If I’m emailing someone in New Zealand and want to know what time they might receive my message, I think “seven hours ago tomorrow.” That’s the time difference between Madison, Wisconsin, and anywhere in New Zealand. Right now there’s a lot of filmmaking going on in that distant place.

The May 2 issue of Screen International published a three-page spread on the lively production situation in New Zealand. It contains plenty of evidence that the positive impact that the LOTR trilogy had on the industry there continues. In the last chapter of The Frodo Franchise, I described how both productions from abroad and local films have benefited from the world-class production and post-production facilities created by Peter Jackson’s team. The gorgeous scenery that played Middle-earth continues to draw productions for location shooting.

Park Road Post

There’s James Cameron’s 3-D sci-fi blockbuster Avatar (due out next year), which recently finished filming in Wellington. We won’t be seeing the New Zealand landscapes in it, though. The filming was all done in studios. Cameron’s production went to Wellington for its creative talent and cutting-edge technology. Many of the technical crew, of course, got their training on Rings. Gavin Hood, director of X-Men Origins: Wolverine shot on the South Island for two and a half weeks, and a second unit spent six weeks there. Given that the first three X-Men movies were made in Canada, the production was looking for new scenery. The production was based in Sydney, where Hugh Jackman was finishing up starring in Baz Luhrman’s historical epic Australia. Another fantasy, Underworld 3: Rise of the Lycans, was in the Auckland area for 11 weeks in early 2008. Other films shot recently in Auckland were The Laundry Warrior (a U.S.-Korean production) and Fox’s They Came From Upstairs.

Then there are the Kiwi films. Peter is in post-production on The Lovely Bones, and Niki Caro, of Whale Rider fame, is well into her next feature, The Vintner’s Luck. Taika Waititi, whose first feature Eagle Vs Shark was a local hit, is at script stage on The Volcano. Eagle Vs Shark didn’t have much success outside its home country, though I managed to see it in a theater here in Madison. It’s a weirdly charming little comedy, and a must-see on DVD for fans of the Flight of the Conchords, whose Jemaine Clement stars in the film. (BTW, there’s an interview with Clement and Bret “Figwit” McKenzie in the May Wired.) Toa Fraser, director of No. 2, which won the audience award at Sundance in 2006, is at work on Dean Spanley, and Jonathan King, who debuted with Black Sheep, is directing a teen-oriented fantasy, Under The Mountain. As with Black Sheep, Weta Workshop will be creating the fantastical creatures. Vincent Ward’s new feature, Rain of the Children, has its premiere at the upcoming Sydney Film Festival. Three feature debuts are coming up: The Strength of Water (Armagan Ballantyne), Apron Strings (Sima Urale), and Second Hand Wedding (Paul Murphy).

Even films that aren’t shot in New Zealand may go there for post-production work like sound mixing, editing, digital color grading, lab work, and of course special effects. John Woo is working on Red Cliff, which he shot in China, at Park Road Post, as is Alex Proyas for his Australian-shot Knowing. I’ve got a couple of photos of this gorgeous facility in the book, and I blogged about watching the sound mixing for The Water Horse there in May of 2007, over on the “Observations on film art and Film Art” blog. The image above is from the PRP website, which has grown considerably since I added it to my blogroll here. The photo at the bottom comes from the Screen International story on Wellington’s production infrastructure. It shows the garden, complete with pond and miniature waterfall, that graces the courtyard around which the structure was built. That garden was being installed in December of 2004, when I visited PRP for my last round of interviews. The two rooms jutting out on the second floor at the right were where some of those interviews, on that and the earlier trips, took place. (The photo on the left is from one of Film New Zealand’s many ads featuring the beauties of the country.)

Despite all the recent and current filmmaking activity, the New Zealand industry’s infrastructure is still pretty small. X-Men Origins was an elaborate project, and there weren’t enough crew members available; people had to be brought in from outside. Avatar came close to having the same problem but managed to get enough local people to do all the work. The capacity of the industry to absorb big productions from abroad hasn’t grown much since the days of LOTR. One American producer commented in one of the Screen International stories, “I wouldn’t want to be the fourth film shooting in New Zealand.”

The Screen International coverage includes three brief interviews with the producers of some of the big outside films shot in New Zealand. Each interview ends with the same question: “Would you shoot in New Zealand again?” Ralph Winter (X-Men Origins) replied, “We would come back again because the locations are so spectacular.” Jon Landau (Avatar): “Yes.” Richard Wright (Underworld 3): “In a heartbeat.”

Plus a certain Mexican director of our acquaintance is keen to go and spend four years of his life there. Now, about four and a half years after The Return of the King was completed, New Zealand seems still to be building the momentum that the trilogy started.