‘The Governor’ — how not to make a drama

Press, 3 July 1985, Page 15

‘The Governor’ — how not to make a drama

Nearing the end of its protracted wallow in nostalgia, Television New Zealand last week dared repeat the opening episode of “The Governor.” It originally screened amidst a violent controversy about how much it had cost — $500,000 or $1 million? The storm now abated, TVNZ no doubt thought it safe to haul it out of the video vault for kinder reappraisal, thinking, somewhat naively, that the criticism at the time had more to do with the money spent than the product itself. They could not be more wrong! Whether $500,000 or $1 million was spent is really neither here or there. What matters is whether we got value for money. What we got was a good example of how not to make an historical drama — any drama in fact. The costumes and settings were perfect — too perfect. The wear and tear of everyday routine, everyday life, was not readily evident. Where was the crumpled and wrinkled look of livedin clothes? After all, Sunbeam electric steam irons were a bit scarce in those days. The Maori make-up was outstanding, especially the tattoos. Over all it was

Review

Ian Hutchison!

good, except for Henry Williams’ lambswool hairpiece and the two little, naked Maori boys who looked as though they had just been whipped out of their swimming togs. Makeup forgot (or perhaps continuity did) about their unsunned buns. Minor flaws like this can be overlooked. Bad acting, however, cannot. Apart from George Henare’s good performance of a rather bad keep-on-smilin’ Hone Heke, the only other half-decent actors were the horses and cannons. The extras, though, did not do too badly. They did a good job of acting as extras. Getting technically critical now, did you see the cheap looking rear-screen projection scenes, the ones where a part was played out in the studio in front of some projected scenery footage shot earlier? What can one say — except that it looked pretty crummy. If one was pushed, though, one could say that these

scenes were due to bad camera coverage of the script. Because they look so bad, rear-screen scenes are usually only used when the particular shots required for editing the programme together are not there. This does not say a lot about the director, the person responsible for camera coverage. Perhaps the film jammed in the magazine, or the lab lost it. Or perhaps bits of the script were missing when he read it. Mind you, from the look of it bits were missing when it was written. In terms of choice of shots, the direction was pretty bad. Most of them were eye-level and wide. Certainly, this established a nice epic oil painting feel to the programme, but it got rather boring and left one looking eagerly forward to the next set of exciting advertisements. To provide visual interest and add to the excitement and drama of the programme, what was needed was a variety of different angles and size of shots. Many significant points in the story were not covered with a close-up or big-close-up, especially the battle scenes which demanded them. It seems to me fairly important that we should have seen pakeha bayonets ripping open Maori bellies.