Kaleidoscope - Beyond Reasonable Doubt

...the film is being made here today, and it's my obligation to be here and to see what's happening. And so I've got that rotten feeling of the memories, and then I've got the good feeling of having my name completely exonerated.

– Arthur Allan Thomas, while watching a courtroom scene being filmed

I was really excited by the idea of it . . . It’s not a documentary, although a lot of people think of it in terms of documentary — they always assume that’s what we are making, because it is real. But it is a nice combination of those things — of absolute realism, and yet it’s got to be a dramatic story. The combination of those two things is the kind of film that I like...

– John Laing, director of Beyond Reasonable Doubt

Six weeks of filming and more than a hundred actors playing people alive today, and depicting the events of a story that is still unfolding — the trial and conviction of Arthur Allen Thomas for the murders of Jeannette and Harvey Crewe — and asking the same question: was he convicted beyond reasonable doubt?

– The narrator introduces this documentary

Seven years ago John Barnett began his own production company. Now, with four feature movies behind him, he's a veteran in the chancy business of independent filmmaking. When British author David Yallop came here to write about the Thomas case, Barnett negotiated the film rights before publication.

– The narrator

The fear of injunction has been a major fear. We had to guarantee to our investors that the picture wouldn't get stopped . . . each time we bought out a draft of the script, we sent it to lawyers, and they sat down and vetted it. The [NZ] Film Commission, who are major investors in the picture, insisted that we have it vetted by their lawyers. And their lawyer came back and said there were 90 points that had to be examined and verified. And we came back on all of those, and satisfied them.

– Producer John Barnett on the pressures of making the film "legally sound"

Primarily my job is to make sure that it doesn't cost any more than it has to. So I have to be heavy all the time in that area . . . some days we've got up to 150 people, other days you're only five. But in round figures we'd be spending between six and ten thousand dollars a day...

– Production manager Grahame McLean

Hundreds of extras were needed for the courtroom scenes . . . Most of the people in this scene were actually outside the court at the end of the second trial. Eight years later they're back, even wearing the same clothes.

– Reporter Bernard McLaughlin

How much more of your information is obtained from newspapers?

– Ian Watkin interrogates one of the witnesses

A helluva lot of money.

– Producer John Barnett, when asked how much the film cost

If as many people saw it as saw Jaws in New Zealand, I still wouldn't make my money back.

– Producer John Barnett is asked how much money will be recouped from the film's New Zealand release