David Harry Baldock
After almost two decades of directing and producing documentaries, David Harry Baldock left TVNZ in 1988 to launch Ninox Television. The company’s roster of reality-based programming included export hit Sensing Murder, local award-winner Our People Our Century and nine seasons of Location Location Location. These days Baldock is busy making arts programmes from Shanghai.
Brian Walden
Some jobs never make the headlines; in the screen industry, one of those unsung positions is the production manager. After seven years on film sets in Asia, Brian Walden returned home in the mid 70s to production manage the shoots of many classic TV dramas, from Hunter’s Gold to Hanlon. In 1985 he went freelance, keeping a firm hand on shoots involving horses, hospital porters, vampires and underwater aeroplanes.
Geoff Jamieson
Geoff Jamieson was working as a mechanic in Queenstown when he was asked to help out on landmark 70s television series Hunters's Gold. So began a busy career as a camera grip on a run of classic TV dramas, as well as the ambitious shoots for movies The Quiet Earth and The Piano. Jamieson passed away on 24 May 2016.
Kim Sinclair
In 2010, thanks to his work on James Cameron's Avatar, Kim Sinclair joined the short list of Kiwis to have scored both an Academy Award and a Bafta. His globetrotting career as a production designer has seen him working in locations from Mexico to Thailand to the Southern Alps, and for directors Martin Campbell (Vertical Limit), Steven Spielberg (The Adventures of Tintin) and Robert Zemeckis (Cast Away).
Grahame McLean
Veteran producer and production designer Grahame McLean helped organise the shoots of a run of landmark Kiwi productions, from The Games Affair to Sleeping Dogs. Later he brought TV success Worzel Gummidge down under, and became the first — and will likely long remain one of the few — New Zealanders to direct two feature films back to back.
David Paul
David Paul's work as a cameraman and director of photography covers the gamut, from documentary and dramas to shorts, commercials and feature films. His CV includes award-winning work on telemovies Tangiwai - A Love Story and Until Proven Innocent, plus Edmund Hillary miniseries Hillary.
Clive Cockburn
Clive Cockburn has composed music for a host of Kiwi television shows, and the occasional movie. Since devoting himself to soundtrack work in the early 80s, Cockburn has provided sounds for iconic programmes from Wild South and Country Calendar, to the theme for the TV One news.
John Blick
After starting his filmmaking career at the National Film Unit, cinematographer John Blick has shot many iconic Kiwi commercials, done extended time in Asia and the United States — and worked alongside everyone from Brian Brake and Peter Jackson (The Frighteners), to Skippy the Bush Kangaroo.
Hilda Hayward
One of the earliest New Zealand women to work in movies, the late Hilda Hayward collaborated with her husband Rudall on four silent feature films in the 1920s. Author Deborah Shepard argues that her coverage of the 1932 Auckland riots make her New Zealand’s first known camerawoman. Hilda Hayward passed away in 1970.
Ron Skelley
Ron Skelley spent 36 years with the National Film Unit’s sound department, contributing to the soundtracks of Weekly Review, Pictorial Parade, and many other NFU and independent films. He started at the NFU in 1949, and was in charge of the sound department from 1977 until his retirement in 1985. Skelley died in March 1992. Image Credit: Photo from The Evening Post, courtesy of Fairfax Media