After an incredible premiere at Auckland's Sky City Theatre, kiwi documentary Tenor: My Name is Pati has rolled out across Aotearoa with a series of special screenings and filmmaker Q&As with Wifitie Rebecca Tansley and her star, Pene Pati. She somehow found a minute to take a few questions from your WIFT Editor and how lucky are we!
Not only that, she has gifted us 5 double passes to give away to see her fabulous film - details on how to enter the giveaway comp after this wonderful kōrero with Rebecca!
Q&A WITH AWARD-WINNING WIFT FILMMAKER REBECCA TANSLEY ON TENOR: MY NAME IS PATI
WIFT EDITOR (ED for short): Rebecca - congratulations on releasing your incredible story into the wild - how are you feeling??
REBECCA TANSLEY (RT for short): That cliché about raising a child and watching them go out into the world is true. This is the biggest and (I think) most broadly appealing film I’ve made – it’s a feel-good ride of a story with a truck-load of music, of all kinds, thrown in for good measure. So I’m starting to sit back and enjoy the audience responses. But to answer your question specifically, I feel like a blue whale who has just given birth.
ED: You spoke so emotionally about this journey at the NZ premiere in Auckland, and we all know the sacrifices filmmakers must make - especially it seems, FEMALE filmmakers. What did it take for you to bring Tenor: My Name is Pati - to the big screen?
RT: It took three and a half years of hard work, determination and strong self-belief. The film wasn’t cheap to develop because of the travel required to build relationships with many people and organisations overseas, so I invested my own funds in the beginning. I was able to do that only because my much-loved father had passed away the year prior and left me and my siblings each a small amount. I figured, “Well I can either put this into my Kiwisaver or into this film!” But more than the money – and the NZFC supported with much-needed development funding once we reached a certain point – it represents an enormous amount of shared effort. I was both producer and director so it was pretty relentless, but I was supported by the wonderful people who gathered around the project to form its aiga, including our wonderful Co-Producer Catherine Madigan and Executive Producer Taualeo’o Stephen Stehlin. I definitely did not do this on my own and couldn’t have done it without them, and many others.
ED: Was there ever a time you doubted you could make this film happen?
RT: I tend to joke that Doubt is my unwanted best friend, you know, the one that hangs around past their use-by date, so one answer is “yes, every day”! But the real answer is – to quote Pene from the film – that on some level, “I believed I could do it.” Yes, there were many days when the going was tough. Were we going to manage to secure the myriad permissions? Was I going to be able to make this work in the edit? Would I make a film that the community from which it sprang (and to whom it really belongs) accept it? So deep down, I must have believed I could do it. And if there’s one lesson anyone can take from seeing this film, it’s that self-belief is – if not everything –it’s a lot.
ED: Where did your idea of making a film with the Pati brothers come from? And how did the story reveal itself as the project progressed?
RT: Like many people across Aotearoa I had fallen in love with Sol3 Mio back in the 2010s, had bought their albums and seen them perform live. Then I made a film of a live opera in which Amitai Pati starred, and because of my involvement with opera both professionally (I made two films for NZ Opera), and from my personal interest, I was aware of Pene and Amitai’s achievements internationally. In late 2022 when I was thinking about a new project I did some research to find out more about their story and realised it was a terrific adventure that deserved – and could sustain – a cinematic treatment. The fact that the family had so much incredible archive footage was the gold that made it really possible to tell that story completely.
ED: The prodigious musical talents and gifts of Pene and Amitai are showcased so stunningly, shot beautifully of course by Simon, and I can only imagine the pressure you felt with the sound mix! What were the biggest technical challenges of the many myriad shoots?
RT: Our film was technically challenging in several ways but possibly the most unusual was the opera recordings. Firstly, we had to be sure we could capture the audio of the live operas appropriately. Opera singers do not sing with amplification or microphones, but the opera houses all have their own in-house microphones around the stage area for recording, all differently set up. We had to work with the inhouse teams in each house to ensure the performances were recorded – not just the singing but also the orchestras. After we received the stems (I think the most was about 120 stems from Opéra de Paris) we ingested those back at Images & Sound and they did a very rough premix which was synched with pictures for our offline purposes. We had tested the workflow with Images & Sound and our opera recording mixer, Adrian Hollay, so that once we knew which opera excerpts we were going to use, Adrian mixed just those excerpts for us. Then those sections were re-imported into the re-recording mix during audio post. All the planning and relationship building with the opera houses really paid off – although when we turned up in Paris we discovered one whole act of the opera there was staged behind a gauze screen which made filming it pretty tricky!
ED: What surprised you the most about the Pati boys as you came to know them and their family, and their journey to the opera houses of the world?
RT: The surprising thing was how incredibly generous the family was, to me as a filmmaker. It’s not something I take for granted. I could see where and how the foundations for Pene and Amitai’s success had been forged, but being able to show that foundation onscreen – that’s down to the family.
ED: I gotta say - without spoilers ha ha! - the story arc and then placement of the Nessun Dorma performance was masterful filmmaking - did that all reveal itself in the edit or was it your plan all along?
RT: I got wind of that recording happening in 2023 and I figured the footage would come in handy not just for the eventual film but also for a teaser to help me finance the film, so I filmed it with a French crew before we had any official funding (thanks Dad!). I was sitting behind the monitors in another room, but as soon as Pene had finished recording Nessun Dorma we all knew we had witnessed something pretty special. Where it came in the edit then became the big question – I knew I didn’t want it at the end, but also we couldn’t put it too soon in the story. A bit of story structure 101 came in handy! As did Thomas Gleeson’s masterful editing.
ED: And the choice to show Pene's face, and at time's both of the boys - watching with the screen reflected into their faces - INCREDIBLE. how did you achieve this and where did the idea come from?
RT: I would LOVE to say I thought of this but I got the idea from the Netflix documentary series about David Beckham. My initial motivation was to get Pene and Amitai to talk about what was going through their heads at different moments in their past, to try to bring the audience into their minds so to speak, but what happened instead was that we got their unfiltered emotional response to what they were seeing and hearing – which is ten times better! We filmed it using a set-up a bit like a simple autocue. We loaded a bunch of clips I had selected onto an iPad and sat the brothers down to watch it via a mirror in front of the camera lens, with an ear pod for audio. Then in post we introduced the (correct) archive footage over the top of their faces, and played around with the look we wanted to achieve.
ED: And finally - how did it feel to show Pene and his family the final version of their film at the premiere, and to feel the full theatre of people live the film alongside them and you?
RT: We showed a cut of the film – somewhere between rough cut and fine cut – to Pene and Amitai in person, in San Francisco and France respectively, to gauge their reaction and get their feedback. Happily they were both very happy with what they saw and Pene only had one note. When we finished the offline edit we showed the eldest sister Torres, and finally when we were almost finished we held a private screening for the family in the grading suite at Images & Sound. I think for this first viewing they had a lot of emotions – after all it must be a very weird feeling to see your lives play out on screen – but that meant at the premiere they were (hopefully!) able to relax and enjoy it. And by that time other members of their community had also had an opportunity to see the film and had all responded to it extremely positively.
It was such a huge privilege to tell this story. I’m enormously proud that the Pati aiga believe the film represents their story honestly and with integrity.
ENDS
TICKET GIVEAWAY
If you'd like to win one of 5 double passes to see Tenor: My Name is Pati, correctly answer this simple question via email to office@wiftnz.org.nz
QUESTION: Name the hugely successful musical group the Pati brothers formed with Moses Mackay?
Be one of the first FIVE people to email the correct answer to office@wiftnz.org.nz and you'll win a double pass - good luck!