NHNZ corporate services head Tim Mepham and managing
director Michael Stedman check details inside the film
production company's new offices in Dunedin. Photo by
Gregor Richardson.
NHNZ, formerly Natural History New Zealand, likes to
fly just under the radar, but its new premises at the southern
end of Princes St, in Dunedin, will give it a higher public
profile. Business Reporter Neal Wallace reports that NHNZ today
has changed rapidly in the past few years.
The major refit by NHNZ of the former Roslyn Woollen Mills
building in Dunedin, more recently occupied by the
Metropolitan Club, is more than creating a made-for-purpose
home for the film production company.
It is also a metaphor for how the award-winning Dunedin-based
television documentary production company has emerged
stronger, larger and more influential after several tough
years.
If not the largest, most respected film company of its type
in the world, NHNZ is in the top few, with shrewd stakes in,
or alliances with, similar companies in Singapore, South
Africa and eventually Australia, and production houses in
China and Abu Dhabi, in the United Arab Emirates.
Go back three years and the exporter was being hammered by a
soaring exchange rate, which in one month alone eroded
$US250,000 from its bottom line.
Ten jobs were affected, involving three early retirements,
three job losses and four who moved to contracted positions.
But that is history.
The Fox Television Studios-owned company has gone from
strength to strength and, through its various entities, will
this year produce close to 120 hours of film.
Ask managing director Michael Stedman the reasons for this
transformation, and he puts it down to two things.
The first was the conscious decision in 2007 to either stand
still and face an almost inevitable contraction of business,
or go out and grow.
They chose the latter.
The second was to turn to its strength, the quality and
talent of its staff, built from 30 years' experience.
This has not only resulted in some changes in production, but
also what is produced.
Technology played a key role.
NHNZ has been using high definition (HD) technology for close
to 10 years and will soon start moving in to 3-D, utilising
the technology expertise of its staff, but also working with
leading developers of the technology in Dunedin.
Look at the list of documentaries under production and you
also get a sense of another change.
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