Test Pictures - Geoffrey Steven

More on the Wellington Film Festival from Rod Prosser

New Zealand

This film (NZ's first feature film in 4 years) was the most talked about film in the festival. It was also the first to be booked out.

On seeing this film most viewers have arrived at a very pessimistic view of the capabilities of New Zealand film-making. New Zealand film-making has, however, much greater potential than this film would indicate.

Although Test Pictures is at least better than the soap opera Close to Home it is still a pile of junk. The scripting alone would have ensured the failure of the film. The directing was un-coordinated and obviously did not belong to one person. The camera work was painful. Fancy panning around for no reason at all where no special effect is created is a despicable fault in a film-maker. The sound work was atrocious. The sound levels were completely unbalanced and extremely irritating. The editing was extremely sluggish, main faults being: shot after shot of the same scene without any change in perspective, pointless rolling of of the same shot and the conflict between the cutting and dialogue. Finally the acting was simply non-existent. There was no human-ness about it at all. More identifiably human expressions could be got from a chimpanzee walking around. Although the occasional well-created shot (largely contributed by the beautiful scenery) and several good ideas in amongst the footage made the whole thing a bit more bearable, many people left early.

I rip shit out of this film not just for the hell of it but rather I do it in defence of New Zealand film-making. My criticisms have been as simple as possible to point out that the defects shown in this film are simple to overcome and that there is no reason for New Zealand films to remain in the rut in which they seem to have entrenched themselves.

Of course, the development of New Zealand film-making is hopeless as long as the government and other people see their aid to the film industry in terms of only thousands of dollars. Much more simply has to be spent so that independent film-makers can get off the ground. By this I don't mean that present amateur film-makers should be given the money to become professionals but that highly skilled people within the film business should be given the chance to leave the establishments and combine together in various independent crews to make features. (NZ is the only country of any size which doesn't have a film industry). Amateurs would also gain an opening through this scheme. For example at the moment, there is little attraction to join one of the established institutions for the creative person. There could not only be apprenticeship jobs with the independent maker; but apprenticeships with TV 1, TV 2 and the Film Unit would be much more attractive because the lack of prospects would no longer exist

After having said all this one might say why have such an industry at all since we can pick and choose from overseas productions. If we take this attitude I think that we miss out on a great deal because film has incredible power to reflect a national identity. It can play an extremely important part in the development of all aspects of a society. This is shown by the use which all third world countries, and many other young societies have put it to. Good examples are Czechoslovakia (before the 1968 Russian invasion), Cuba, Chile (during its short freedom under Allende), India and even Australia. These countries and many more have realised the very great significance of their own film art.

Film is increasingly becoming aligned with the pursuit of social justice, freedom and economic progress because its communicative potential is almost unlimited and similarly with its artistic potential. New Zealand will wake up to this one day and there will no longer be any necessity for judging films like Test Pictures so harshly.

They could then truly be regarded as test pictures or experiments which are a highly desireable part of the whole process.