National Film Unit once was. The Unit learnt the hard way.
Behind many of these films no one ever seems to know where they are going. They simply wave a movie camera around the landscape, bash it all together, talk madly down the sound track and go off in a blaze of glory basking in the words of some newspaper reporter who hasn't seriously looked at a piece of film for forty years and anyway, couldn't care less so long as he has done his forty hours and been paid the award wage. This is what appals me.
The makers of these films never seem to take into consideration how much their audience can take at a sitting, how far the film is going and certainly have no idea of what they are trying to achieve. As good a case in point is the recently concluded Tall Trees and the Gold. As an example of documentary technique it's as good an example as I know of how NOT to make a film. (Call it a documentary film or television programme -as you wish.) This is the best example of the worst effort I've ever seen on a television screen anywhere. After the first episode I continued watching it steadily. I couldn't quite believe my eyes or my ears. I was detenmined to see this thing through if it killed me. It damn nearly did. The film rolled its relentless way through the projector and I always ended the programme sitting lower and lower in my chair. I haven't the slightest doubt of course, that some people sat there entranced. Yes, entranced is the word. What they now know about the kauri forests of the north and the gold-mining there you could write on the back of a postage stamp with Bob Semple's famous pencil-a carpenter's pencil.
The object of this series was presumably to inform, enlighten, excite or do something or other to us about the kauri forests and the gold-mining in the north. It did nothing of the kind. I'm now no better informed or excited than I was before on the subject of these miles of film. I wanted to be because I've spent only a little time in and around the parts the film dealt with. I wanted to know more, I thought I might learn something and I thought I might he excited, I was depressed. I was at times too, reduced almost to helpless laughter. Parts of some of the episodes were hilarious but I'm sure they were not meant to be. Some of the hilarity of course, was caused perhaps unconsciously but it was there nevertheless. The pomposity of the episodes was often appalling-or appealing, it depends how you look at it. I've sat through some pompous films in my time but this was often the daddy of them all. This was particularly so when we came to the final episode where with time running out the film-maker never, never stopped talking. An amateurish mistake in such film-making if ever I knew one. We couldn't see the film for the talk. The talk often became a spate of meaningless words barely keyed to the screen. Then there was neither the technical ability nor the desire to cut anything. I began to wonder if the film-maker, Miss Shirley Maddock, was being paid by the foot. (It's an old trick. Film-makers in the early days of sound, in New Zealand films anyway, used to play this game.) There were many impressive scenes but a scene or two don't make a film neither for the cinema screen nor the TV set. The final impression with which I was lefit was that of someone waving a film camera over the countryside and talking madly down the sound track at the same time. Perhaps it was produced on this basis. Talk that is not keyed and knit closely to the screen is one of the commonest faults in amateur cine club competition films as I well know, having sat through a great many over the years. With the spate of meaningless words running down the tnack my mind boggled at the thought of what the film might be telling me.
According to the Listener this film series was about Kauri milling in the north and Gold-mining in the Coromandel Peninsula and the part these activities played in New Zealand's colonial development.
This is not what I found at all but what the series was about I'm not quite sure. It was about kauri and gold-mining, I'll give Miss Maddock that in but we never saw the story. The purpose of film-making whether it is for the silver or the television screen is to both see and hear. This was a good example of muddled thinking.
Footnote. I understand that Miss Maddock is now writing a book on the same subject. This could be exciting and informative and I look forward to it but a film is not a book and vice versa.
The example of this series is a good one. TV can't encompass everything. Its pace is a killing one. Nothing ever stops. When it attempts anything it must do so thoroughly or leave alone or leave only in part, clearly indicated. It is often this muddled thinking which sends such sessions as Town and Around to its knees-flattened. When the attempt is made to bolster something up with a gimmick it rarely comes off. Sometimes I applaud but it's rare. Too often it is a case of something attempted nothing done.
Television is something more than this. If it is here to stay as it obviously is then more and more will be demanded of it even if facilities are limited as they certainly are at present. The catch is that facilities, equipment, staff and technical resources are always limited. The problem is how to triumph over them. We've been toddling with TV for a long time now but I've almost gone as far as I can go. The NZBC can drag me along further and there have been moments or two when they have done it but I suppose the limitations lie in their staff, what they are out to work on and what they achieve. More and more at present they seem to be achieving less and less. Would more stations be the answer? Perhaps so, perhaps not. I haven't the slightest doubt that the NZBC can triumph over all the technioal problems working within its resources but it started oif toddling and it's still only toddling. How long, Oh Lord, how long?
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