(This report is based on hand-written notes made at the time.)

The feature film I'm trying to make will cost about $200,000, so if anyone has their cheque book on them, I'll sit down and say no more...

The job of trying to raise the money for a feature film in this country is monumental. I received a letter two weeks ago from a man in Hong Kong callled Mr Ye, who had seen one or two films I'd made on television there and said if I'd like to go to Hong Kong he'd pay all expenses, provide a house and car, and I could stay there three months or more if I'd like making television commercials and features in Hong Kong.

So you sometimes wonder why we carry on the battle in New Zealand - particularly the area of feature film making seems to be barren. But as a New Zealander I want to stay here and I want to live here, and like other New Zealand film-makers you don't give up.

My personal feeling about feature film making is that its not an art, its not a luxury, its an industry and whether there's one film made a year, or two films made a year, its an industry. Its an industry in the sense that these films have to be commercial. You can't ask people to put money into a film which you don't expect to get your money back.

It's not like going to the Arts Council and asking for a grant or patronage which is an important sphere of film making too because that's the way people can experiment, that's the way you find new directors.

The fount, the development organisation as I would like to see it, would be separated from the Arts Council. As we all talk about film as art the important area for establishing finance for a film has got to be from the private sector, in other words, people willing to put up finance for a feature film.

Thats why the sort of people to operate such an organisation need to have experience in the cinema: they need to lean on banks, they need to lean on distributors, they need to have to wheel and deal and need to travel to film festivals around the world. They need to be salesmen and I'm sure there are a few people in New Zealand at this time who could do this job.

The idea of a Film Financing Corporation is not to just to have a lump sum of money, which would be available on application to make a film. There are many roles they would have to have. They might put up so much money to develop a script, and of course this is the hardest area. You can't go to make a feature film until you've got a script because people want to see a screenplay. To get a screenplay you need good writers to write it - and to get a good writer you've got to pay them. These are the sort of areas that need to be covered.

A producer on Lost in the Garden of the World is willing to make co-productions with us in New Zealand. But we need one first. Once you've done one,  you're away...

Tony Williams

1976