ScreenTalk: John Harris
03 May 2011
John Harris is the owner of one of New Zealand’s biggest production companies - Greenstone Pictures.
John Harris is the owner of one of New Zealand’s biggest production companies - Greenstone Pictures. He began his television career at TVNZ working in news and current affairs and helped launch Top Half.
Moving into the private sector he produced a number of TV shows including That’s Fairly Interesting and Heroes.
In 1994 he created Greenstone Pictures, and went on to produce a huge range of TV shows such as The Zoo; Epitaph; Motorway Patrol; and Neighbours at War. In 2010 Greenstone acquired the production company Cream Media.
In this ScreenTalk interview, Harris talks about:
- Becoming the Programme Editor on Top Half in 1980
- ‘Marrying’ John Hawkesby and Judy Bailey on the show
- How a pack of dogs ruined the set
- Producing That’s Fairly Interesting for Communicado
- How the show Heroes showed the better side of human nature
- Setting up Greenstone Pictures
- How Epitaph showed a unique side of New Zealand history
- Expanding his business by purchasing Cream
- The ‘privilege’ of telling other people’s stories on TV
This video is available on YouTube to embed and distribute via a Creative Commons licence.
NZ On Screen: Interview, Camera & Editing – Andrew Whiteside