Stephen Stehlin is the longtime producer of TVNZ's weekly magazine show Tagata Pasifika, which targets Pacific communities in New Zealand.

He has also worked on a number of other factual TV shows such as Koha, Maori Battalion - March to Victory and When the Haka Became Boogie. Stehlin was made a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit in 2008 for services to Pacific Island television and the arts.

In this ScreenTalk, Stehlin talks about:

• Having to learn to type for his first job in television
• Working on the show Koha when it was in primetime
• Getting the crew out of trouble while filming Maori Battalion - March to Victory
• Having an amazing time learning about early NZ popular music on When the Haka Became Boogie
• A traumatic camera failure on his first directing job on Countdown to Telethon 1990
• Being told he was the ‘wrong’ race when applying to work on Tagata Pasifika
• Overcoming a lack of resources to produce a news segment for the show
• Bringing drag queens onto the show to inject entertainment value into the programme
• Why the show matters to its diverse audience
• Being proud to have worked with comedians The Laughing Samoans

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

NZ On Screen: Camera and Editing – Andrew Whiteside