Silverscreen’s final scene
By Gena Tuffery,
Idealog May/June 2007, page 34
For 33 years, the glow of Silverscreen was golden. Their Toyota ads welcomed us to their world and the L&P Stubbies spots showed us that world was classic Kiwi, butt cracks and all. But in January our most successful production house closed its doors. What happened?
The big time
Even people who have never heard of Silverscreen know the company’s work—it was paraded before us every night while we gnawed on our lamb chops. The commercials were often big-budget, frequently cinematic and always showed off high-end production values, but most of us just recognised them as Those Ads That Don’t Suck.
There was a good reason: as New Zealand’s first dedicated ad production house, Silverscreen set the bar way up in the Long White Cloud. Geoff Dixon, the wizard behind the screen, opened shop in Wellington in 1974 after he returned from a directing stint in Oz to find there was no freelance film industry here. “We picked kids up off the street and showed them how to push a dolly,” he remembers. “We had a really good niche to ourselves, made up of good directors, good staff and good friends. It was a little power pack.”
That power kept Silverscreen’s eight-room Marjoribanks Street headquarters buzzing for over two decades. Thirty seconds down the road, ad agency Colenso fed them a regular diet of good scripts, while three minutes away global top shop Saatchi & Saatchi provided them with all the creative desserts they could chomp through.
“It wasn’t a corporate thing,” Dixon recalls of the early Wellington industry. “We were all just mates. We’d turn up every day and figure out how much it would cost to make something and we’d all go off and do it. Simple.”
Simple formula, simple results—pretty much any epic ad you can think of from the last 30 years is now wound around a dusty Silverscreen showreel. From Scotty, Crumpy and their Toyota Hilux, to Singapore Girl and her beatific smile, Silverscreen Productions specialised in realising characters that the public would remember.
The company also had a knack of creating epic directors—Christine Jeffs (Sylvia and Rain) Lee Tamahori (Once Were Warriors) and Matt Murphy (the Catherine Zeta Jones Visa ad) all cut their reels there. “It was the place you went to get the big jobs done,” remembers Exposure director Kevin Denholm, who himself made the big Telecom ‘Fast Eddie’ campaign when he worked out of Silverscreen.
“Big-budget, beautiful pictures became unfashionable and everyone just grabbed a handycam. It was throwing away the things we’d learnt—it’s like studying for something all your life, then saying your exams don’t matter anymore.”
And after the big jobs came the big fun. Dixon’s right-hand woman for 30 years, producer Roimata Macgregor, says while “we all worked like buggery”, she also remembers times that were positively laid-back. One of her boss’s few demands, she recalls, was that his employees lie upside down on the staircase while he poured tequila down their throats whenever the occasion arose. And occasions were inclined to arise—Christmas, birthdays, the end of a shoot, a bit of a schmooze, or just because the decade you were living in started with an eight and ended with a zero. “It was carte blanche for bad behaviour in those days,” says Macgregor. “It was outrageous—and for obvious reasons it’s all a blur.”
By all accounts the busy years passed in a flurry. By the time the company’s second Production Company of the Year plaque was added to an award-cluttered Silverscreen wall in 2005, business was big in every way. The small Wellington base had been superseded by $5.5 million premises in Auckland City, housing 13 full-time staff, numerous contractors and an interior atrium complete with Japanese gardens. A winding passageway through the commercial mansion led to the back entrance of Oktobor, Silverscreen’s multimillion-dollar post-production arm where rolls of film metamorphosed into glossy TVCs. There was also Silverscreen Films, not so much an arm of the company as a wooden leg—it made the troubled River Queen feature film.
Although none of these things were evident elsewhere in an industry where production houses traditionally rent warehouses and farm out their rolls of 35-millimetre for processing, these big overheads were initially no problem for the country’s biggest production company. Silvercreen was, after all, the operation responsible for setting a New Zealand advertising spend record in 1999 when it charged Air New Zealand an industry-estimated $1.5 million for a two-minute brand extravaganza set to a Dame Kiri soundalike warbling ‘Pokarekare Ana’.
But by 2004 these top-end jobs were harder to come by, and when Silverscreen did sniff them out they discovered not everyone considered them top dog anymore. Macgregor recalls: “It felt unsustainable. It had become so big it was hard to see the big picture anymore. It started to feel scary.”
I didn’t sense this fear when I went to Silverscreen/Oktobor’s last Christmas party that year—but in comparison with the excesses of previous Silverscreen bashes, times did seem a little tough. The theme was ‘white trash’, a great excuse to serve the mulleted and mini-skirted cans of Lion Red and bottles of pink Chardon. But the cheap piss didn’t stop the white trash getting trashed—we were partying at Silverscreen, all was right with the world. And besides, most other production houses had abandoned their traditional Christmas drink-up altogether. The belt-tightening had begun.
The small times
Silverscreen was the classic tall poppy and when it finally fell in January this year, after three years of swaying, the reaction was quick and loud. Owner Geoff Dixon blamed the shrinking market, while many in the shrinking market blamed Dixon and his refusal to shrink along with them. But what caused production budgets to shrivel in the first place? Early in the millennium the larger economy wasn’t in a major slump, but suddenly agencies and directors were—and none more so than at Silverscreen where big-budget jobs were needed to pay the mammoth power bill. And the in-house chef.
While Macgregor concedes that Silverscreen’s problems lay on many levels—including the high overheads and a “too little, too late” attitude to changing them—she believes one event in particular spurred the ad margin downturn: the multiple award success of a very low-budget ad campaign for Casio G-shock watches (“When you’re this tough, everyone wants to have a go at you”). Colenso BBDO’s campaign had cleaned up in the 2000 awards season—not the first low-budget ads to do so globally, but the first cheaply-made series of Kiwi commercials to take such a haul of metal.
“The economy wasn’t in a major slump, but suddenly agencies and directors were—and none more so than Silverscreen, where big-budget jobs were needed to pay the mammoth power bill. And the in-house chef.”
“I remember it because it was the first time I was shown a script that had a very, very small budget, presented as this award-winning idea,” Macgregor recalls. “The agency really wanted this particular [Silverscreen] director to direct it, but he wasn’t available. Someone else did it and that became a kind of a benchmark in advertising here, which was very cheap and cheerful. Don’t get me wrong—after G-shock there were still some really good brand campaigns, but it seemed that was the turning point. It was the beginning of that kind of low-end trend, after that the thinking almost became ‘We’ve got to cut our budgets so we can win more awards.’”
Ex-agency producer Phil Liefting, now at Film Construction, believes “the freebie problem” has always existed, but agrees it’s been exacerbated in recent years. “There have always been a lot of cheap ads done,” he says. “But the problem with G-shock was it was a freebie that cleaned up at awards shows. That put a focus on it. Creatives started writing simple scripts just to win awards. Then some suits started thinking ‘If we can do it for some clients why not for all?’ Now it’s got to the stage where there are cheap jobs going through that really should have a lot more money behind them. You know:
‘We need a free job.’ Who for? ‘Coke.’”
Something(s) for nothing
While not blaming any one ad for budget declines, Dixon recognises the trend toward low production values and its implications for the industry and, ultimately, for his company. “There was a shift when things started to go a little quirky,” he says. “Big-budget, beautiful pictures became unfashionable and everyone just grabbed a handycam. A lot of people didn’t like that, including us, because it was throwing away a lot of the things that we’d learnt—it’s like studying for something all your life, then saying your exams don’t matter anymore.
“There was nothing malicious about it, but this whole culture of freebies came about. Agencies would say ‘If you do this [job] we’ll get you the next one,’ but there’s no loyalty in advertising. Favours have gone from agencies to production companies to crews to equipment. It’s devalued the whole industry.”
Y&R agency producer Zoe Yendell agrees there’s been a cheapening of ‘the product’—even when that product is a brand ad for a multimillion-dollar, multinational company. She believes it’s this low-value perception that has grown around TVCs that is to blame for clients’ lowered budgets, as opposed to the clients themselves.
“When you go to a shop where you know you can barter, you will,” Yendell says. “Whereas you have much more respect for the person who says ‘that’s my price’ and sticks to it. We need to get that back again. I’d like to see more people saying ‘no’ and the industry becoming more regimented—maybe with rate cards.”
But getting agencies and production houses to stop undercutting each other is easier said than spun—as Dixon says, there’s no loyalty in advertising. By all accounts no matter how small the budgets became in recent years, there would always be a new director fresh off the country’s overstocked film shelf hungry to build up a good showreel. But the freebie requests keep coming and eventually that hunger becomes literal: “There always comes a point when those directors have to put food on the table,” says Exposure’s Denholm.
New directions
Denholm was part of one of the few things that shrunk at Silverscreen: the staff phone list, most notably the names found under ‘flagship directors’. “They hurt when Adam Stevens (L&P director), Chris Dudman (Steinlager) and Kevin Denholm (T3G) left about a-year-and-a-half ago,” says Liefting. “It was a case of losing too many people at the top in too short a timeframe.”
Dixon does not dispute this, even stating at a creditors’ meeting in February that losing “key directors” was one of the reasons behind the company’s declining turnover. But he’s not bitter about the ones that got away: “Over the years we’ve had a lot of very good directors that have deserved their independence,” he says. “When we lost directors it was because they went on to start their own companies. I feel proud of that. I have great respect for them all—they’re all doing great work.”
No compromises will be entered into
It seems great work is hard to come by these days. There’s one thing that everyone Idealog talked to agrees on: “You get what you pay for,” they chorus. And what is that? “Just look at the six o’clock news ad breaks!” they cry. Indeed. The traditional premiere slot for big brand ads is now filled with brash retail spots—the kind of ads that Silverscreen avoided at all costs. Literally.
Iconic Footrot Flats and Kiwiana ad producer, Pat Cox, sees this as Silverscreen’s ultimate downfall. “I think the main thing that caused problems for Silverscreen was that Geoff was trying to maintain quality standards and professionalism far longer than people were prepared to pay for them,” he says. “Unfortunately his optimism led him to believe that as long he kept [standards] up, things would get better—they would go back to being of a better quality. I guess there was a kind of head-in-the-sand problem there, but it’s admirable.”
Macgregor agrees this “positive attitude taken to the extreme” helped lead Dixon into troubled waters. “I disagreed with a lot of his decisions, but there was never any malicious intent in anything he did,” she says. “[Silverscreen] collapsed because of the market, the high overheads and losing sight of the core business—all coupled with Geoff’s unbridled enthusiasm. I know he took it really personally when we closed. He felt responsible to the creditors.”
“Silvercreen was the operation responsible for setting a New Zealand advertising spend record in 1999. “It felt unsustainable. It had become so big it was hard to see the big picture anymore. It started to feel scary.””
He must have. Almost three months after going into liquidation, Dixon pulled a Suzanne Paul—not by appearing in the infomercials he undoubtedly despises, but by voluntarily paying back creditors with the proceeds of selling Oktobor to Omnilab.
“Yes, I’ve sold Oktobor,” Dixon told Idealog in an apartment atop the empty Silverscreen Productions building six days after the March 20 sale. “Yes, we have spoken to Meltzer Mason Heath [the liquidator]. Yes, we have agreed on an amount we believe will be a 100 percent payout to creditors. It’s taken three months to sort this out, which isn’t too long in the bigger picture I guess, but it’s been hard. I’ve been going flat out to find solutions to quickly address what has had to be addressed … the last thing up my sleeve was always Oktobor. I’m so glad the new owners are going to keep it all together.
“If I can feel as though I’ve cleaned up a problem that’s happened, I’ll feel happy with that. It’s a huge relief.”
Many others also let out a big sigh when the news broke—none more so than the creditors, some of whom claimed to have been waiting since June 2006 to be paid. Suddenly where Idealog had heard “it’s sad”, “it’s so sad”, “it’s so fucking sad”, we now heard “I’m glad”, “I’m so glad”, “I’m really fuc …” Well, you get the picture.
It appears that with debts squared, the film and ad industries now feel able to reflect guilt-free on the Silverscreen legacy. “Geoff has been instrumental in starting a huge number of people’s careers who had the talent but needed a break,” says Silverscreen’s former office manager, Lisa Macris, echoing common sentiment. “And from those careers has come the New Zealand film industry as we know it. People have gone on to make feature films and the crew who worked on those features often learnt their skills by being involved with Silverscreen.”
It may be the end of the silver era, but the Silverscreen story is still a successful script. And if current-day hot shops like The Sweet Shop or Curious Films close in 30 years, they’ll be success stories too. Because 33 years thriving in any industry is a good innings, but 30 years in the ad-making game is Ireland beating Pakistan—who would’ve thought? Prob’ly never happen again.
Comments
Gerald
So much mush in this story, they have always been pricks to work for as 80% of those who have had anything to do with them over the last decade.
elvis
This is a puff piece if ever I saw one. This was an arrogent organisation based on ego and a need for cash to service an overblown overhead.
carl
I dont know, you have to admire ambition, that's classic tall poppy syndrome, had the company been able to sustain itself during what has unquestionably been a time of major change in the industry then we'd all be gushing. Media has changed, budgets have changed.
dave t
Yeah well it was geff's responsibility to his staff to change too. Basically the business model never worked in our market.
Gerald
Yep they had the biggest ego's ever and it isn't tall poppy bashing it is widly known.
Maybe if they hadn't spent so much on whisky for one particular producer and if they had spent a little less on the lavish fittings with $9,000 upwards rugs on the floor they might have survived a tough time. Geoff won't be worried though he still has plenty I bet.
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