Filmmaker spreads hope of learning

Sometimes all it takes to change the course of one’s life is a single decision, or so the road that filmmaker David White chose shows.

Spending only Thursday in Hamilton to make a presentation at the School of Media Arts Spark Festival before heading home to Wellington for work, White believed that working on the documentary Shihad: Beautiful Machine, opened his eyes. Despite being more well known for his documentaries on subjects such as animal slaughter, DIY catapults, and pigs, to name a few subjects, it was pure happenstance that got him into that particular branch of film making.

“I fell into documentary making simply by being hired to make a documentary,” White said.

It was working on the Shihad film that White believes set his career path  from failed actor, due to his self-confessed inability to do accents, to director and filmmaker.

“I felt that documentary was a really great way of making films and because I really loved people and, like, so, for me it was a way into the world of filmmaking.”

Adding to this was a conscious choice to “take himself out of action” and that it was all about the making of the art.

White also believes that it is a great way to learn about people and about new topics, in a way that interests him and, by extension, other people. This principle has become a staple of his filmmaking process, for both his fiction and non-fiction projects, since working on the Shihad piece.

“I think the biggest thing for me in regards to making anything is that I have to have learned something and it has to have carried on in the learning of my life.

“At the end of each project, well, I’ve learned quite a lot about what, whether it be about writing, or directing, or producing, or whatever, and I’ve learned something and that’s actually going to enhance my life that’s what you should be going for. Don’t just try and do what the easy option would be, even though it’s scary.”