Kiwi company telling China's stories

In a world first for a Western production company, Natural History New Zealand (NHNZ) is making documentaries for China’s domestic television market.

Managing director Michael Stedman said NHNZ’s foray into the Chinese domestic market is part of a strategy that has seen the company become the largest foreign producer of documentaries about China (48 to date) for the international market.

It is also filming stories targeted at the Asian market. NHNZ’s television production in China accounts for between five and 10 per cent of its annual output.

Stedman said making Chinese domestic programmes was the result of closely working with China Central Television (CCTV), one of the largest broadcasting companies in the world. “For example, we’re helping them make a series of documentaries about Chinese architecture that won’t appeal to the international market, but it will appeal to the China market.”

NHNZ began working in China more than 15 years ago, and the country was a rich source of material. “When the last space shuttle came back, everyone said it was the end of an era and there were only the Russians [left], but China has a very aggressive and sophisticated space programme and we’ve just finished a documentary on that.”

NHNZ has a New Zealand staff member permanently based in its Beijing office, but Stedman said it was vital to employ local staff because they knew China in a way Westerners never would.

“The Chinese nationals that work for us manage and run the operation and [senior producer] Kyle Murdoch from our company is about content and editorial.”

NHNZ’s success was the result of putting enormous effort into learning about Chinese culture, the structure of organisations and the hierarchy of those organisations – something Stedman said many New Zealand companies failed to do. “Too many of them are in too much of a hurry. They want to go to China with an order book, fill it up and come home. Well it doesn’t work that way.

”I’ve met New Zealand companies that have been badly burned, that jumped in there and will never go back. It was lack of homework – expecting the world to march to the same drum as New Zealand or the West.

“But doing business there is very different and it’s at your peril if you don’t put effort into understanding it.”

Everything in Asia was built around relationships, which took time to build up. “They will often only do business with people they know, like and trust, and you can’t develop that on your first visit. It may take three, four, five visits before you really start to be taken seriously.

“New Zealanders have to be prepared to step outside their comfort zone, to learn and ask questions. Stay away from lots of expats and just jump in the deep end. If you show an interest in China, the Chinese will respond.”

It helped if Kiwis doing business in China understood the country’s long ties with New Zealand, which go back to the gold rush days and the work of Rewi Alley. “[The Chinese] really do care about those sorts of relationships and they’re very important to them culturally. Small things like the fact that the gold dredges in Central Otago were invented by the Chinese and the first shipment of butter overseas was by the Chinese.”

New Zealand’s support for China’s entry into the World Trade Organisation and our free trade agreement with China are also significant.”The fact [the FTA] exists means New Zealand has a very special status in the minds of the Chinese, so in that sense it has value to us.”

NHNZ’s ability to forge alliances with Chinese broadcasters had proven invaluable. It regularly entered into co-production agreements with the likes of CCTV, which gets the rights to screen the programmes in China and also provided 40 to 70 per cent of funding.

“It’s a symbiotic relationship. We want to make great films and they  want great stories about China seen around the world. . . They want to invest serious amounts of money into the budgets and that’s very important from our point of view because you cannot make documentaries out of thin air.”

Co-production also means NHNZ gained access to areas not normally open to foreign film crews, such as the Terracotta Warriors restoration laboratory and the earthquake-devastated Sichuan province. “We’re working on a documentary about the Forbidden City for 2013, and we’d never get in there as a Western film crew.”

Stedman highly recommends people read The Chinese Have a Word for It: The Complete Guide to Chinese Thought and Culture by Boyé Lafayette De Menthe.

By Amanda Cropp

Image: A Natural History New Zealand crew filming on the Great Wall for a series calledChina Revealed, the company’s first 3-D production.