SCENIC FILMS SHOT IN N.Z. BY U.S. VISITORS

Press, Volume XCIX, Issue 29102, 14 January 1960, Page 8

SCENIC FILMS SHOT IN N.Z. BY U.S. VISITORS

A man whose work in filming wild life and making travelogues and other films has taken him to 68 countries in the last 50 years, from the jungles of South America to Africa and the icy wastes of the Arctic, is in Christchurch on a New Zealand tour in which he is filming sequences for a feature movie of this country. He is Mr Dick Bird, who with his wife, Ada, arrived in Christchurch yesterday for a stay of about a week. The pair will then travel further south to complete their trip in New Zealand, which will have occupied about three months and covered virtually every district, including the main scenic areas and farmlands. Mr Bird has carried out considerable filming for Walt Disney wild-life features in recent years, mainly in the Rocky mountain area of Canada. One of his major tasks in this respect was the feature, “White Wilderness.”

He has filmed lions, tigers, and other big game in Africa, and deadly snakes and alligators in South America, and polar and grizzly bears, mountain goats mountain lions, and bison in North America and the Arctic. In recent years Mr Bird and his wife have made features and travelogues on Bermuda, British Guiana, Mexico, Newfoundland, the Canadian Rockies, and various other countries, often at the request of Governments of the countries which are awake to the tourist potential of his films. Lecture Tours

The films are shown during lecture tours to universities, geographic and other societies in North America. Some of the films have been shown to more than 500,000 persons through these lecture tours, and the couple said they expected a similar audience for the New Zealand film when it was completed. Mr and Mrs Bird’s absorbing work takes them away from their home in Saskatchewan, for 11 months of the year. Some of the interesting and unusual features which they have found in New Zealand, and which will be incorporated in the feature film, are teams of marching girls, surf life-saving clubs’ activities, and wood-chopping contests which they saw on the West Coast.

“Activities carried out here for recreation seem like work to us, and it is marvellous to see these pastimes taken on as a sport in this country,” said Mr Bird. “In North America little is done for nothing; you have an entirely different concept over here.” The New Zealand film will also feature Maoris, sheep raising and shearing, and farming, the unique

native bird life, and scenic attractions of bush, rivers, glaciers, and mountains. “This is a fertile country,” said Mr Bird, whose most vivid impression is the greenness of the land and bush which he is intent on capturing in his film. Native Bush “The native bush growth in New Zealand is very similar in density and appearance to jungle growth, so that we find ourselves unconsciously stepping carefully in the bush here to avoid snakes,” said Mrs Bird. She said photography was a hobby as well as a job for her husband, and she also was keenly interested in it. There was great satisfaction derived in sharing their travels with thousands of other persons through the lecture tours, she said. Mr Bird was bitten by a deadly snake in the South American jungle, but survived because the snake had nearly drained its poison sac on another victim shortly before. He also survived three "crack-ups” in aircraft while filming during the war, lived through a shipwreck on one of the North American lakes, and had a bullet clip his head while filming a labour riot in steel mills in Illinois.

The pair are carrying with them on their trip cameras and tape recording equipment worth 20,000 dollars. They will lecture in Vancouver on their return from New Zealand, and expect to make a film in India later this year.