Graeme Cowley: an eye on the film industry...

Interview – 2017

Ciematographer Graeme Cowley has an impressive line-up of features to his credit, including Smash Palace, Utu, and Carry Me Back (which he also produced). Cowley set up pioneering equipment hire company Film Facilities with Nigel Hutchinson, to bolster the range of camera equipment available to New Zealand filmmakers. He was also a prime mover behind Utu Redux, the restored version of Utu.

In this ScreenTalk interview, Cowley talks about:

Spending time in prison while filming the 'Lawful Excuse' episode of Winners & Losers
Observing the professionalism on the set of breakthrough Kiwi movie Sleeping Dogs
The challenges of being attached to a fast-moving mini for Goodbye Pork Pie
Scheduling to capture optimal light on classic movie Smash Palace
Shooting in the cold, the forest, and the darkness for Māori Western Utu
Bringing the first Steadicam and HMI lights into New Zealand for the movie

This video was first uploaded on 12 October 2017, and is available under this Creative Commons licence. This licence is limited to use of ScreenTalk interview footage only and does not apply to any video content and photographs from films, television, music videos, web series and commercials used in the interview.

Interview, Camera and Editing – Andrew Whiteside

The main challenge we had was just mounting the cameras around the car . . . we didn't have sophisticated car mounts: we just made up bits of scaffolding, pipes and stuff, and the cameras we pretty much had to look through all the time. So it was not just mounting the camera; it was [about] mounting me.

– Graeme Cowley on spending time on a moving car while camera operating on road movie Goodbye Pork Pie

Graeme's Full Profile