Porter’s Pinot

The first sequence of the documentary on wine making in Martinborough is being screened at the film school today. After another great shooting day in Martinborough, with John Porter this time, and an interview with him at his law office in Wellington I had enough material to make a 11 minute film about him. I have also managed to interview Christian from Nga Waka again and film the bottling plant. So next I will put together more on the process of wine making and the problems of the 07 harvest. Hopefully there will be more filming soon, because I now know that despite it being winter there is still a lot going on in the vineyard. See it below or on YouTube.

Telling Tales - final film

The results are in and they are great. The other students in the crew covered the Mt. Vic tunnel, Freyberg pool, cross-strait swimming, Bolton St. cemetery, pub brawls, among other topics. Watch my finished film below, or go to the Museum of City and Sea in Wellington to see all of them from the 15th of May. Or find this film on YouTube.

Documentary Progress

So I am almost finished with the ‘Telling Tales’ project, after getting up unreasonably early on Thursday to film Molesworth Street without people. Unfortunately I planned without considering the early start times of public sector workers. But I still think I got the footage I need. On Friday I went off to Martinborough again to film the harvest at the vineyards.

Another setback, though, as John Porter was unavailable. But my fabulous production manager Christian arranged for me to visit another vineyard to shoot the last of the picking and pressing of the grapes. I talked to the vineyard and cellar managers about their job and the work they did, so at the moment the doc is going into a different direction than I planned.

I also got up REALLY early again to shoot early morning shots of the countryside, but getting good audio at the same time proved to be very hard. All of Martinborough seems to get up early to drive around in their car and ruin my lovely recordings of bird sounds. I need a sound recordist!