By RANOBA BAOA
One of the common setbacks highlighted by film production crews who come here for shooting films is lack of availability of equipment locally.
This issue was also highlighted by the producer of ‘Bula Quo’, Tim Major.
‘Bula Quo’ was shot in Fiji last year. Its world premiere was held at Village 6 Cinemas in Suva on Monday night.
Now South Pacific Recordings Limited has started investing in equipment needed for shooting films here.
The company last year bought a Jimmy Jib camera crane set and only last week received other lighting equipment as well.
General manager Krupesh Patel said: “We have bought the equipment needed for film production to come and shoot here.
“Initially we bought the Jimmy Jib in July last year and our last shipment of lights came in a week ago out of Germany.”
The equipment brand is Arri, known to be the best motion picture film equipment in the world.
In total, the investment was $1.2 million and is already being used in the Bollywood film Santa Banta.
“Now they (international film producers) don’t have to worry about bringing in those equipment,” Mr Patel said.
“I think the only thing they would need to bring are cameras and I think RED cameras are also available in Fiji as well.”
First-hand experience
Mr Major said: “Film in Fiji is an emerging industry and so there are some logistical problems when you’re making a film here.
“As an example of that, there were no cameras and other essential equipment here and the cameras are expensive to hire anyway and then ship them halfway around the world is an absolutely even higher expense.
“So if we could have had those resources on the island, we could have saved costs and it’s the same with lights, mainly technical things.”
Film reaction
Close to 100 people from the television and media industry as well as invited guests came to watch the film that had incorporated a lot more Fijians than any other internationally-made film in Fiji.
Film Fiji acting chief executive, Florence Swamy, after watching ‘Bula Quo’ said: “I think we’ve just proven that we can make a world-class film here.
“We now have a pool of people who can do various roles in the production and as we go on, there would be a bigger pool of people for producers to employ.”