John Toon: Internationally-successful NZ cinematographer…

John Toon is an award-winning cinematographer who has worked all over the world and in many genres. His early New Zealand TV jobs include The Governor and Moynihan, while his movie credits include Rain, Sylvia and Sunshine Cleaning (all shot for his wife, director Christine Jeffs), plus Broken English and Mr Pip.

In this ScreenTalk, Toon talks about:

• Being spied on while filming ground-breaking early current affairs programme South Africa – The Black Future
• How slow motion filming transformed the documentary John Walker – The 3-49-4 Man
• Sharing the filming of The Governor with the National Film Unit
• Creating wind from an old DC-3 airliner for movie The Silent One
• Making a set surreal for the short film Stroke
• 'Stealing' the look of the film Rain from colleague, cinematographer Stuart Dryburgh
• Using subdued colours on the set of Sylvia
• How illness kept him from realising his 'big break' on the Hollywood film Glory Road
• Ignoring official rules on the Bougainville set of Mr Pip

This video was first uploaded on 16 September 2013, 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