Rod Morris: a life filming in the wild...

Interview – 2016

For over 25 years Rod Morris worked with TVNZ’s Natural History Unit and its successor NHNZ, documenting New Zealand wildlife. His passion for the natural world lead to his involvement in Wild South, and a trio of award-winning documentaries about The Black Robin, plus one-off docos The Devil’s Playground, Wild Asia, Ghosts of Gondwana and Dragons of Komodo. Since leaving NHNZ, Morris has worked on many wildlife books.

In this ScreenTalk, Morris talks about:

Going with a soap opera theme for classic nature documentary The Black Robin
How the discovery of a kākāpō nest lead to him directing episodes of Wild South
How the landscape became a character in documentary The Black Stilt
Proving that kea kill sheep in Kea – Mountain Parrot
Following the courageous character in Tasmanian devil documentary The Devil’s Playground
How a bat, a kiwi and a grasshopper wētā became the stars of Ghosts of Gondwana
How the Natural History Unit came into being at just the right time
Being proud of what he has been able to create over his long career

This video was first uploaded on 10 October 2016, 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

We succeeded in filming keas attacking sheep at night, and I can remember thinking 'what the hell are we going to do now? My main character has just turned out to be a murderer basically. How on earth are we going to do a good news public relations story on this extraordinary bird, when this is what it does?' . . . I did learn later that a Nelson vet had posted a reward of $10,000 for anyone who could prove keas that attacked sheep.
– Rod Morris on a disconcerting discovery made while making 1993 documentary Kea - Mountain Parrot

Rod's Full Profile