Draft 2 PhD Introduction - ResearchSpace@Auckland

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there. 298 Victoria Stafford, a former departmental secretary at Ilam, remembers Ward
as being very good at “wheedling things” out of people, and as being rather insistent in
attempting to acquire or borrow the things he needed for his projects. 299
The film equipment that the students in the Moving Image Department had to use was
basic – three cameras (two Bolexes and an Arriflex camera that was available on
requisition), one old Movieola and one flatbed editing bench, and very little lighting
equipment. Askew comments that: “We shot a lot outside. There’s plenty of sun in
Christchurch”. 300 One disadvantage of outdoor shooting was that the students liked to
film people sitting on the beach, and that tended to result in the camera regularly getting
sand in it. For television work, there was one television portapack available on
requisition. Access to television equipment was reasonably good through the
University Education Department, which had a new and quite extensive studio
complex. 301 Sound track mixing could be done in conjunction with local film making
studios or the National Film Unit in Wellington. 302
Despite the limited equipment, during his training at art school Ward made a number of
films and experiments, many of them shot by the same cameraman, John McWilliams.
The films were screened only at art school but despite Ward’s assertion that they served
only as training for his first ‘public’ film, A State of Siege, “his earliest film, The Cave,
did serve to announce one of his central themes”, understanding the world “by looking
at a number of different points of view – particularly people on the extremes”. 303 This
thirty-minute film, shot in 1975 by John McWilliams on 16mm colour and black and
white, was based on Plato’s image of the cave where people live in a world of shadows
instead of in the sunlight, and because they know nothing else, they see and think in
terms of shadows. About one quarter of the film was stills animation. 304
298
Lynette Read, interview with Maurice Askew, 25 January 1999.
299
Lynette Read, interview with Victoria Stafford, 10 June 1999.
300
Lynette Read, interview with Maurice Askew, 25 January 1999.
301
Video had arrived late in New Zealand and although there was some experimentation with it at art
schools (particularly in connection with conceptual and performance art), it was hardly an equivalent for
16mm in terms of the visual quality of the results.
302
Askew, "Course Outline for the Moving Image Department's Programme,"vol., 2-3.
303
Roger Horrocks, Vincent Ward: The New Zealand Film Makers at the Auckland City Art Gallery
Series (Auckland: Auckland City Art Gallery, 1985).
304
This film appears to be lost, although both Ward and White believe there may be a copy still in
existence, probably in someone’s garage.