Art Beat with Rosalie Crawford

I've heard how four to five hours of makeup time for one actor can result in just a few seconds of screen time in a movie.

In early October I saw that first hand while helping make a promo film with the Bay of Plenty Film community for the inaugural International Youth Silent Film Festival NZ finals, which was held at Baycourt on Saturday, October 22.

We had a cast and crew of about 57, as well as four makeup artists from Face & Beauty. Directed by Anton Steel, Jannine Bishop and her crew created a 1920's themed movie set on the stage of Baycourt and Tanya Horo took care of casting from her talented people at BOP Actors.

We started the day at 6am, with Sandi Cutts turning Zoe Kirtley into a tiger woman in time for filming at 11am. I was impressed with how the group of actors, aged 5–19, knew there would be a great deal of waiting time during the day before their scenes were called. Costuming, makeup, waiting for those few moments to act, and then not knowing if it would be ‘left on the cutting room floor'.

My own family's ventriloquist doll, Charlie Brown, who we've often talked about as 'our little brother” ended up with his own cameo role, as the film created characters based around a circus type theme with a snake charmer, bearded lady, stilt walker, Charlie Chaplin, strong man and others. That moment when a family member makes it to the big screen is certainly an exciting one, even if he is a puppet!

A camera was strapped to Chris Kirkham, and Chris was strapped to a crane and lifted up into the air above Baycourt seating, to be flown down around the rotating Wurlitzer organ onto the stage.

There have been so many talented people from the film industry coming out of the woodwork and living in the Bay of Plenty with skills like Jimi Colzato's post effects ability and Tessa Blackett's editing.

The International Youth Silent Film Festival NZ finals were held on Sunday night with the ten finalist films screened with live accompaniment by organist Nathan Avakian, the film composer, on the Mighty Wurlitzer. The ‘one shot wonder” promo made by the Bay of Plenty Film community was screened and is now viewable on Vimeo at: vimeo.com/188909923