Don't Leave Town Till You've Seen the Country

A Triumph of Make-Believe

By Owen Hughes 15/09/2020

I’ve always had a soft spot for this commercial. Although it had one of the smallest budgets of any I directed over a decade, it was a triumph of 'make-believe'.

We begged, borrowed and bartered two stock shots of New York and Paris, and shot the rest in Auckland in a day. Economy meant it was shot on 16mm. Keith Lambert was the cinematographer; Philip Laing, brother of singer Shona Laing, was the hapless traveller. The French waitress was played by Nikki Lovrich, now an established makeup artist.

The African sequence was shot in a foot of water in the elephant enclosure at Auckland Zoo. Today’s viewers, educated by David Attenborough, would see they are Asian elephants — not African elephants.

There’s not a lot of nuance, but quite a bit of 80s swagger, which in hindsight reflects the times. In popular culture, 1984 was a turning point for those stage-strutters Tina Turner and Madonna, while politically Roger Douglas was just around the corner. Unlike our voyager, he was gung-ho about barreling over a waterfall.

As has been said, the past is a foreign country; they do things differently there. Whipping around Auckland in a day with minimum crew and cutting the next afternoon after syncing rushes in the morning was heady, but it was underpinned by a great deal of preparation to manufacture the illusion.

- Owen Hughes is a veteran producer, who set up company Frame Up Films in 1977. Hughes has produced over 40 documentaries and many dramas.