Mark Everton: From TV news to classic documentaries...

Interview – 2015

Mark Everton began in radio, before joining the TVNZ newsroom in 1985. After jumping ship to help run Nightline for TV3, he set himself up as an independent producer and director. Everton has been involved with a number of award-winning documentaries including Back from the Dead and Lawson Quins story The Five of Us. His credits also include the series Epitaph, Captain’s Log, MasterChef New Zealand and music history show Give It A Whirl.

In this ScreenTalk interview, Everton talks about:

Learning "so much", while working with the late Angela D’Audney and others on Eyewitness News
Moving to TV3 for the "rock'n'roll" days of late night news show Nightline
How the network’s receivership led to better stories
How a chance conversation about graveyards lead to hit show Epitaph
Successfully convincing the Lawson Quins to tell their story in The Five of Us
Finding out too late there were a lot of family home movies
Working with Johnny Givins and Gresham Bradley on Captain’s Log
Getting memorable advice about seasickness on one of the journeys
Obtaining rare footage of a real murder investigation for Operation Bouma
Asking the tough questions of contestants on MasterChef New Zealand
How Making New Zealand was much more than just an archive series

This video was first uploaded on 16 March 2015, 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

...it's not just a trawl through the archives, it's not just a historical story; these are very valid contemporary stories, and I reckon they are worth telling, they are worth knowing about. And so that was the driver.
– Mark Everton on Making New Zealand being much more than a collection of old film clips

Mark's Full Profile