Michael Seresin, the New Zealander who filmed Harry Potter

By RUSSELL BAILLIE

As he sits talking about everything from the joys of a good pinot noir to the digital age's effect on his chosen profession, Michael Seresin sees the sun setting over the Marlborough Sounds.

Like anyone, he enjoys a good sunset.

Except when he's working. Then, to see a good sunset can mean an abrupt end to a bad day. A collective panic called We're losing the light.

You may think that having one stressful career partly-dependent on the elements is quite enough. Seresin has two.

First, he's a cinematographer - the guy who helps a movie's director decide how a film should look and then does it.

He's recognised as among the best in his craft after a near 40-year career and a long list of credits, a few of which were elevated from mediocrity by his eye.

His latest film is also his biggest: Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. Mexican director Alfonso Cuaron and Seresin have been widely praised for delivering the first in the series which isn't afraid of the dark.

Second, Seresin is a winemaker with an estate vineyard that bears his name just out of Blenheim on the terraces of the Wairau River.

He's not the only Kiwi with a Hollywood passport whose South Island bolthole comes with its own bottled merchandise.

Further south in Otago, both director Roger Donaldson (with whom Seresin shot ground-breaking 1977 New Zealand thriller Sleeping Dogs) and Sam Neill (who starred in it) have their own vineyards.

Only Seresin's operation is roughly 10 times bigger than both. He's been in the trade since 1992 and has since expanded into extra virgin olive oil.

"Out of ignorance and stupidity, they've done much smarter business than me," he laughs. "They've got like 20 or 30 acre blocks and I've got 400 acres [162ha]. They make 10 times more money than I do and if anybody can afford to do it on a bigger scale it's them.

"Sam came up to see Marlborough last year and spent the day with me.

"He said 'Jesus, you've got all of this. How the hell do you do it?' I said, 'F... knows. I must have been drunk when I decided to'."

There's a similar blokey levity when you ask Seresin, who left his job at NZ's nascent Pacific Films in 1963 to head to Europe and into an early career as a commercial director, about being recruited into Potter-world.

Months before, a director mate in Los Angeles called him to recommend that he see Cuaron's Y Tu Mama Tambien. The same mate told him a few months later that Cuaron had the Potter gig, which confounded him like it did the rest of the industry.

A few days later Seresin arrived at his London home to find a hand-delivered envelope from producer David Hayman asking if he'd like to see a script.

He called, the script arrived "and I phoned them up three hours later and said, 'Yeah, sure'.

"So Alfonso came to my house and we sat down with a glass of wine and talked.

"Over the next couple of weeks Alfonso and I got to know one another a bit better and he said 'Do you want to do it?' and I said 'Yeah, I've got bugger all to do so why not? Have a bit of fun, earning Warner Brothers' money'."

That bit of fun turned into a 18-month commitment - last week Seresin was in Los Angeles helping the transfer of the film to the upcoming DVD.

After a career dominated by shooting mostly serious fare for British director Allan Parker, Seresin found himself facing a digital fantasyland in his most effects-heavy production yet.

"I remember Alfonso and I saying to each other, 'How the f... are we going to do this?' But you just get the best people in the world basically."

Even they couldn't do much about the weather during the month spent on location in the Scottish highlands.

"It was incredible.

"The powers that be had worked out we would go there in May because it is the one month it never rains and there are no midges. So we arrived there and it's a sunny day and the next day it pisses with rain so we go into a little set we built. But it pissed with rain for the next 28 to 29 days.

"Though it was appropriate to the drama - bright, sunny weather would have been a nightmare.

"Maybe we went a bit darker than a normal film of this type which we thought was appropriate and it raised a lot of comments.

"But what you see in the shadows takes you a bit longer but when you do, it's often a bit more interesting than everything being bright."

Weather and shadows aside, Azkaban brought with it a few other lensing problems. Like nocturnal encounters with a werewolf on a 9000 sq m soundstage involving 500 lights replicating moonlight; steadicams and lots of running. Or like the showdown in the claustrophobic environs of the Shrieking Shack.

"If it was easy it would be boring. It's nice to have a challenge; that's what kept us going. In the end we did get fed up with just the sheer drudgery of it and ultimately it's a mechanical process and there is only so many times you can be turned on by stuff.

"Ultimately, the best thing that came out is we did a creditable job of what in essence is a franchise now and I think it has a more cinematic feel to the previous films - which is appropriate to the story."

Seresin has not signed on for his next film yet. He had to turn down Vincent Ward's River Queen because of scheduling conflicts. It would have been only the second film he's made here. But that's not something that particularly concerns him.

"In some ways I would love to do one here but in other ways I am not fussed. I don't bang the big New Zealand drum. I love being a New Zealander but to be honest with you when everyone asks, 'Where's home?' I say, 'Nowhere and everywhere'. So when I come back here I love it. Go back to London, I love it; go to Italy, I love it.

"I ended up [starting the vineyard] here and where I am sitting now looking at the Marlborough Sounds with the setting sun it's physically paradise. I have a lot of other problems with New Zealand: our short termism, our defensiveness and all the rest of it. But I love the place."

He's still in close touch with regular boss Parker, for whom he has shot nine diverse films since 1976. But he can just see the next envelopes waiting for him in London.

"Sure as s... I'll be offered a bunch of Harry Potter-type movies But I'm not looking forward to that. I'd rather pull corks out of wine."