Don Reynolds

Don Reynolds started working in the sound department, and has gone on to produce 15 features, many of them Kiwi classics.

Reynolds began working in sound in the late 1960s, while training with the government's National Film Unit. Five years later he set up company Associated Sounds, which grew to become one of New Zealand's biggest independent post-production facilities. 

Reynolds worked on many the key productions of the 1970s, including landmark documentary series Tangata Whenua, early, independently-made TV drama The Games Affair, and Vincent Ward short film A State of Siege. During the renaissance of Kiwi filmmaking which began that decade, he was often found either holding the microphone boom, recording the sound, or mixing the completed soundtrack. Reynolds was there for the Blerta TV series in 1976 — home to many future screen talents — plus early features Solo and Smash Palace.

The shift to producing came about thanks to Goodbye Pork Pie. In 1980 director Geoff Murphy proposed to Reynolds that Associated Sounds provide sound equipment and mix the film's soundtrack, on a deferred basis: ie by being paid out of the film's future income. The deal definitely paid off. "The real success of it was that we actually got three times our money back, our investment back, out of the New Zealand release alone," Reynolds said in this video interview. "So it was a very successful foray into my first real investing in film." 

Although capturing clear sound often meant a battle with car and train engines, Reynolds looks at Goodbye Pork Pie's completed sound mix as "one of the pinnacles" of his sound career — though Murphy's next feauture, the epic Western Utu, would come close. "I love things like we have a huge battle, and then suddenly we cut and it's absolute silence — nothing else except Bruno walking amongst some leaves. It was using sound to very dramatic effect." 

In 1983 Reynolds produced and sound mixed a short film based on Keri Hulme story Hooks and Feelers. Shot partly on his Wainuiomata property, it was directed by Melanie Rodriga; the following year, the pair made their official debuts as feature film director and producer with Trial Run, the tale of an isolated photographer (Annie Whittle) threatened by a mysterious figure.

The next four years were extremely busy: Reynolds produced, or had a hand in producing, eight more features. In 1984 he helped negotiate the sometimes tense shoot for psychological drama Heart of the Stag, which won praise for star Bruno Lawrence. Reynolds reunited with Stag's director Michael Firth the following year for Sylvia, which they produced together. Based on the life of teacher Sylvia Ashton-Warner, it was voted amongst the 10 best films released in America that year by Village Voice critic Andrew Sarris.

Reynolds had earlier worked on sound for Sam Pillsbury's first feature The Scarecrow. The two went on to develop science fiction tale The Quiet Earth. It was "a big sound job", since the no-life-left-on-earth scenario required that most of the sound be replaced in the studio. "That's where Sam and I work so well together," said Reynolds at the time. "I come from the commercial aspect, Sam is artistically inclined...I reflect the views of the average moviegoer who wants more visual kapow and another car chase."

Working with producer Chris Hampson, Reynolds next produced two films with ambitions unmatched by their budgets: underseen road movie/romance Arriving Tuesday, and Illustrious Energy, a tale of nineteenth century Chinese goldminers. Illustrious Energy marked the acclaimed directorial debut of cinematographer Leon Narbey; the producers agreed to delay the shoot for a year, to allow the director and his art department time to give the Clyde sets the desired lived-in feel. "Leon is a passionate man" says Reynolds. "Everybody loved working on the project and they loved working with Leon, and there was this huge sense of support ... it was just this strong feeling that we were making Leon's film."  

Arriving Tuesday was equally as energised, with a largely "first feature film" crew pushing through a five-week shoot on less than $300,000. "I believe strongly that we can and should make some low budget films," Reynolds told OnFilm during the 1985 shoot. "This film couldn't be made without the willingness and good spirit of all the people involved." 

The late 80s saw Reynolds caught up in helping run company Mirage Entertainment, and the French shoot of Larry Parr romance A Soldier's Tale. Reynolds' production company Cinepro had merged with Parr's company shortly before the October 1987 stockmarket crash, which helped lead to the collapse of Mirage.

Reynolds went to work at newly created TVNZ drama subsidiary South Pacific Pictures. Within a year was appointed Chief Executive. He produced Welsh-Kiwi rugby romp Old Scores, was executive producer on Ian Mune classic The End of the Golden Weather, and part of the 13-strong multinational producing team behind Alexander Graham Bell miniseries The Sound and the Silence. In 1991 Reynolds moved to TVNZ as Director of Production and Co-production, with a responsibility for locally produced shows.

During this period Reynolds was one of a trio of executives who worked on overcoming unease within TVNZ about the viability of launching a daily soap. The soap was Shortland Street, and Reynolds helped secure a guarantee that it would retain a primetime screening slot for one year, giving it time to find its footing. Reynolds was aware that soaps often fall in ratings over their first year, before picking up; he argues that if TVNZ had gone with its desired order of 26 episodes, Shortland Street would never have had the chance to take off. "Between Chris Bailey and I, we scavenged TVNZ for equipment and things and people," says Reynolds. "It was really a lot of bulldozing that pushed it through." 

The Shortland Street team took advice from Australian soap experts Grundy Television. Later Reynolds joined Grundy, moving to London, to become Senior Vice President of Drama. While in London, he transferred to an international co-production role with Canada's Atlantis Films (later Alliance Atlantis). Reynolds had worked with the company on Kiwi-Canadian co-production Gold, set during the Central Otago goldrush. Atlantis would produce an ill-fated TV reimagining of Jules Verne's Mysterious Island, shot down under.

Next Reynolds moved to Sydney, to take up a newly-created position as Head of Programme Production for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. The job made him responsible for all ABC production in television, radio and multimedia.

Keen for a more hands on role, Reynolds created Sydney-based company Film.Com Pty. In 2002 he joined commercials legend Geoff Dixon to run Silverscreen Films. They produced three features before the company hit the wall: Geoff Murphy thriller Spooked (both Reynolds and Murphy had shown early interest in source book, The Paradise Conspiracy), Australian drama Peaches, and Vincent Ward historical epic River Queen. When news of the later film was unveiled at the 2004 Cannes Film Festival, Reynolds argued that it was "probably the biggest budget New Zealand story" that had been attempted to date. Throughout his career, Reynolds had experienced both ends of the funding spectrum — from the scrappy low-budget films to major productions working in testing environments, and everything in between. 

"When we made Pork Pie we were in the formative, pioneering stages of filmmaking," he says in book Shadows on the Wall - A Study of Seven New Zealand Feature Films. "There were a total of two film crews in New Zealand, we're talking about sixty people. That was the film industry ... it was such an invigorating environment because you weren't on the block as much as you are now. We were all just mucking in to try and make it work."

Reynolds talks about filmmaking in this interview, talks up River Queen in this news report, and does some crystal ball gazing in the closing stages of this 1987 documentary. Looking back on his career, he is proudest of having made a stand for the importance of getting a lunch break.

Profile updated on 11 November 2022

Sources include
Don Reynolds
'Don Reynolds: Pioneering soundman turned movie producer' (Video Interview) NZ On Screen website. Director Andrew Whiteside Loaded 23 March 2015. Accessed 11 November 2022
Barbara Cairns and Helen Martin, Shadows on the Wall - A Study of Seven New Zealand Feature Films (Auckland: Longman Paul, 1994)
Helen Vause, 'Love On A Low Budget' - OnFilm, December 1985, page 24 (Volume 3 No 1)
One Network News - 2004 Cannes Film Festival (Television Programme, TVNZ) 
The Quiet Earth press kit