Back to results Interview : Bright sparks make Blackspot In the first part of a two-part interview about Blackspot, their independent feature film, Luke Hawker and Ben Hawker respond to emailed questions about their careers to date and how they parlayed their childhood passion for DIY moviemaking into film careers in Australia and New Zealand. What first interested you in the screen production industry? I think we can honestly say that “interest” never came close to describing what we felt about film. Growing up within the sheltered shores of early 1980s’ New Zealand, movies consumed us. This was, after all, the heyday of blockbuster cinema; going to see a film was no longer simply escapism, it was a ticket to another universe. Our parents sensed momentum in the medium and, though times were tough, we were never in any danger of missing milestones the likes of The Goonies, ET or Back to the Future. Raiders of the Lost Ark, Ghostbusters, the Star Wars and Alien films, these pictures came so thick and fast that one ended up taking the superb story craft and soaring production values for granted. For an introduction to the profession we would end up following into adulthood, this was one hell of an education for brothers growing up in rural Wairarapa. It’s ironic that our passion for filmmaking was fostered amongst the same lonely roads we would end up shooting our first feature on. We emulated what we had seen and loved. Role-playing our favourite Ghostbuster or Jedi engendered the creation of armaments, costumes and, most profoundly, creatures. A healthy (if not slightly morbid) fascination grew with the disgusting and malevolent creations that poured from the various American creature shops of the day. Play acting and dressing up evolved quickly into genuine attempts at film product manufacture. Tool boxes and home stationery supplies were looted. Bedrooms and garages became latex-drenched workshops. Magazines the likes of CINEFEX made their way into the bedside stacks. Our ever suffering parents seldom enjoyed an afternoon or weekend that was not tinged with the smell of ammonia or spray paint. It was a natural progression for us to commit our our newly made heroes and beasts to film. Be it Kodak Super 8 or video 8, we shot the hell out of each other. Our efforts, however crude, were extremely gratifying. Shooting and cutting these little films had opened up yet another world of creation for us. Forced to look back at ourselves through a lens, there was a sudden realisation that we had an eye for humour, improvisation, for cinematic emulation. With practice, maybe we could really make something of this – we never stopped. Looking back, there was a reason our home movies always leaned towards homage. We were reaching for the real thing even as kids. So at what stage did you realise your all-consuming hobby could actually be what you’d do when you grew up, and how did you go about parlaying that realisation into reality? We were either very lucky or simply oblivious to alternatives. Our family is one of those freakish rarities where, at first glance, there doesn’t appear to be any original personalities; just a conglomerate of film caricatures communicating with movie quotes! For us there was never any other option. We lived for storytelling, be it through performance or cinematic narrative. We grew, and our desire for film and theatre grew alongside us. We stuck with it because it was all we knew, all that inspired us. It therefore was a natural progression from after-school pastime to theatre school full time. Living in Australia for a decade, we Hawker brothers did time at NIDA in Sydney. Luke, having the lifelong acting itch, completed an intensive young actors course, and Ben, a two-year diploma in production. It was during this time we found the most tenacious of low-budget film producers in Freya Blackwood. A native Australian, Freya had studied production at AFTRS, also in Sydney. These studies and the several years of freelance work in Australia that followed were instrumental in cementing our desire to be filmmakers. As New Zealand has seen in recent years, the Australian film industry had a period of growth through the mid to late ’90s. We were able to leap headlong into training (and employment) for an industry we were already vehemently passionate about, straight out of high school. Though still a few years away from a film of our own, we collectively racked up some great production credits in Australia – Holy Smoke, Babe 2, Chopper, Dark City, Farscape, and The Matrix – and all before any of us had turned 22. Although we didn’t realise it at the time, coming back to New Zealand at the behest of Weta Workshop was really the first big step in realising our personal goal as filmmakers. We owe Peter [Jackson], Richard [Taylor] and Tania [Rodger] a great debt of gratitude for this invitation and for instigating the thriving network that now resides in the Miramar Peninsula. We quickly realised New Zealand’s newly revived film industry was a little different from the one we had left behind in Australia. It was more close knit and there was a sense of mutual exchange, even between the tiers of low-budget and multimillion-dollar production. In short, it was a paradise for facilitation. As many of the visiting filmmakers from Europe and the States will tell you, enthusiasm, creativity and resourcefulness are abundant here – as corny as it may sound, in New Zealand turning a dream into reality is only a matter of time. The spools of our own cinema machine began to turn. What kind of roles were you undertaking on the various shows you worked on in Oz, and what has your work at Weta Workshop involved up to this point? The work we cut our teeth on in Australia was extremely varied. Like most Australasian effects technicians and production staff, multiskilling is essential – if the goal is to maintain steady employment in a tumultuous business, one can’t afford to over-specialise. Being a little younger, Luke continued his performing arts training right up until the move back to Wellington in 1999. Interestingly enough, it was Luke’s affinity for performance that has led to him into dual roles on recent projects like Avatar. Luke would perform his role as an AD one day, and the next day he would just perform! Freya juggled production of her own 16mm short films while working as a production assistant on several of the aforementioned projects. She started her AFTRS production course shortly after finishing art deptartment. work on The Matrix – where Freya and Ben first met. Ben’s roles were a continuation of the garage work he had roped Luke into throughout childhood. Though prosthetic make-up began to emerge as the leading art for all three of us, speciality props/costumes seemed to be a reoccurring theme in the Australian jobs. Many included some of the trickier, more unusual visual effects requirements that production had need of. For example, George Miller requested an indestructible, inflatable clown suit, Jane Campion needed an artificial urination rig for a nude performer (where do you hide it?) and finally the Wachowski Brothers required bio-electric ports embedded in flesh if you please. There were more than a few perks to be gained working in this capacity. We were on full-scale, multimillion-dollar film sets, working directly with cast members and their directors. We were extremely lucky – intangible details such as set etiquette became second nature very early on in our careers, and we were being provided a first-hand education in the most expensive and strenuous part of film production; the shoot itself. Not only did these experiences allow us to segue directly to Weta Workshop in 1999, they prepared us for Blackspot six years later. Though bursting at the seams with capability, in ’99 the huge Weta Workshop had an immense challenge ahead of itself. We arrived to find ourselves immersed in a highly experienced team of people, many of whom had already spent several years developing Lord Of The Rings. It’s no great secret that making LOTR was one of the tallest orders in film history – we have never worked harder in our lives. Luke and Freya both started as foam latex technicians. Freya moved on to paint and apply literally hundreds of hobbit feet and creature prosthetics. After LOTR she briefly took the role of project manager for a Weta collectable range before finally leaving Weta to pursue a career in children’s book illustration. Working from home, Freya was able to facilitate the production of Blackspot whilst still meeting publishing deadlines (her books now have worldwide distribution and have since gone on to win several awards). Luke moved from foam latex to prosthetic mold making. He worked with Ben developing a Weta silicon prosthetics system, and both joined various teams of people, completing countless other technical creature work for LOTR. Luke was eventually made mold room supervisor. He applied prosthetic make-up on Return Of The King and was promoted to prosthetic make-up coordinator for work on King Kong. Apart from the odd stint of stunt work, Luke now freelances in production as an actor and AD. Over the 10 years Ben has spent at Weta, he has designed, sculpted, molded and applied prosthetic makeup, worked as a creature designer, sculptor and sculpting department supervisor. Alongside Luke he has performed motion capture and creature suit work, puppet making and puppeteering. Ben has also worked as a 3D modeller and script developer for Weta’s Jane and the Dragon television series. Although Ben no longer works in a technical capacity at Weta Workshop, he is currently writing a Weta-commissioned screenplay in cooperation with a major American film studio. So what was the inspiration for Blackspot, and how did you develop this into a screenplay? The inspiration for Blackspot started with several ideas, but essentially the story was conceived while on a late-night road trip. Luke and friend Theo Baynton philosophised long into the night about the foreboding New Zealand landscape and what prolonged isolation might drive a person to – even on a well-travelled-road. It led Luke to recount another memory, of another late-night drive years earlier. While his girlfriend slept, Luke drove through the unlit void of rural New Zealand. After two hours, the car had not passed any intersecting roads nor encountered any other vehicles. Eventually the glow of a small town did appear, but not before Luke was struck with how easily fear and paranoia had crept into his mind: “For all I know I could be driving off the end of the world...” These ideas and feelings were channelled into the premise, if you were to suddenly to find yourself stuck in a horrific scenario you couldn’t control, how far would you go to change your circumstances? With this concept in place, writing could begin. The first draft introduced a myriad of questions: At what point do relationships become expendable? Who or what would you sacrifice to preserve your own sanity or survival? Given a second chance, would you choose the same outcome knowing it would hurt those close to you? Initially Luke and Theo explored the idea together, writing into the late evening after working a full day at Weta. Luke then ran with the resulting outline, spending three months fleshing out the story and exploring different avenues before finally showing the resulting draft to long-time TV and film producer Paul Hawker (yes, father of the Hawker brothers). Attempting a first-time screenplay can obviously be very intimidating and doubts had emerged over the initial premise. After discussing a variety of options with Paul, Luke was reassured that the original concept was the most successful of the options and an idea worth pursuing. The script was refined over several months, focusing mostly on story and dialogue. In late 2004, Freya and Ben were finally shown a 60-page draft that Ben and Luke then decided to rework together. So what did this process involve? The writing process on Blackspot was actually a lot like this interview! More often than not, Luke will usually be first off the mark with a stream of consciousness that will hit all the marks. We both have an innate storytelling ability. Luke’s seems to be well angled towards that of a pitch. His ideas are conveyed quickly with succinct story beats, and they are never cluttered with the details that insecure writers so often pepper into works with a thin premise. Ben, on the other hand, has been a confessed fan of screenwriting for a long time. A follower of such gurus as Joseph Campbell, Robert McKee and Syd Field, Ben had been privately studying the intricacies of story structure for years. He had already made several (admittedly fairly dismal) efforts at feature-length scripts before Luke approached him with the first draft of Blackspot. These roles are very flexible and are often reversed – not so much out of necessity, but from the expressive nature of the work. It is after all, a creative medium. We find the collaboration to be a very successful combination of unbridled inspiration and sound structure. Though extremely rewarding, it would be a lie to say the collaboration was not without the odd spot of friction. Luke’s organic storytelling would sometimes conflict with writing structure Ben saw as essential. We must emphasise that neither of us were entirely inflexible, though, just stubbornly passionate! When an impasse did occur, the working relationship quickly found a way to turn a stalemate into an opportunity. The sometimes drastic manoeuvres we made while trying to find a compromise often led us down innovative new paths. © Copyright Onfilm magazine March 2009 All material appearing is copyright and cannot be reproduced without prior permission of the publisher. Please contact the copyright officer: Ph 0-9-845 5114, Email copyright@mediaweb.co.nz.	Username Password Keep me logged in on this computer Forgotten your password? 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Interview : Bright sparks make Blackspot

In the first part of a two-part interview about Blackspot, their independent feature film, Luke Hawker and Ben Hawker respond to emailed questions about their careers to date and how they parlayed their childhood passion for DIY moviemaking into film careers in Australia and New Zealand.

What first interested you in the screen production industry?
I think we can honestly say that “interest” never came close to describing what we felt about film. Growing up within the sheltered shores of early 1980s’ New Zealand, movies consumed us. This was, after all, the heyday of blockbuster cinema; going to see a film was no longer simply escapism, it was a ticket to another universe. Our parents sensed momentum in the medium and, though times were tough, we were never in any danger of missing milestones the likes of The Goonies, ET or Back to the Future.
Raiders of the Lost Ark, Ghostbusters, the Star Wars and Alien films, these pictures came so thick and fast that one ended up taking the superb story craft and soaring production values for granted. For an introduction to the profession we would end up following into adulthood, this was one hell of an education for brothers growing up in rural Wairarapa. It’s ironic that our passion for filmmaking was fostered amongst the same lonely roads we would end up shooting our first feature on.
We emulated what we had seen and loved. Role-playing our favourite Ghostbuster or Jedi engendered the creation of armaments, costumes and, most profoundly, creatures.
A healthy (if not slightly morbid)
fascination grew with the disgusting and malevolent creations that poured from the various American creature shops of the day. Play acting and dressing up evolved quickly into genuine attempts at film product manufacture. Tool boxes and home stationery supplies were looted. Bedrooms and garages became latex-drenched workshops. Magazines the likes of CINEFEX made their way into the bedside stacks. Our ever suffering parents seldom enjoyed an afternoon or weekend that was not tinged with the smell of ammonia or spray paint. It was a natural progression for us to commit our our newly made heroes and beasts to film. Be it Kodak Super 8 or video 8, we shot the hell out of each other.
Our efforts, however crude, were extremely gratifying. Shooting and cutting these little films had opened up yet another world of creation for us. Forced to look back at ourselves through a lens, there was a sudden realisation that we had an eye for humour, improvisation, for cinematic emulation. With practice, maybe we could really make something of this – we never stopped.
Looking back, there was a reason our home movies always leaned towards homage. We were reaching for the real thing even as kids.

So at what stage did you realise your all-consuming hobby could actually be what you’d do when you grew up, and how did you go about parlaying that realisation into reality?
We were either very lucky or simply oblivious to alternatives. Our family is one of those freakish rarities where, at first glance, there doesn’t appear to be any original personalities; just a conglomerate of film caricatures communicating with movie quotes! For us there was never any other option. We lived for storytelling, be it through performance or cinematic narrative. We grew, and our desire for film and theatre grew alongside us. We stuck with it because it was all we knew, all that inspired us.
It therefore was a natural progression from after-school pastime to theatre school full time. Living in Australia for a decade, we Hawker brothers did time at NIDA in Sydney. Luke, having the lifelong acting itch, completed an intensive young actors course, and Ben, a two-year diploma in production. It was during this time we found the most tenacious of low-budget film producers in Freya Blackwood. A native Australian, Freya had studied production at AFTRS, also in Sydney. These studies and the several years of freelance work in Australia that followed were instrumental in cementing our desire to be filmmakers.
As New Zealand has seen in recent years, the Australian film industry had a period of growth through the mid to late ’90s. We were able to leap headlong into training (and employment) for an industry we were already vehemently passionate about, straight out of high school. Though still a few years away from a film of our own, we collectively racked up some great production credits in Australia – Holy Smoke, Babe 2, Chopper, Dark City, Farscape, and The Matrix – and all before any of us had turned 22.
Although we didn’t realise it at the time, coming back to New Zealand at the behest of Weta Workshop was really the first big step in realising our personal goal as filmmakers. We owe Peter [Jackson], Richard [Taylor] and Tania [Rodger] a great debt of gratitude for this invitation and for instigating the thriving network that now resides in the Miramar Peninsula.
We quickly realised New Zealand’s newly revived film industry was a little different from the one we had left behind in Australia. It was more close knit and there was a sense of mutual exchange, even between the tiers of low-budget and multimillion-dollar production. In short, it was a paradise for facilitation. As many of the visiting filmmakers from Europe and the States will tell you, enthusiasm, creativity and resourcefulness are abundant here – as corny as it may sound, in New Zealand turning a dream into reality is only a matter of time.
The spools of our own cinema machine began to turn.

What kind of roles were you undertaking on the various shows you worked on in Oz, and what has your work at Weta Workshop involved up to this point?
The work we cut our teeth on in Australia was extremely varied. Like most Australasian effects technicians and production staff, multiskilling is essential – if the goal is to maintain steady employment in a tumultuous business, one can’t afford to over-specialise.
Being a little younger, Luke continued his performing arts training right up until the move back to Wellington in 1999. Interestingly enough, it was Luke’s affinity for performance that has led to him into dual roles on recent projects like Avatar. Luke would perform his role as an AD one day, and the next day he would just perform!
Freya juggled production of her own 16mm short films while working as a production assistant on several of the aforementioned projects. She started her AFTRS production course shortly after finishing art deptartment. work on The Matrix – where Freya and Ben first met.
Ben’s roles were a continuation of the garage work he had roped Luke into throughout childhood. Though prosthetic make-up began to emerge as the leading art for all three of us, speciality props/costumes seemed to be a reoccurring theme in the Australian jobs. Many included some of the trickier, more unusual visual effects requirements that production had need of. For example, George Miller requested an indestructible, inflatable clown suit, Jane Campion needed an artificial urination rig for a nude performer (where do you hide it?) and finally the Wachowski Brothers required bio-electric ports embedded in flesh if you please.
There were more than a few perks to be gained working in this capacity. We were on full-scale, multimillion-dollar film sets, working directly with cast members and their directors. We were extremely lucky – intangible details such as set etiquette became second nature very early on in our careers, and we were being provided a first-hand education in the most expensive and strenuous part of film production; the shoot itself. Not only did these experiences allow us to segue directly to Weta Workshop in 1999, they prepared us for Blackspot six years later.
Though bursting at the seams with capability, in ’99 the huge Weta Workshop had an immense challenge ahead of itself. We arrived to find ourselves immersed in a highly experienced team of people, many of whom had already spent several years developing Lord Of The Rings. It’s no great secret that making LOTR was one of the tallest orders in film history – we have never worked harder in our lives.
Luke and Freya both started as foam latex technicians. Freya moved on to paint and apply literally hundreds of hobbit feet and creature prosthetics. After LOTR she briefly took the role of project manager for a Weta collectable range before finally leaving Weta to pursue a career in children’s book illustration. Working from home, Freya was able to facilitate the production of Blackspot whilst still meeting publishing deadlines (her books now have worldwide distribution and have since gone on to win several awards).
Luke moved from foam latex to prosthetic mold making. He worked with Ben developing a Weta silicon prosthetics system, and both joined various teams of people, completing countless other technical creature work for LOTR. Luke was eventually made mold room supervisor. He applied prosthetic make-up on Return Of The King and was promoted to prosthetic make-up coordinator for work on King Kong. Apart from the odd stint of stunt work, Luke now freelances in production as an actor and AD.
Over the 10 years Ben has spent at Weta, he has designed, sculpted, molded and applied prosthetic makeup, worked as a creature designer, sculptor and sculpting department supervisor. Alongside Luke he has performed motion capture and creature suit work, puppet making and puppeteering. Ben has also worked as a 3D modeller and script developer for Weta’s Jane and the Dragon television series. Although Ben no longer works in a technical capacity at Weta Workshop, he is currently writing a Weta-commissioned screenplay in cooperation with a major American film studio.

So what was the inspiration for Blackspot, and how did you develop this into a screenplay?
The inspiration for Blackspot started with several ideas, but essentially the story was conceived while on a late-night road trip. Luke and friend Theo Baynton philosophised long into the night about the foreboding New Zealand landscape and what prolonged isolation might drive a person to – even on a well-travelled-road. It led Luke to recount another memory, of another late-night drive years earlier. While his girlfriend slept, Luke drove through the unlit void of rural New Zealand. After two hours, the car had not passed any intersecting roads nor encountered any other vehicles. Eventually the glow of a small town did appear, but not before Luke was struck with how easily fear and paranoia had crept into his mind: “For all I know I could be driving off the end of the world...”
These ideas and feelings were channelled into the premise, if you were to suddenly to find yourself stuck in a horrific scenario you couldn’t control, how far would you go to change your circumstances?
With this concept in place, writing could begin. The first draft introduced a myriad of questions: At what point do relationships become expendable? Who or what would you sacrifice to preserve your own sanity or survival? Given a second chance, would you choose the same outcome knowing it would hurt those close to you?
Initially Luke and Theo explored the idea together, writing into the late evening after working a full day at Weta. Luke then ran with the resulting outline, spending three months fleshing out the story and exploring different avenues before finally showing the resulting draft to long-time TV and film producer Paul Hawker (yes, father of the Hawker brothers). Attempting a first-time screenplay can obviously be very intimidating and doubts had emerged over the initial premise. After discussing a variety of options with Paul, Luke was reassured that the original concept was the most successful of the options and an idea worth pursuing. The script was refined over several months, focusing mostly on story and dialogue. In late 2004, Freya and Ben were finally shown a 60-page draft that Ben and Luke then decided to rework together.

So what did this process involve?
The writing process on Blackspot was actually a lot like this interview! More often than not, Luke will usually be first off the mark with a stream of consciousness that will hit all the marks. We both have an innate storytelling ability. Luke’s seems to be well angled towards that of a pitch. His ideas are conveyed quickly with succinct story beats, and they are never cluttered with the details that insecure writers so often pepper into works with a thin premise.
Ben, on the other hand, has been a confessed fan of screenwriting for a long time. A follower of such gurus as Joseph Campbell, Robert McKee and Syd Field, Ben had been privately studying the intricacies of story structure for years. He had already made several (admittedly fairly dismal) efforts at feature-length scripts before Luke approached him with the first draft of Blackspot. These roles are very flexible and are often reversed – not so much out of necessity, but from the expressive nature of the work. It is after all, a creative medium.
We find the collaboration to be a very successful combination of unbridled inspiration and sound structure.
Though extremely rewarding, it would be a lie to say the collaboration was not without the odd spot of friction. Luke’s organic storytelling would sometimes conflict with writing structure Ben saw as essential. We must emphasise that neither of us were entirely inflexible, though, just stubbornly passionate! When an impasse did occur, the working relationship quickly found a way to turn a stalemate into an opportunity. The sometimes drastic manoeuvres we made while trying to find a compromise often led us down innovative new paths.

© Copyright Onfilm magazine March 2009

All material appearing is copyright and cannot be reproduced without prior permission of the publisher.

Please contact the copyright officer: Ph 0-9-845 5114, Email copyright@mediaweb.co.nz.

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Interview : Bright sparks make Blackspot

In the first part of a two-part interview about Blackspot, their independent feature film, Luke Hawker and Ben Hawker respond to emailed questions about their careers to date and how they parlayed their childhood passion for DIY moviemaking into film careers in Australia and New Zealand.