There have been criticisms of the state of documentaries on New Zealand television. The problem is not a drop in ratings but a sense that the level of respect and satisfaction has declined, within both the public and the production industry.

by Roger Horrocks

There have been criticisms of the state of documentaries on New Zealand television. The problem is not a drop in ratings but a sense that the level of respect and satisfaction has declined, within both the public and the production industry.

by Roger Horrocks

To quote two typical examples:
On 30 November 2002 the Listener ran an article by Peter Calder, 'More than Pies and Breasts', which began: 'Local documentary makers still struggle to have anything more than the broadest and most commercial ideas accepted by television.' Calder summed up the last decade as 'a remorseless narrowing of the range of stories that are told with public money', and reported on a recent documentary conference co-sponsored by the Directors Guild that showcased projects that 'have been denied the broadcaster support they need to gain access to NZ On Air funding.'

In a similar spirit, the website run by the film-makers who made the festival documentary Campaign explores the theme 'Why are NZ television documentaries so crappy these days?' www.unreal.co.nz The site includes a bogus NZ On Air application form with a menu of all the cliches required for your very own 'el cheapo knock-off New Zealand television documentary'.

Broadcasting staff would deny that such criticisms were representative. Yet Ian Fraser, CEO of TVNZ, has acknowledged the existence of problems. According to the Listener (1 February 2003): 'He [Fraser] wants more challenging and provocative documentaries, whether from New Zealand or overseas. He says TVNZ has screened too many documentaries "at the tabloid end" in the quality of their storytelling.'

Such debate raises large, intangible issues and the present paper does not claim to be a comprehensive or purely objective survey of the subject. Rather, this is a personal perspective by someone who was involved in creating NZ On Air's documentary policy in its early days. It seeks to provide a contribution to the discussion by asking: What has changed over the 14 years since NZ On Air was created? What lessons can be learned? What are the problems? And what options suggest themselves today?

The problems most often cited are a declining quality of

(1) storytelling and
(2) research.

These are two of the foundations of documentary-making, and there has always been a need to keep strengthening them - like script-writing skills for our feature films. I will address these issues, but also the range of documentaries which seems to me equally important, and it's the aspect that has gone through the most obvious changes over the past 14 years.

When we ask 'what kinds of documentary should be the priority?' the main complication has always been the basic difference between a broadcaster's view and that of NZ On Air. As a commercial enterprise the broadcaster has to ask: 'What will make the most money for us?' whereas NZ On Air is required to 'reflect and develop New Zealand culture and identity'. It shares the broadcaster's interest in ratings but only as one factor. The third player in this complex situation is the government, which promoted commercialism through the '90s but is now encouraging a more public service approach.

NZ On Air's greatest impact on the documentary genre came during its first years when it found (in the course of some very active lobbying and negotiation) that it could make common cause with the broadcasters (initially TV3, later TVNZ) in developing a new style of 'mainstream' or 'popular' documentary. This led to a huge expansion in documentary production. It occurred during a period of fluidity and confusion when everyone was adjusting to major changes in the industry (TVNZ restructured as an SOE, the shift to out-sourcing of production, and the arrival of competition in the form of TV3).

Although the introduction of the TVNZ Charter is a less thorough-going change, the transitional (or confused) situation today seems to me the best chance NZ On Air has had since the beginning of the 1990s to play a proactive role in the documentary field.

Types of Documentary
NZ On Air set out in 1989-90 to 'grow' local content in terms of the overall number and range of programmes. The dominant approach at that time in government circles was to devote one's best energies to defining what was needed and why, and to researching the client base, but to
pay little attention to the culture or complexities of provision. After all, a funder had to beware of being 'captured' by providers. Thanks to the beauty of competition, a funder could always switch to a new and better supplier. Alas, things were not so simple in the field of culture, which was less like manufacture and more like agriculture or horticulture - like establishing a vineyard, say. You could not simply order something, you had to grow it, and that was a complex and vulnerable process dependent upon many factors in the environment, and it required a long lead-time. This was particularly the case in a small country with no compulsory quotas and a low level of local content.

Cultural funders supply money as a fertiliser, but if they want good results they need to do a lot more than that. They have to understand the energies inherent in the culture and identify and nurture those energies. A television funder needs to consider why people want to make
documentaries. It's a risky activity and there's not much money in it. Furthermore, the best documentaries have always gained their special value (or 'x factor') from having a stronger motivation than simply making a few bucks. They tap the energies of the culture at large, and
those energies find expression (when NZ On Air and the broadcasters provide the opportunity) in a range of different types of documentary. To list the main motivations:

1. History and geography
There is an impulse (in both Maori and Pakeha programme makers) to tell the tale of one's tribe, to explore whakapapa, to keep the past alive, and to keep reconsidering its relevance to the present. Our landscape and geography are similarly ongoing topics for rediscovery. The New Zealand Wars (1998) is an example of a history series and Landmarks (1981) of a geography series. Both were based on the vision and research of academic experts yet held the interest of a broad audience.

2. Journalism
Some documentaries are an extension of news and current affairs, and share the same impulse to unearth the truth and share it with others. While news focuses on today, and current affairs considers the events of the current week or perhaps month, documentary takes a broader
perspective. A documentary is expected to offer a greater depth of research and richness of detail; it needs more production time but has a longer shelf-life.

Documentaries made by journalists tend to focus on social/political subject-matter, and to emphasise 'content' and verbal interpretation. (While technical, stylistic, and visual aspects are acknowledged, they tend to be seen as a second priority.) Like academic research, journalistic
research has always attached importance to skill, care and resourcefulness. Training in one or both of these traditions has generally been the best source of research skills for documentarymakers.
This tradition also illustrates the sense of protocol (or ethics) that is common to all serious forms of documentary - the feeling that one has a responsibility to be 'true to reality'. The truth may not be what the average viewer wants to hear or the broadcaster wants to buy,
but it should be documented and communicated. A good documentary is entertaining but its purpose is not merely to entertain, and entertainment should never take precedence over truth.

Most 'average viewers' seem to accept this protocol, for when they watch a documentary (or a news or current affairs programme) they expect it to be well-informed and trustworthy.

Consider the fierce public debate over factual details of series such as New Zealanders at War or The New Zealand Wars.

3. Politics
A separate category is needed for passionate, committed, political documentaries that share some of the same concerns as journalism but reject the current affairs requirement of 'balance'.

With such resources as he or she can scrape up, an independent programme-maker wants to present a particular political perspective that they see as having been ignored by the mainstream media. Examples include Merata Mita's Patu!, early feminist films such as Some of My Best Friends are Women , and Alistair Barry's Someone Else's Country and In A Land of Plenty and other productions by the Vanguard Films group.

Barry describes his aims in the classic public service broadcasting terms of informing and empowering. Television has always been nervous
about such documentaries because of the risk of law suits, their presumed minority audience, and a general dislike of their style (criticised as 'too didactic' or as 'old-fashioned').

In the old days, TVNZ did occasionally agree to screen such a project, sometimes because a commissioning editor was won over by the passion of the film-maker. Some of these
controversial documentaries had a big impact because they represented strong minority points of view that were 'ahead of their time' in terms of public opinion - for example, films from the 1970s and early '80s about Maori land issues, feminism, nuclear tests, gay rights and environmental issues.

Today such films are almost never accepted by the major broadcasters, a rejection that has generated much scorn and satire. Patu! was finally screened 8 years late (in 1991, on the tenth anniversary of the Springbok Tour). Neither of Barry's recent documentaries has been accepted. The genre continues to exist outside mainstream television with the help of
community groups, video sales, and screenings on Someone Else's Country did eventually reach a remarkable number of viewers.) The closest mainstream television comes to this genre is the occasional documentary on an historical subject researched with a similar passion and commitment, such as 1951, or an international topic such as Punitive Damage. This is not to challenge the sincerity or quality of television's own in-house political coverage, such as TVNZ's Assignment programmes, but simply to point out that a strong tradition of independent (or maverick) political documentary-making has
largely been excluded over the past decade.

4. Culture
Some documentaries have a strong cultural motivation in representing community traditions - Maoritanga, the cultures of other ethnic or national groups, and subcultures of various kinds.
Getting onto television, particularly in prime time, is seen as an important step towards social acceptance and equality. The best of these documentaries (often made by a creative member of the group concerned) provide high satisfaction for members of the community and can surprise outsiders by revealing an unfamiliar culture to them. Such projects are linked not only with journalism but also with history, sociology and anthropology.

The representation of Maori culture has now a long whakapapa. The breakthrough series for television was Barry Barclay and Michael King's 1974 Tangata Whenua. This is still widely used today and it has gained additional resonance as an historical record. The backing of the Treaty has made possible an occasional prime-time series such as Rangatira (1998); and NZ On Air has been able to insist upon a 15% Maori quota in the main documentary strands, which has facilitated a number of important programmes; but many Maori programme-makers are waiting eagerly for the new MTS channel because they feel that mainstream broadcasters have placed too many limitations on the expression of their culture.

Some other cultures have yet to be the subject of even a single documentary. NZ On Air's biggest success in terms of multiculturalism was Immigrant Nation which first went to air in 1993. In all, there were three groups of episodes up to 1996, a year when TVNZ withdrew its support for 'minority' programmes of various kinds. There had also previously been a few one-offs ( Star of David, Exiles, I'm Taking Nana Home, and Going Dutch).

Considering recent waves of immigration, debates about multiculturalism, and the many personal stories to be told, it is disappointing there have not been more documentaries of this kind. A very few have been made in recent years such as Taste of Place.

Broadcasters appear nervous about them because of what they see as the risk of alienating mainstream viewers. As one example of the impact of television coverage on a subculture, gay and lesbian documentaries in the early 90s seem to have been clearly a factor in increased mainstream interest, visibility and acceptance. They included: Lew Pryme: Welcome to My World (1990), The Sex We Don't Talk About (1991), Mr and Mr (1992), and The People Next Door (1994).

5. Science
People enthusiastic about science have been active in the documentary genre from the beginning. In New Zealand this has been a particularly strong tradition in terms of natural history because of the deep attachment to landscape and interest in environmental issues.

The Natural History Unit in Dunedin has an impressive international reputation. Yet in the mid-1990s there was a noticeable decline of broadcaster interest in this genre.

6. The arts in general
What arts documentaries tend to have in common with previous categories is a sense of pride in one's cultural tradition, a lifetime commitment to it, deep belief in its value, and a desire to see it better acknowledged and more widely known.

Such documentaries can mean high satisfaction for their target audience, can dramatically expand the public for new artists and trends and have a long life since they continue to be used for years by schools, universities, galleries, public libraries, etc. They also retain long-term importance as an historical record.

The arts receive less public support in New Zealand than in most other countries. Australia's Creative Nation report argued that while all forms of culture are to be valued, the arts are a key workshop in which new and unique forms of national culture and identity are created.

NZ On Air has a major achievement in the area of arts documentaries - the Work of Art series, with approximately 40 episodes spread over seven years (1993-9) on TV ONE starting at 9.30 or 10 pm on Sunday nights. This series documented the arts with a depth unknown before or since. The series was also a showcase for some of the most innovative documentary making on New Zealand television. The dates of the series are, however, misleading, as commissioning had tailed off by 1996. TVNZ had decided to have no more arts documentaries, reducing arts coverage to fast-turnaround magazine programmes with short items. This appears to be still the case, apart from occasional profiles of stars such as Kiri te Kanawa.

(g) The art of documentary
Overseas, documentary-making has had strong links with experimental work of various kinds and with 'high culture' rather than popular culture. (For example, the staff of the GPO Film Unit in the 1930s was a 'who's who' of leading young British writers, artists and composers. It was John Grierson, its CEO, who wrote the original proposal for our National Film Unit at the request of the New Zealand government.)

Documentary-makers in this tradition (such as Peter Watkins, Frederick Wiseman, Agnes Varda, Errol Morris, Les Blank, etc.) see their genre as necessarily experimental, a constant search for new and better ways to represent and interpret reality. Overseas their work is screened by public service channels, art house cinemas, film festivals and universities. They provide the basis for courses on 'the documentary' taught in universities and art schools round the world. Indeed, to people interested in the art of film, this is what 'documentary' means, and some would regard mainstream television documentaries in New Zealand as simplistic, stylistically dull and old-fashioned.

Some overseas documentaries are showcased in New Zealand by the international film festivals each year, and have certainly influenced local directors. There has also been a strain of experimental documentary-making in New Zealand (by directors such as Vincent Ward, Peter
Wells, and Nicki Caro). All experimental work in this country runs the risk of being roasted by reviewers as pretentious. It is unfortunate that each tradition tends to be impatient and disrespectful of the other. Our television system has been less than welcoming, particularly in recent years, though a few projects manage to find their way into 'auteur' or 'festival' series (such as Wells's Pansy or Barclay's Feathers of Peace).

However mixed the initial audience response may be, such work is important in keeping us in touch with the diverse and adventurous culture of documentary-making overseas. Clearly these seven categories intersect and reinforce one another in a variety of ways. For example, culture often has a politics. The Tangata Whenua series was primarily concerned with Maori culture but it also had strong political implications, and was innovative in some of its camerawork and editing (as it experimented with what an appropriate style for Maori filmmaking might be). Many of the Work of Art series were contributions to 'the art of
documentary'. There have been journalistic documentaries of an investigative kind with a passionate political point of view - such as Cave Creek (1998) or The Remand of Ivan Curry (1991).

And arguably journalism must combine with art to make a great documentary.

What is important here is to acknowledge the variety of motivations. What they share is a sense of the serious potential of the documentary genre (serious in social, artistic, scientific or political terms). Simply to promote one type of documentary would be to ignore the other energies (all of which are strongly based in our culture). The problem is that virtually all of these types have become endangered species in our current television environment. All tend to be regarded by broadcasters as 'worthy and dull' and therefore intimidating to the average viewer. As Geoff Steven used to say, 'No more castor oil documentaries!' Of course, one person's castor oil is another person's cup of tea, or glass of champagne.

A few slip through, but we seem to have limited our television garden to just a few varieties. How did this come about, and is it necessary? Was it a response to trends in the environment (financial pressures, the competition from 'reality programmes', changing public taste)? To answer these questions, we need to look at the local history of documentary.

At the centre of this account will be the creation of a new kind of 'mainstream' or 'popular' television documentary in the years 1990-1995. During this period of growth, other types of documentary also flowered. Then from around 1996, the range narrowed, and even the mainstream documentary came under siege. The account will bring us back to the present, and the
possibilities for another surge of growth.

History
The first base for documentary-making in New Zealand was the government's National Film
Unit (NFU). From the 1940s the NFU made some memorable films about New Zealand history,
natural history and the arts, among other topics, which were screened in cinemas (and later on
television). Some strong creative individuals spent time in the Unit (such as Margaret
Thomson, Cecil Holmes, John Feeney, and Maurice Shadbolt) but there was sometimes a
tension between their interests and those of the Tourist and Publicity Department which did not
want the Unit to become too political or too experimental.

When television arrived in 1960, it developed its own documentary tradition, initiated by Shirley Maddock. Well-known later directors included Doc Williams, Bill Saunders, Malcolm Hall and George Andrews. Over the years the television documentary department produced some influential and finely crafted series in the journalistic tradition, along with topics from
history and geography. The Natural History Unit was created in 1978.

Both these institutions - the NFU and television - came under criticism when a new wave of
independent film-makers emerged in the 1970s. They took their bearings from films seen in 'art
house' cinemas, from new trends in British television, and from the countercultures of the
sixties. They took unfamiliar and sometimes controversial approaches to history, politics,
culture, and the art of documentary. Although television did commission or purchase some of
their work, such spending was a discretionary category that depended upon current policies and
finances. Michael Scott-Smith was very receptive to independent work, but there were periods
- for example, after the second channel was created in 1975 - when the NZBC went back to
producing almost everything in-house. Hence, conflict developed between the film and
television communities during the 70s (the period when the new film industry was bursting
with energy and eager to get its work on the screen), and this divergence has remained to the
present day. There is an international belief that local production benefits enormously from a
positive relationship or synergy between film and television, so the gap that exists in New
Zealand can be seen as a major problem.

Visiting English writer Stephen Cleary noted recently that he was 'staggered at the distant relationship between local film and television' in this country (NZ Herald 11 March 2003, p.B5).

In the 1970s television tended to see the film-makers' attitude as a case of sour grapes. Why
should the NZBC feel any obligation to screen the work of directors - long-haired, dopesmoking
hippies in some cases - who lacked the craft skills (particularly journalistic skills) that
its own producers had carefully developed over the years? Meanwhile the film-makers tended
to see the television documentary unit and the NFU as small elitist groups that held a monopoly
on the genre.

They saw documentaries being made by these institutions with resources, budgets, and time-spans that were almost obscene in comparison with the conditions of the independent industry. They also regarded the resulting documentaries as conservative and oldfashioned in style and subject matter.

Many of the new film-makers started out by making documentaries - for example, Roger
Donaldson, Tony Williams, Merata Mita, Barry Barclay, Gaylene Preston, and Vincent Ward.
Such work was frequently maverick, quirky, crusading, auteurist, experimental, etc. Inevitably
it was high-risk and it had its disasters as well as its hits. To supplement the limited funding
available from television, film-makers scratched up small amounts from the QE2 Arts Council,
the Education Department, and political groups. Some of the new wave (such as Paul Maunder
and Sam Pillsbury) managed to obtain jobs at the NFU, bringing innovation and controversy to
the Unit.

The creation of the NZ Film Commission provided an alternative source of funding for documentaries, although feature and short drama films generally took first priority. An unfortunate legacy of this period was the bad blood between the film and television communities and it is necessary to keep this in mind in understanding the tensions that exist to this day between the so-called 'film' and 'television' traditions of documentary.

The two traditions came closest to re-uniting in the first years of the 1990s (with the help of NZ On Air), but after a few years the gap widened once again, as television became increasingly
commercial.

By the time NZ On Air was created in 1989, the NFU had disappeared as a production unit and
the television environment had become more commercial and more competitive. These
pressures limited what NZ On Air could achieve, but they did suit developments in popular
culture. Indeed, NZ On Air's two greatest successes could be seen as following the grain in that way:
- the establishment of New Zealand's first daily (or 'stripped') soap, Shortland Street ; and

- the establishment of weekly documentary strands on TV3 and TV ONE. Of course NZ On Air cannot take more than a partial share of the credit for these success stories, but the funding body was certainly very active in facilitating them. The result was a great expansion of local content for both drama and documentary (categories explicitly mentioned in NZ On Air's legislation). The annual figures for total hours tell the story:

Year                           1988 1989 1992 1994 1996
Drama/Comedy               39   59  223  283  357
Documentaries                43   36  175  207  252

It has been argued that these figures are misleading because TVNZ's production was at an
unusually low level in 1988-9, or it was the arrival of TV3 (rather than NZ On Air) that
increased the amount of local content. But what these figures confirm is that the mix of
programmes changed, with NZ On Air helping to bring about an increased emphasis on drama
and documentary.

Between 1988 and 1996, total NZ content increased 239% (from 2112 to 5066), but drama/comedy increased 910% (from 39 to 357) and documentaries increased 586%
(from 43 to 252).

The broadcasters were initially sceptical of both developments. While Julian Mounter was CEO
of TVNZ he strongly resisted the idea of a soap. And a TVNZ programmer told me: 'There's a
world surplus of documentaries, so why make any more? Especially as there's only a limited
demand for local ones.' Fortunately there were individual staff members within TVNZ and
TV3 who thought differently - a kind of good-humoured conspiracy of those with a
commitment to local production. In documentary-making, the key person was Geoff Steven
who established Inside NZ in 1991 as a branded prime-time series. This 'umbrella strand' rated so strongly it became one of TV3's major programmes. Eventually when Neil Roberts joined TVNZ he headhunted Steven who then established the Documentary NZ strand for TV ONE.

The ratings success of New Zealand documentaries in the 1990s was particularly striking as it ran completely counter to overseas trends. Documentaries had largely disappeared from the primetime schedule of overseas commercial channels. New Zealand came to produce relatively more documentaries for primetime than any other country. This was one reason programmers remained nervous about the genre. New appointees from overseas had difficulty understanding it. Others would return from overseas television fairs convinced that 'our documentary boom can't last'.

Why did New Zealand buck the trend? There seem to be three reasons. First, documentary has
always been a strong tradition in New Zealand (local audiences are more cautious in their
response to local drama). Second, the 1990s saw a surge in nationalism. As a former colony
with a strong sense of 'cultural cringe', which has always imported most of its culture
(including its television) from Britain and the USA, Pakeha New Zealand had some catching up
to do. Of course Maori culture has an ancient history; but a distinctive 'high brow' Pakeha
culture did not develop in this country until the 1930s, and it was not till the 1990s - the great
age of populism - that the fascination for distinctive forms of Pakeha popular culture really
took off. The concept of 'kiwiana' did not come into widespread use until then, and some of the
highest rating documentaries of the mid-'90s were Kiwiana, The Way We Were, Heartland , etc.

Of course there had been precedents, as a strong sense of nationalism had always surrounded
our sports and military traditions; the popular series Country Calendar had been on air since
1966; and television and NFU documentaries had expressed a sense of pride in our history and
landscape. The difference lay in the increased range and quantity of such material and its more
vernacular or populist style.

The third reason for the boom in documentaries was the development of a new kind of
'mainstream' or 'popular' documentary, a joint initiative between NZ On Air and the
broadcasters. (Broadcasters tend to be uneasy about the term 'mainstream' but I will use it in
this paper as a convenient shorthand.) Different from either the classic NFU or TVNZ model or
the alternative film tradition, the characteristics of such a documentary included the following:
a) The search for a broad audience (not just older viewers, say, or special interest groups);
b) A consistent effort to be accessible, with clear storytelling and a strong 'throughline' as the
basis;
c) An emphasis on personal stories, preferably with elements of emotion and drama (hence,
documentaries structured around people rather than around themes or other intellectual types of
structure);
d) An emotional tone that encouraged viewers to laugh, cry, or otherwise get involved - not a
detached or coolly ironic approach;
e) A desire to make subject-matter 'relevant' (as well as clear) to the average viewer - finding
the right strategy (or 'hooks') to catch and sustain interest;
f) A brisk pace and a conscious awareness of ad breaks - so that a one-hour documentary
involved approximately 46 minutes structured in five 'acts', with a strong opening sequence to
capture the viewer's interest, 'cliffhangers' or an unfolding story to guard against 'drift' during
commercial breaks, no sag in the middle to prevent a waning of interest, and a strong ending or
'payoff'.
g) An attempt to 'show' rather than 'tell' (an emphasis on real-time immediacy, that deepened
in the course of the decade).
h) The ability to make the most of a lean budget since all this had to be done for $100,000 (or
$130-140,000 today), helped along by developments in non-linear editing and smaller digital
cameras.
i) 'Promotability' as a key issue ('How will the broadcaster be able to 'promo' it? What will be
the one line description in the TV Guide or newspaper?'), with emphasis on the ability of the
documentary to attract viewers through a strong concept and colourful visuals, and to stimulate
discussion next day (on talkback radio, say, or in the workplace over morning tea).
Although these principles were far from new, the thoroughness with which they were
developed in the 1990s amounted to a new set of craft skills for New Zealand documentary
makers. The recipe (which initially owed much to Geoff Steven at TV3) proved to be more
popular than the broadcasters had expected. At its best, the new documentary was 'less starchy'
than the old style (as someone put it in a survey), neither hi-brow nor tabloid, satisfying a
potential interest in 'ordinary kiwis telling their own stories (for once)'. Although some of
those kiwis were far from 'ordinary', they were placed in a context of everyday New Zealand
life. There was an on-going debate with broadcasters (particularly with Mike Lattin after 1995)
who wanted approaches to be faster or more gimmicky, and subjects to be lighter or more
glitzy. Some overseas television experts also found the documentaries too homespun. NZ On
Air worked at holding the line, defending the best aspects of this new 'mainstream'
documentary because it had tapped important energies in the culture.
Certainly the public responded. The ability of free-to-air television to function as a national
forum was demonstrated by the public stir created by documentaries such as Lew Pryme:
Welcome to my World (1990), Aramoana (1991), Miles and Shelley Go Flatting (1992),
Britten: Backyard Visionary (1993), Scared Silent (1993), All About Eve (1993), Muldoon
(1994), Kiwiana (1996), Heartland (such as the 1996 Wainuiomata episode), Out of the Dark
(1996), Kirsa: A Mother's Story (1996), Location Location Location (1998), Love Thy
Neighbour (1998), The Lawson Quins (1998), Cave Creek (1998), Blokes and their Sheds
(1999), Crump: A Wandrin' Star (1999), My Name Is J