Aussie import Gavin Strawhan is a screen writer who has had a hand in many of our recent TV drama successes. After assisting with the set up of Shortland Street, Strawhan then teamed with writing colleague Rachel Lang to create the drama series Jackson’s Wharf, Mercy Peak, Lawless, and This is Not My Life.

Strawhan has worked on Burying Brian, Go Girls, and Outrageous Fortune; and co-created the kidult drama Being Eve. He also helped develop a number of feature films such as Crooked Earth, Whale Rider, and Jubilee, and in 2010 wrote the screenplay for Matariki.

In this ScreenTalk interview, Strawhan talks about:

• The difficulty in finding experienced writers at the beginning of Shortland Street
• How bringing on writer Rachel Lang made a huge difference to the soap
• How Shortland Street brought real kiwi accents and characters to the small screen
• Realising the impact writers have on a show while writing for Lawless
• Go Girls being a show about kindness and optimism
• How This is Not My Life was partly a critique of capitalism
• How the finished version of Matariki was a lot more serious than the script he worked on
• How a director’s vision differs from a writer’s vision
• Why being a writer involves ‘fraud’

This video is available on YouTube to embed and distribute via a Creative Commons licence.

NZ On Screen: Interview, Camera & Editing – James Coleman