Simon Coldrick
Simon Coldrick first encountered an editing suite while living in his native England. He moved downunder in 2005 and set up Auckland post-production company The Bigger Picture. Coldrick went on to edit Emmy-nominee The Golden Hour, acclaimed big-screen documentary Tickled, and award-winning docudrama Erebus: Operation Overdue. In 2019 he co-directed rugby documentary By the Balls.
Charlotte Purdy
Charlotte Purdy’s CV ranges from reality TV to Antarctic disaster. After a television OE in the United Kingdom, she helmed documentaries and factual TV back home. Under her Rogue Productions banner she created reality format The Big Experiment, and made Reel Late with Kate. After a decade producing current affairs, she co-directed docudrama Erebus: Operation Overdue and rugby doco By the Balls.
Tom Scott
Catapulted to fame after tousles with Prime Minister Robert Muldoon, Tom Scott originally trained to be a vet. He ended up helping Murray Ball turn Footrot Flats into a hit movie. The celebrated humourist and cartoonist has also told the story of Kiwi legends Edmund Hillary and David Lange, in both TV documentaries and dramas. Scott also co-wrote Rage, a TV movie about the 1981 Springbok tour.
Pat Cox
Pat Cox has been bringing television commercials to the screen since the 1970s. As a producer, he was instrumental in turning longrunning comic strip Footrot Flats into an animated feature. Footrot Flats: A Dog's Tale went on to become the most successful New Zealand feature of the 1980s.
Antony Starr
Antony Starr has won multiple awards for being sly and idiotic at the same time, playing twin brothers on TV's Outrageous Fortune: gormless Van and cynical lawyer Jethro. The roles are distant cousins to an earlier part on Mercy Peak. A starring turn as a sheriff with a secret in Alan (True Blood) Ball’s US TV series Banshee, followed big-screen roles in drama After the Waterfall and Australian thriller Wish You Were Here.
Taika Waititi
Sometime actor Taika Waititi has clearly sunk his teeth into directing. His 2005 short film Two Cars, One Night was Oscar-nominated. Second feature Boy (2010) became the most successful Kiwi film released on its home soil — at least until the arrival of Waititi's fourth movie, Barry Crump inspired adventure comedy Hunt for the Wilderpeople. In 2017 Marvel movie Thor: Ragnarok became an international hit.
Dean Parker
2013 Arts Foundation Laureate Dean Parker has written extensively for stage, television, radio and print. Alongside his own projects, he has shown himself as a skilled adaptor of everyone from Nicky Hager (The Hollow Men) to Ronald Hugh Morrieson (movie classic Came a Hot Friday).
Sandy Houston
Sandy Houston's career in animation and visual effects has involved 70 plus movie projects — including animated classic Watership Down, visual effects landmark Jurassic Park, and Oscar-winners The Return of the King and King Kong. Along the way she has been on hand to watch computers become key tools in creating screen illusion.
John Fellet
Sky Television chief John Fellet began a long tenure in pay television after abandoning hopes of becoming a professional baseballer, and realising accountancy was “a terrible career choice”. Arizona-raised Fellet joined the pay television company as Chief Operating Officer in 1991, and has been Sky’s Chief Executive since 2001. Fellet is set to leave Sky in late 2018.
John McBeth
John McBeth's commentating career began after injuries put paid to his senior rugby playing days. He became Radio New Zealand's lead rugby commentator in 1985 and took that position at TVNZ in 1992. With his trademark sense of humour never far away, he has covered Olympic and Commonwealth Games and America's Cup yachting along with many other sports.