5th September – to stutter and stumble and completely forget where the story is...

7 people gave their converting pitches to the class and 5 critiquers (Lloyd, Richard, Paul and Craig Meade) before me. I forget to take my glasses off so I can’t see the judging eyes and it’s all down hill from there. I lose the plot and find myself ranting for two minutes about how cool the pigeons are.

Even my “Illegal Tegal” story pitch slide fails to trigger the right response from my autopilot spiel. I cut my loses and move onto the long-tailed bat. The fact it’s a bat and (along with the short-tailed bats) is the only endemic terrestrial mammal we have seemed to have the foreigners sold but that didn’t stop my feedback from stating the obvious – where the hell are you going with all this? I didn’t want to embarrass myself further by giving a 3rd pitch (NOTE: everyone else was wise enough to focus their 3 minutes on one story). But I feel so passionately about it I want to share with you now.

The 3rd pitch: -disclosed for scrutiny for the first time
Seeling Wildlife - A look at the world of today’s natural history filmmakers - shattering that Attenborough Illusion.
I hope that doesn’t come across too pessimistic. We have so many incredible filmmakers right here in New Zealand. Not just the ones who go out into the field but those who sit at home and write, edit, do sound and colour balancing. The point I want to get across is that wildlife docos are moving away from what we grew up with – blue chip and Attenborough. It’s becoming fast paced, action packed and low budget. I want to share what it has been like to see this intriguing career from the inside, from eyes that were completely clueless prior to this course. Everyone who loves their job as a natural history filmmaker have reasons to love it – a reason I’m sure others would love to hear.