NZ: Film 'designer' challenges the world of words

AUCKLAND (Pacific Media Watch): A new style of making film is breaking ground in New Zealand, challenging the way the industry operates and suggesting that images should be given as much attention as words.

Professor Welby Ings, who is a New Zealand film-maker, artist and educator, says the convention in film is that thinking occurs through writing, and that all film submissions are accepted on the basis of a written script.

'Talking in pictures'
“But film is not theatre, the wonder of film is that it is talking in pictures,” he says.

His works have been described around the world as “visually rich” and he puts it down to the fact that his films are completely thought out in images, so that they are “designed works, not directed films”.

Typically a page of script is translated into a minute of time on screen and from there, costs and timing of the film are assessed, but Professor Ings’ artistic style approaches from a completely different angle.

He says despite the economic costs, it is important to have the human element in an industry that is taking off with digital tools.

Professor Ings gave his inaugural professorial address last night at the Herald Theatre in the Aotea Centre in Auckland. True to his style, he broke with convention and gave an interactive presentation, followed by a screening of his latest film, Munted.

He says the aim of the film was “to show how a poignant story could be developed not from a script but from images made between the drawn world and a naïve story related, filmicly, by a young child”.

Five years in making
The film mixes Ings’ own drawings and paintings with film footage and has detailed use of sounds to tell the story. The 17-minute production features converging media and took five years to make.

Ings says you can hear “every creak of the floorboard in incredible detail”.

Despite the artistic value, Dr Ings says the style is not taking off around the world, mainly due to cost.

“The democratisation of digital media has made it affordable to imitate the handmade mark of the artist, but that’s only an imitation.”

When making Munted, he manually photographed the growing and then dying of lilies in a vase, and physically clicked the camera 700 times, once every six hours. He says the fact that he was five minutes late with one of the clicks added an authenticity that is not achieved through digital media.

“It adds that idiosyncratic richness of a human interpretation,” he says.

The film also features an intricately designed set, including a local store, which took six months to design and make. Every jar and label on the shelf was individually created to achieve not only a realistic picture of a 1960s store but a very realistic set for the actors to work in.

“It’s hugely time-consuming,” he says. “It’s not an economic approach.”