I get a lot of questions about the Ice Blacks documentary, so in attempt to keep everybody in the loop with the project, I have decided to write about it here.
Most people are annoyed at the delay in finishing the film, so it's best to go back to the start, 5 years ago.
The Ice Blacks documentary was originally conceived to help show New Zealanders back home what it was like to be away with the national men's team at a world championship event. The fact that the tournament was held in Australia meant we would be sending a strong team and it was relatively inexpensive to go over and film.
On top of filming behind the scenes, I would also shoot match coverage and interviews for TV3 and send that footage back for the evening news. At the time this was a technical marvel as most footage sent back to TV news stations back then was still via satellite and not via internet dropbox's as I was doing.
For the two weeks I was in Australia, I shot everything I could, all day, every day. Then I would stay up much of the night importing, cutting, transcoding and uploading that vision to TV3.
Despite the great raft of support I received while following and working with the team, I was still held at arms length and not allowed into the changing rooms, on the team bus or even to talk to the players should I be deemed a distraction. This is something I completely understood, but which ultimately hurt the project.
It was only once I sat down to cut the documentary that I realised just how badly we needed those shots and that emotion on camera. HBO's 24/7 coverage of the lead up to the Winter Classic didn't help either, as it set a new gold standard for documentary coverage of hockey.
Expectations were high and there was no way I could live up to them. One man with a little camera can't do what a well resourced unfettered multi-million dollar production can do.
I naively believed I could.
I spent an enormous amount of time working with broadcasters to try and find the funding to finish the documentary, over a year, with no success. At my wits end I turned to crowd funding to see if there was enough desire out there to get the project over the line, there was and it was humbling.
Post-production is an expensive process and the money raised was to be spent entirely on the technical requirements of producing a program of this kind. I never budgeted for everything that could and would go wrong, the first edit was a disaster, the money was gone and my spirit with it.
I knew how bad this first cut was, how bland, how lacking in on-screen emotion, it simply wasn't any good. I rued not being able to be in those changing rooms in way that kept me awake at night. I wished I had never turned to the public to help get the documentary finished.
I wished I had let it go a long time ago and just taken everyone's disappointment on the chin.
I spoke with film making friends and decided to change the narrative. The documentary would no longer be about the Ice Blacks experience or performance in each game, but about our rivalry with Australia. It was a loose premise, but one which allowed me to implement a story arc for the viewer to follow.
Over the next year I researched a great deal about the history between the two countries, sought archive photo's and video (an ongoing process should you know anyone with any photo's or video of New Zealand playing Australia at any time in their history) and shot numerous pick up's and interviews with members of the squad from that tour.
It hasn't been easy. I'm doing the work of twenty people and keeping my head on straight during the process is very difficult. I'm intellectually and emotionally drained from passing between the minutiae and the overall arc of the project whilst trying to manage everything else in my life. But I endure.
I'm currently working my way through the off-line second edit of the film and my goal is to complete 3 minutes a day. I intend to continue to write about this process so you can follow it.
I'm writing this, not to wallow in my discontent, but to share an understanding of the work that's going in. I don't expect this film to win awards, in fact, I absolutely expect a hundred people to pull me aside to tell me it isn't very good or ask why I didn't film in the changing rooms. I do however want to get this film done for everyone who donated to the project, everyone who's supported me through this process and most of all, the Ice Blacks.
