Leon Narbey: illustrious cinematographer...

Interview – 2011

Acclaimed cinematographer Leon Narbey has had a hand in many of New Zealand’s best-known films. He directed the feature film Illustrious Energy in 1987, and has been nominated for awards for his cinematography on movies Desperate Remedies, The Price of Milk, Dean Spanley and Whale Rider.

In this ScreenTalk interview, Narbey talks about:

Directing classic gold mining tale Illustrious Energy
Resisting attempts to shoot the movie in a studio
The challenges of filming Desperate Remedies in a wharf shed
The chaos caused by the number of sets that had to be built
The difficulties of making the whales realistic on the set of Whale Rider
Taking an "organic" approach to filming Rain of the Children with director Vincent Ward
Working with Peter O'Toole and Sam Neill on the freezing set of Dean Spanley

This video was first uploaded on 6 September 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

This film, Whale Rider, we had very much an approach that it was going to have a 'real' feel. We didn't want a studio feel . . . Theres no backroom and nice little nuances to make it look like a Coca-Cola ad; it was gritty. We wanted that gritty realism.
– Leon Narbey on creating the cinematic look of Whale Rider

Leon's Full Profile