Draft 2 PhD Introduction - ResearchSpace@Auckland

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“with a lot of people quite dedicated to the vision of an exciting young director. They’d
seen or heard of his work. The script was clearly distinctive and even from the written
work, it was clearly strongly visual”. He links the difficulties of working with Ward to
the challenges posed by the location: “Vincent pushed things to an extreme in terms of
[the] locations and physical demands that are made of people”. He explains that
initially “your levels of tolerance are high”, but after a few weeks, the cast and crew’s
patience started to be stretched. White is aware that Ward’s “obsession for detail can
get the better of him and jeopardise important things”, but at the same time, concurs
with Ikin in his view that obsession for detail “is the difference between someone who
is good and someone who is great”. 658
Because the location was so isolated, everything had to be brought into the valley, and
as Ikin recalls, the logistics of getting supplies at short notice in such a remote location
were difficult, “even [for] simple things, like a new lens, which, if you’re filming in the
city, you just go down the road and hire. It had to be got from Auckland on the bus and
there was only one bus a day and it had to be met at a certain time and you had to drive
to meet it”. Mobile phones were not yet available and each telephone call Ikin made
had to be a toll-call. Walkie-talkies were used on the set. 659 The set was created by
transporting some existing buildings to the valley, such as the two Railways Department
huts used for Birdie, and the farmhouse. A great deal of additional construction was
done on site. This proved to be time-consuming and Ward, the art director, Kai
Hawkins, and the Art Department had to begin work on the site three months before
shooting started. Because Ward lived on location while the sets were being constructed
he was able to make any changes that were needed immediately. As usual, he was
involved in all the details of the set, including overseeing the colours of the wallpaper in
the house, and choosing trees, on at least one occasion uprooting a tree from the side of
a road. 660 Ward remembers “the leading hand of the construction crew building the set,
knee-deep in mud, screaming at the damp, claustrophobic walls of the valley, answered
only by an endlessly mocking echo”. 661 Ward has always been frank about the
difficulty of his locations, and – with what some would see as Romantic idealism – is
also inclined to see them as contributing to the authenticity or intensity of his films.
658 Lynette Read, interview with Timothy White, 29 September 1999.
659 Lynette Read, interview with Bridget Ikin, 27 September 1999.
660 Ward, Lecture to Film Students at Auckland University.
661 Ward, Edge of the Earth: Stories and Images from the Antipodes 72.