The behind-the-scenes edition

Kia ora e te whānau and nau mai, hoki mai!

If you’ve been with us for a while now, you’ll have banked some pretty incredible mōhio/knowledge around the Māori arts, media, and events scene.

This wiki we wanted to take you a step further, nō reira we’re going behind-the-scenes!

Before getting into it, we have some green room news of our own to share:

You know the monthly draw we’re running for anyone who shares Te Arawhata with a mate? The one with a prize pack of epic goodies from Māori creatives worth $500?

Well just quietly - other than a few mentions on socials and right here, we’re not really telling anyone while we get our systems right - which means your chances of winning this month are higher than they’ll ever be. Tohutohu/instructions are at the bottom of this newsletter.

Righto, forget Universal Studios. Your tour of the Māori creative industry starts ināianei/now.

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Weekly top picks

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#1 Watch: ‘Behind the scenes on The Dead Lands,’ with Waka Huia

for a bit of fun

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The Deadlands, an epic action film about a Māori chieftain's son and his quest to avenge his father's murder, was big. Like industry-changing, courageously big.

In this Waka Huia special, we get to see exactly how the crew pulled it off—the intense fitness regimes and mau rākau/Māori weaponry sessions to get actors into warrior shape, Scotty Morrison’s mahi to find long-forgotten ‘battlefield reo’ for the script, and the amazing intricacies of every costume and prop.

It’s a Māori film fan’s dream watch.

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Find it: on the Waka Huia Youtube channel
Time: 30mins
Cost: free

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#2 Listen to:  ‘Back to Kura’ - a podcast by Shilo Kino and Astley Nathan

for the inspiration

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Takiura, a Māori language kura/school famous for its intense reo immersion method, is kinda like Harvard for te reo Māori learners.

From the outside, it has an air of mystery. People go in at a similar level to you and emerge one tau/year later, seemingly fluent (or a million steps closer to it than you are), with newfound confidence—and heaps more mates.

For those of us wondering what actually happens on the inside, Shilo and Astley, first year ākonga/students, bare it all on this podcast.

Whether it inspires you to sign up, or feel sure about your current programme, it’s worth the listen.

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Find it: on Spotify
Time: 15 episodes about 30-40mins
Cost: free with your account

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#3  Do: sign up for a rongoā Māori workshop with Titoki Education

to learn something

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When you haven’t grown up with it, the art of rongoā/traditional Māori medicine can seem incredibly mystical, like potion-making.

The truth is, it’s a science. It just hasn’t been widely passed on for many reasons including the Tohunga suppression act and fact that most of us don’t hang out in the bush so much anymore.

At Titoki Education, hugely respected rongoā practitioners, Rob McGowan (Pākehā) and Donna Kerridge (Ngāti Tahinga, Ngāti Mahuta) generously share their knowledge to clear the waters for anyone with an interest.

It’s such a cool opportunity team. All you have to do is sign up.

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Find it: on the Titoki website
Time: two days
Cost: from $260

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#4 Read: ‘An interview with Patricia Grace’, on E-Tangata

to feel all the feels

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Patricia Grace, the writer known for ‘Potiki’, ‘The Kuia and the Spider’, ‘Tu’, ‘Cousins’, and many more sits down with E-Tangata to talk about her writing career.

In this article Grace is wonderfully frank—one of those people who carry enough self confidence to not need to talk anything up, or indeed, play anything down.

They cover some of the secrets to her success and her well honed (and fascinating) process for weaving stories together.

If you thought, like me, they MUST be mapped out beforehand, you thought wrong.

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Find them: on the E-Tangata website
Time: 5mins
Cost: free

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Weekly deal

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Get 50% off selected Taputapu prints!

Feeling inspired to do some creative work of your own? We find having a beautiful space to do it helps and Nikki Kennedy (Ngāti Porou, Te Whakatōhea, Te Aitanga a Mahaki) from Taputapu Toi has just the prints for the job—at 50% off!

She also shares a lot of behind-the-scenes on her instagram page, detailing both the business and creative sides of her mahi (punctuated by some pretty mīharo Gisborne backdrops). Enjoy!

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Weekly feature

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What goes on location… is later shared on Te Arawhata

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James McIntyre’s Māori whānau harks back to Te Kaha in Te Whānau-a-Apanui lands, heoi this editor and producer has worked all over the world.

His credits include local classics ICE TV, 1News, and Flipside, massive sports broadcasts like The Americas Cup and Volvo Ocean Race, as well as a myriad of reality shows, human interest pieces, and cutting edge scientific documentaries.

He agreed to sit down with me this weekend to yarn all things behind-the-scenes (mostly because he’s also my big brother and owes me for babysitting time).

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So what is something that most people don’t realise about the world of television production?

Probably how down to the wire it can all be.

Like, the Volvo Ocean Race was an interesting one. We’d turn up to these locations, like you’d go to Brazil and there’d be 6 boats who’d been at sea for about 20 days each. So that’s 6 boats times 20 days footage—often 12 hours of footage for each day. And we had just days to sort it all into a one hour documentary.

Often at 1News you’d be sitting there at 5:30, thinking, ‘Yes, sweet. My day is done’. And then hear some reporter sprinting around the corner going, ‘I’ve got the lead story!’ And you’d suddenly have half an hour to load, cut, and export it.

There used to be a room full of tape machines where they’d play the stories out from and it was always just like a full sprint down the hallway about one minute before six o’clock. You’d bang the tape into the player and there’d be this spooling sound as the it was slowly loading. You’d hear the news anchor reading the introduction as you’re frantically hitting play.

Yeah, those are always really stressful but really cool moments as well. It was a real adrenaline rush.

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Any funny behind-the-scenes yarns? You must have seen some things…

Quite a few. There have been run ins with foreign police, food poisoning dramas on yachts around royalty, people forgetting they’re wearing lapel mics…

I remember the cameraman getting so mad at me when I was a junior helping out on a particular Ice TV shoot. Nathan, Petra, and Jon were all naked in the scene, but using kitchen props like a jug of milk, cups, and stuff to hide the naughty bits. I had to aim a light at them, but I was too scared to even look in their direction, so was trying to do it blind.

Just hanging with a Kiwi crew in other countries was always crack up. Quite often, there were a couple of us Māori boys on jobs. I remember one guy on America’s Cup, Kereti, who grew up with reo Māori as his first language, searching in the supermarket in San Fran for pork bones to cook a boil up in his apartment. It’s so fun to have them over there, Nothing cures homesickness like an East Coast handshake and a ‘Chur Bro’.

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Apart from being a massive nerd… (my bro throws his muffin at me here), what do you reckon makes you a good editor?

I'm actually not like… like I think there are lots of editors who are really technically skilled, and I'm not that technically skilled. I've just always liked storytelling. And I think that's what I love about editing—just listening to people tell a story and then figuring out how best to make that work in a TV show.

And… I mean the cool moments are when you get to see the reactions of people watching things that you've edited or produced. And just seeing you know, I guess people have an emotional attachment to the thing that you've created. That’s pretty rad.

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Jimbo (a humble wee kumara) goes on to tell me about the people who have guided and supported him along the way; a team of legendary broadcasters who took him under their wing, our aunt and well-known producer, Jude Anaru. Soundies, producers, runners, directors, make-up artists—all storytellers in their own right—working (overtime) behind-the-scenes to share new stories and worlds with us.

It’s got me thinking about the number of people behind every one of our weekly recommendations. Chur to them eh? And Chur to you all for reading Te Arawhata, engaging with their mahi, and supporting them to keep doing their thing.

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