Dave Gibson: On the versatile output of the Gibson Group...

Interview – 2008

Producer Dave Gibson ran Wellington-based company Gibson Group for more than three decades— producing movies, documentaries, television dramas and comedy, as well as shows for mobile phones and interactive walls for museums. He went on to spend four years as Chief Executive of the NZ Film Commission.

In this ScreenTalk, Gibson talks about:

How studies to become a teacher were overtaken by a growing interest in cameras and filmmaking
How he began mining an international market for educational films
Why Gibson Group worked on an eclectic range of projects, based on what interested them
Making sure the money ends up on the screen, for example on acclaimed drama series The Insiders Guide to Happiness
Venturing into feature films, including horror movie The Irrefutable Truth about Demons
Using developing technologies for Gibson Group's museum work
Triple-pronged earthquake project Aftershock
Figuring out how to turn hit children's book Everything You Need to Know About the World into quiz programme The Simon Eliot Show

Dave Gibson went on to do this extended ScreenTalk interview in 2024.

This video was first uploaded on 11 October 2008, and is available under this Creative Commons licence. This licence is limited to use of ScreenTalk interview footage only and does not apply to any video content and photographs from films, television, music videos, web series and commercials used in the interview.

Interview - Clare O'Leary. Camera and Editing - Leo Guerchmann

All the television was made in-house . . .the local market was quite tight, and so we kind of hit upon this formula that if we made things that had a little bit of education but also a bit of television, then we could probably sell them worldwide.
– Dave Gibson on creating documentaries featuring children to tap into an international audience, in the early days of Gibson Group

Dave's Full Profile