New Zealand Making a Pitch to Filmmakers

New Zealand’s politicians are trying to sell that faraway corner of the South Pacific as a haven for filmmakers, aggressively touting their scenery, film facilities and, most important, non-SAG salaries and favorable exchange rates of 49 U.S. cents for a Kiwi dollar.

They are having some success. The island nation of 3.5 million people and 60 million sheep is doubling for Middle Earth in New Line’s $200-million “Lord of the Rings” trilogy, Nepal in Sony’s $100-million “Vertical Limit” and the Santa Anita Racetrack in “Born to Run,” a modestly budgeted movie about a girl and her horse for Disney Channel.

Already, screen production in New Zealand was up 47% in the country’s fiscal 1998-99 year from the previous year to $155 million, according to a New Zealand research survey. And those figures don’t include the big-budget watersheds, “Lord of the Rings,” and “Vertical Limit.”

In the same way that elected officials several years ago joined forces with tour operators to launch a worldwide campaign that has made tourism New Zealand’s top moneymaker, film industry organizations and the government are cooperating to market what’s available there.

“My city’s buzzing. We’ve got ‘hobbits’ walking down the main street of Wellington,” said Mark Blumsky, mayor of the New Zealand capital where Peter Jackson is filming the J.R.R. Tolkien “Rings” trilogy.

In early February, film director Jackson launched Film Unit in New Zealand, the most complete post-production facility in the Australia-South Pacific region, according to its general manager Sue Thompson. It’s also the only film facility in New Zealand with a multimillion-dollar digital telecine, a machine that transfers film negatives to videotapes for editing.

In late February, at the Locations 2000 Expo at the L.A. Convention Center, while an Elvis impersonator shilled for Memphis and a costumed Masai warrior pitched Kenya, Blumsky and Bob Harvey, his elected colleague from the western suburbs of Auckland, pitched New Zealand as a great place to make movies.

Also broadcasting that New Zealand is film-friendly was its ambassador to the United States, former prime minister Jim Bolger, who threw an upscale bash during the expo and American Film Market in Santa Monica. The party featured Kiwi delicacies and six minutes of “Lord of the Rings” footage.

“Three years ago, no one knew how to get in touch with our film people, our line producers, production-servicing people or even what the country looked like,” said Jane Gilbert, who in 1998 started Film New Zealand, the locations arm of the New Zealand Film Commission. “People had the idea that New Zealand is connected to Australia by the Sydney Harbor Bridge.”

Every week Gilbert sends hundreds of e-mails with photos showing off New Zealand’s landscapes. “New Zealand became accessible,” Gilbert said. “As a business, we had to minimize the tyranny of distance and show that we have an infrastructure not based on apple boxes and sheep.”

She brought six Hollywood executives to Auckland, Wellington and Queenstown in February 1999 to show them New Zealand locations, facilities, casts and crews. Air New Zealand provided the air fare. A direct result of that trip, Gilbert said, was Sony’s “Vertical Limits” and the Disney Channel’s “Born to Run.”

“It opened my eyes,” said Roderick D. Smith, vice president for motion picture production finance at Disney, who made the trip with counterparts from Sony, DreamWorks and Saban Entertainment. “I was struck by how open and eager to help out workers are there. Here they are so compartmentalized. A wardrobe assistant would never drive a truck,” he said.