Draft 2 PhD Introduction - ResearchSpace@Auckland

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constraints on the film […]. Vincent would fight for his vision every inch of the way.
Even though John and Vincent would have screaming matches one night, they would
kiss and make up the next day and they’d be fine and they’d move forward and we’d get
the work done”. 764 Maynard was quoted in a newspaper article by Jonathan Dowling as
saying that he saw his priority as being to organise the schedule as tightly as possible
“without risking what Vincent wants to do”. In his view, their working relationship was
unique since: “We’re the only auteur-director-producer team currently working in
Australasia. The rest of the industry is producer- or lawyer-dominated, rather than led
by ideas. In Australia, Vincent is seen as self-indulgent, but in France he is called an
auteur director and he earns raves […]. New Zealand doesn’t see him at all. That’s
why we’re in the position we’re in now”. 765 The phrase “led by ideas” in this context
presumably refers not to the intellectualism but to the considerable freedom Maynard
gave the director to explore and pursue his original creative ideas.
Ward and Maynard had already worked together on Vigil and had developed an
understanding of each other’s priorities, but the relationship between Ward and the rest
of the crew was more problematic, in part due to the director’s perfectionism. Michele
Nayman’s article in Cinema Papers cites an example of this as being one of the night
shoots where Ward was trying to achieve a particular visual effect. Water was used in
order to achieve a translucent look on the road surface, but the hoses had run dry and
there was still half a mile of road that needed to be watered down if the sheen was going
to be consistent. Many directors would have given up at this stage, but Ward was so
determined to get the look that he wanted that he found some buckets and the crew had
to water the rest of the street by hand. Ward explains that: “One of the elements of the
film I was trying to achieve was a look of reflective surfaces in the twentieth century, so
that things would have a translucence, an incandescence, a phosphorescence. I know I
pay a lot of attention to detail. It drives everybody mad”. 766
During the shoot, the director began to be aware that there was hostility amongst the
crew for which he felt partially responsible.
764
Lynette Read, interview with Geoffrey Simpson, 29 September 1999.
765
John Maynard quoted in Jonathan Dowling, "Location Report: Medieval Mystery in Manurewa,"
Onfilm 4.6 (1987): 23.
766
Michelle Nayman, "The Navigator: Vincent Ward's Past Dreams of the Future," Cinema Papers.69
(1988). 30