John Harris: Long-time Greenstone owner...

John Harris was the long-time owner of one of New Zealand’s biggest production companies: Greenstone Pictures. He began his television career at TVNZ working in news and current affairs and helped launch Top Half. Moving into the private sector he produced a number of TV shows including That’s Fairly Interesting and Heroes. In 1994 he created Greenstone Pictures, and went on to produce a huge range of TV shows such as The Zoo; Epitaph; Motorway Patrol; and Neighbours at War. In 2010 Greenstone acquired the production company Cream Media, and more recently Harris has sold Greenstone.

In this ScreenTalk, Harris talks about:

• Becoming the Programme Editor on Top Half in 1980
• ‘Marrying’ John Hawkesby and Judy Bailey on the show
• How a pack of dogs ruined the set
• Producing That’s Fairly Interesting for Communicado
• How the show Heroes showed the better side of human nature
• Setting up Greenstone Pictures
• How Epitaph showed a unique side of New Zealand history
• Expanding his business by purchasing Cream
• The ‘privilege’ of telling other people’s stories on TV

This video was first uploaded on 26 April 2011, 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