Producer and director Colin McRae has a television career spanning 40 years. In that time he has worked in news and current affairs for both TVNZ and TV3, and was the private channel’s Head of Sport to boot.

His ground-breaking historical series The New Zealand Wars won Best Documentary Series at the 2006 Qantas Media Awards.

In recent years, McRae has produced Native Affairs and Anzac Day coverage for Maori Television.

In this ScreenTalk, McRae talks about:

• The challenges of producing regional news show Top Half
• Trying to get legendary music reporter Dylan Taite to focus on Hamilton stories for the show
• How field directing on magazine show That’s Fairly Interesting was a breath of fresh air
• Producing Sunday night current affairs show Frontline
• Feeling sadness when researching a documentary on Cave Creek
• The long and complex process of making acclaimed historical series The New Zealand Wars
• Bringing pathos and drama to documentary series Legends of the All Blacks
• Feeding his documentary experience into Maori Television’s Anzac Day coverage
• How his career has evolved over the years

This video is available to YouTube to embed and distribute via this Creative Commons licence.

NZ On Screen: Camera and Editing – Andrew Whiteside