H: My name is Hazel Gibson.
M: I’m Morgan Leigh Stewart.
H: And we’ve been working on a project which
is destined for online release, called K Road
Stories and it’s a series of ten short films
set on Karangahape Road.
M: I was particularly into this web channel
called ‘Wigs’.
The idea is that it’s online content for
women by women.
That was quite big a few years ago, and I
was like ‘there should be more things like that’.
It wasn’t perfect, by any stretch of the
imagination, but, it was sort of a step in
that direction.
H: I was influenced by a lot of online content
because I don’t have a TV, and I haven’t
had a TV for seven or eight years.
So, everything I watch is online, whether
it’s TV or movies or web-series or games
or anything like that.
M: With things now with short films, where
people used to make short films for film festivals,
nowadays the biggest thing you can get is
like a Vimeo staff pick.
That is like gold.
That would be the goal, you know?
H; Or end up on shortoftheweek.com
M: Screw all those festivals where –
H: Or have someone famous tweet about it.
M: That’s better for your career than laurels
at a festival that no one’s ever heard of.
M: There’s a filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky,
and he talks about making films surrounded
by your “spiritual warriors”.
So people who are all on the same page and
the same wavelengths trying to tell the same
idea.
That really stuck.
H: So we’ve kind of taken that on board
and we try and only have good people around
us who have the same goals.
H: It’s changing very rapidly.
A big interest of both of ours is the social
media side of things.
The marketing, and how you get things out
there.
It’s quite interesting because two years
ago I would have said yup vimeo has the best
video quality, it has the best interface – but
it’s not the biggest in terms of audience.
If people know about your particular film
or whatever you've put up onto Vimeo they can
go and find it.
Or you can have the link and you can share
it and people can find it.
But you don’t really stumble across things
on Vimeo like you do on YouTube.
YouTube is definitely the frontrunner now
because their quality is up to the same quality
as Vimeo.
M: If you want to reach an audience, you should
go online, but create good content because
people get sick of shit.
The quality level should match the potential.
H: An audience’s desire to look at something
online is so immediate it’s kind of like
I have 18 tabs open on my computer and I haven’t
looked at 16 of them in 3 weeks.
You know, like "I'll come back to that."
but I just never will.
It’s kind of like if there’s a video available
for me to watch I’ll watch it right then.
But if I heard about a video that was online
on the radio
I wouldn’t remember to go back 
and look it up later.
But if it came up on my Facebook feed or if
someone sent me a link to it
and I could watch it straight away,
I would do that.
We really need to be thinking about the immediacy
of things.
That culture of binge watching affects how
people write things and create things.
M: For us with K Road stories we’re kind
of doing that.
The episodes, even though they’re stories
and by different directors, they do have recurring
characters.
So if you do watch it all in one go –
H: - there’s an overlap.
You see the same locations and the same characters,
there’s an extra who’s in one who’s
a main character in another and playing the
same kind of person.
That's worked out really well.
M: With K Road Stories, one of the positive
experiences I’ve had is sitting back and
looking at the 10 filmmakers we have and going
‘that’s an incredible bunch
of incredibly talented people’.
There is a bonus to that: 50% of them female.
That is awesome.
That’s a huge jump in the general statistic
for New Zealand.
H: Producing, it’s about 50-50
M: It’s actually 52%
H: So it’s fine
M: Nah but see, this is the statistic that
gets me, 52% of feature film producers 
in New Zealand are female.
So they’re like, well done, move on.
And I’m like no, tell me where the money
split is.
Cuz I want to know that.
There’s a missing statistic here.
H: The $200,000 films are all produced by women –
M: - and the multi-million dollar films
are probably produced by guys.
So whether or not 80% of funding 
goes to the 48% of men or what?
I want to know that. That for me was key, 
and I was like 'that's not there'.
H: Something that I’ve noticed in myself
and something that is really hard to go against
your nature to do or what you’re conditioned
to do, is apologising for what you do.
I find myself writing emails to someone 
when I'm asking for something
and saying ‘oh I’m sorry I was just wondering if
maybe you might maybe want to help me out
on this thing?’, instead of saying ‘hey,
I’m doing this thing, it’s going to be
awesome, you should be involved, I reckon
you’d be great and this project’s going
to be great’.
And to actually go back through and take out
all your sorrys and have a bit of faith in
yourself is probably what’s lacking.
It’s not that there aren’t women out there
who want to, or can do this stuff,
they definitely can, there's talent out there.
It’s just about getting it from that nascent
stage to a stage where they have confidence
in themselves to write a feature and produce
it and direct it.
H: I’ve definitely, as the producer on set,
you are the boss.
You are the boss.
And so to have like, cinematographers 
not listen to you,
or defer to the director 
when you’re just like,
actually, you need to be listening to me 
when I'm telling you this thing.
It can be really frustrating.
Especially if they're older, as well.
People do not like being told what to do by
someone who's younger.
M: That's true, that can be awkward.
I'm pleased I'm ageing.
I feel like it’s like adult kindergarten, often.
I actually just said that today.
H: Different roles require different skills,
and I feel like producing
can often be one of the most 
undervalued roles because your
skill set needs to be so broad.
You need to not only be good at financial stuff, 
and organising and scheduling,
and those kind of things, but what’s really not understood is that
you need to be so good at interpersonal skills.
You’re basically the go-between between
everybody and making sure everybody’s happy
and not clashing and kind of smoothing things
over.
Half your day is making sure everything goes 
smoothly, and if you do your job well,
no one knows you've done it.
M: There's no glory in it.
H: If you are in my position, at the beginning of my 
career in the film industry,
and I don’t see anyone
who looks like me, or who is like me, 
who has reached that pinnacle
of success or recognition by their peers.
How are you ever going to think it's possible?
It was a really frustrating moment.
to be like 'man, why am I even 
trying to do this?'
M: One of the most negative experiences 
I’ve had is to do with,
you know, I talk about the idea 
of the spiritual warrior
It's having the opposite of that.
And having to live with that and deal with
that on a day to day basis
for a very long time.
Because some of these projects take a very
long time.
And you’re unable to get out of it at that
stage.
H: I found myself in situations 
in the commercial world
where you deal with a lot of 
old school people, a lot of older people,
they're from the ad industry,
they're very set in their ways 
and expect certain things,
and they aren’t open to new ideas.
And they just don’t have the same level
of respect for you and it’s really frustrating
not being respected, being younger than
them, or being female.
Personality-wise we get along, but I know
you think that I’m lesser.
