The NZCS sadly laments the passing of director Lee Tamahori and much has been written over the last month about his tremendous impact on the NZ Screen industry. There are DP’s like Gin Loane much more qualified to talk about recent work with Lee, but I thought I’d take time for a few recollections from Lee’s early career as I was lucky to first meet him in the late 70’s. Our aminated conversations around Wellington Film Festival time confirmed he was a true film buff way back then.

Lee started his career as a boom operator on the flagship TV series “The Governor" around 1976, but when I met him around 1977 we worked out of the same newsroom, as sound recordists on “stringer” freelance TV crews covering news and current affairs in Wellington. This was in the heyday of the “Muldoon” era and our parliamentary beat was pretty exciting as journalists who asked the wrong questions were being routinely thrown out of PM press conferences. 

Frame Grab - Tony Barry centre, Bruno Lawrence right

A little later, when I’d become a cameraman, Lee decided to join the feature film upsurge and take a boom-operating job on the feature film “Skin Deep”.  This inspired me to also step out of the TV world and go back to the beginning of the ladder, as clapper-loader on the feature film “The Lost Tribe” around 1980.

Our paths crossed over the years, including a stint in the Cook Islands when he was 1st AD on “The Silent One” and I was on 2nd Unit.  In the late 80’s, when I’d become an established commercials DP, Lee and I collaborated on a series of campaigns through Flying Fish, including Lotto TVC’s (set backstage at the St James theatre in Wellington), and the Fernleaf Butter social commentary TVC dramas masterminded by agency writers Meares and Taine. 

Joel Tobeck as a young runner

In 1989 I was thrilled to be asked to DP a 3-minute black and white 35mm TVC promoting the 1990 Commonwealth Games in Auckland. Lee and Brian Kassler pulled together an entire crew for a “charity” job, again written by Roy Meares and Jeremy Taine at Saachi’s agency. On this shoot, I was truly in awe of Lee’s vision and execution, and it’s the highlight of our collaborations.

Favours were called in everywhere and the production designer, Ron Highfield worked with the NZ Army to build full-size WW1 replica tanks, and move hundreds of sandbags to create various scenarios. At one point we put a piece of glass in front of the camera and Ron grabbed a black sharpie and quickly sketched a fallen forest of dead trees over the mudflats background to make an in-camera war ravaged battlefield. Roy Meares called up a favour from his old buddy Pete Townsend to get the rights to use the WHO song “Join Together”. Just about every known actor in NZ at the time was cast in the ad, including Bruno Lawerence, Ian Mune, Tony Barry, Peter Elliot and a very young Joel Tobeck. 

Ian Mune and Joel Tobeck

Lee’s real genius was revealed in this planning: We had a long tracking shot along a line of soldiers in the trenches and during the track, Lee wanted a Fokker Tri-plane to fly over the ridge right towards camera in a low pass. There just happened to be a replica Fokker Triplane at Ardmore owned by an Air NZ 747 pilot. Problem was, he had no radio contact in the plane. At the briefing, Lee asked him how long he could stay in the air on a tank of fuel? He then traced out a circular route that passed right over our set in South Auckland and told the pilot to take to the air at 10.00am, continuously fly that route and land when he had to. So we set up the shot, Lee timed the exact duration of each circuit and cued the camera move off his countdown. Take one – tracked along the 50m of track, neared the middle and exactly on cue the Tri-plane appeared over the ridge in perfect position and its shadow passed right over the camera!

I’d love to see the original ad remastered off the 35mm neg into 4K, as sadly the only copies around are low res standard definition!

Link to the TVC here

Rest well Lee – you’ve earned it and anyone who was lucky enough to work with you learned so much from your calm brilliance.

~ Donny Duncan NZCS