Film-maker goes to the dogs

BEHIND THE LENS: Sally Rowe films a dog training day at Otairi Station, near Hunterville. PHOTOS/JEREMY HOCQUARD

A feature-length documentary about Paul Sorensen's work with sheepdogs could be Sally Rowe's next big success in the film industry.

Or it could not. Making films is a chancy business and Ms Rowe has yet to evaluate the footage taken in the Rangitikei, and work with her editor to see which way the story goes.

"It's a huge risk - it mightn't see the light of day. All I know what has worked for me once before is just to go with what I thought was a good story and interesting character, and try and tell it well."

She has been making films for 20 years, most recently in New York, and said it was good to get away for a few days back on the family farm.

"It's crazy, it's an artist's life ... it chooses you. Sometimes I wish I could do something else with regular hours and regular pay."

Ms Rowe was brought up on a 1200ha hill country farm near Hunterville, and was back there last week to film dog triallist Paul Sorensen at the dog training day at Otairi Station and doing some mustering the next day.

There is no provisional title for the feature-length documentary she is working on. But if it is successful it could rival her first documentary, A Matter of Taste. It was screened on HBO in the United States and in the New Zealand Film Festival.

It is about twists and turns in the career of New York chef Paul Liebrandt and was made before the current food craze started.

Ms Rowe is not sure whether her latest documentary will be a general picture of dogs working on New Zealand farms, or whether it will introduce audiences to that rural world through former farmer and dog triallist Paul Sorensen. She is inclined toward the latter at the moment, and said Mr Sorensen was willing to be featured.

"He is understated but he has a special way with animals, and that's what drew me to him in the first place."

Kiwi farmers like her father and uncles are an interesting bunch, she said - reserved, dry, knowledgeable, hardworking and loving the land and animals.

Her latest documentary is likely to bring her back to New Zealand often, to film shearing, docking and mustering. Her next visit may be to the annual Hunterville Huntaway Festival, and another dog training day with Mr Sorensen has been suggested for next year.

If successful, the documentary could be released internationally and bought for theatrical release.

But that is a matter of chance. The cost in time and money and success will depend on whether people like it at film festivals.

Ms Rowe now lives in New York with her husband. When she returns there it will be to work on another speculative piece. It is a pilot one-hour television drama that is based in the culinary world.

She did her secondary schooling at Nga Tawa Diocesan School in Marton and then studied hairdressing in Palmerston North and Wellington. She was always interested in film but was not sure how to get into it.

She got her chance when she crewed on a yacht sailing to Thailand and a friend in Bangkok told her about a United States company making a film there. She got a job on it as a personal assistant, and was then an apprentice editor, editing the footage in Los Angeles.

After that, she had all kinds of roles in film companies, from camerawoman to script supervisor. In 2001, when she began the Liebrandt documentary, she started her own company, Rowe Road Productions.

That first documentary took years to make and she had to work other jobs between bouts of filming. But she said it was worth taking the time to get everything right.

"Once it's out there, it's out there, so you have got to make it as good as you possibly can."