War News - The Gallipoli Evacuation (excerpt)

I won't miss the flies, or the lice, or the rats...or good blokes getting killed.

– Corporal Bill Butler (Richard Chapman) on evacuating Gallipoli

Gallipoli was meant to be a swift victory, a quick advance that would sweep aside Ottoman defences. It's turned into a long, bloody stalemate.

– News anchor Ray Harkness ( Mark Mitchinson) summarises the ill-fated Gallipoli military campaign

It was an interesting way to re-energise century old history. For example were able to cross live to the frontline and get updates from Passchendaele.

– Writer David Brechin-Smith on War News, in his profile for NZ On Screen profile

The Gibson Group crew recreated significant battlefields around the Wellington region: Gallipoli at Red Rocks, Passchendaele at Avalon Studios, the Sinai and Palestine deserts on the Wainuiomata coast, the trenches of the Somme at Paekakariki’s Queen Elizabeth Park, and an old dam in Wainuiomata as the walls of Le Quesnoy,

– Gibson Group website

Director Mike Smith, whose job was to convey the concept of a TV news team covering WWI without throwing the audience off, said it was important “not to see any technology. So you never saw a cellphone in 1914. You don’t see microphones, you don’t see cameras.”

– Gibson Group website