Robin Scholes: Producing the goods...

Interview – 2010

Producer Robin Scholes is a legendary name in the Kiwi screen industry. Her big screen credits include Once Were Warriors, Broken English, Rain, Mr Pip and Mahana. As co-founder of company Communicado, she worked on hundreds of hours of television, including Magic Kiwis and dramas Greenstone, The Chosen and Burying Brian.

In this ScreenTalk, Scholes talks about:

The launch of New Zealand’s first private TV channel in 1989, and how it transformed local screen production
Pitching television ideas, with fellow Communicado founder Neil Roberts
Her thoughts on why period drama series Greenstone could have been better
Her favourite TV scriptwriter — and what they brought to black comic series Burying Brian
Why the NZ Film Commission initially rejected Once Were Warriors, and how funding was eventually secured
Her worries following an early private screening of the film
How acclaimed feature Rain came about
Promising test screenings for 2010 movie The Hopes and Dreams of Gazza Snell

This video was first uploaded on 9 June 2010, 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, Camera and Editing – James Coleman

There's an extraordinary ingredient, which is a kind of magic that happens with some films. They can be flawed, but they somehow touch people's hearts, they somehow grip people; and those are the films that really break out.
– Robin Scholes on the "magic" behind the unexpected success of Once Were Warriors

Robin's Full Profile