Zealandia Film
A Walk Beneath the Trees, is a poetic film that takes you on a journey through Zealandia, the world’s first fully-fenced urban eco-sanctuary with an extraordinary 500-year vision to restore a Wellington valley’s forest and freshwater ecosystems as closely as possible to their pre-human state. The 225 hectare eco-sanctuary is a groundbreaking conservation project that has reintroduced 18 species of native wildlife back into the area, 6 of which were previously absent from mainland New Zealand for over 100 years. Our focus as a group is to shed light on what Zealandia is all about, also looks further into the conservation project. To give a somewhat tour of the urban eco-sanctuary. We also want to highlight the volunteers that work there and get an insight into what Zealandia is to them and what inspirers them to give back to the environment. As a group, the three of us were interested in the conservation of our New Zealand environment as well as documenting one of Wellingtons hidden treasures. As a group we were also looking to explore through our documentary if we can give back to Zealandia and raise awareness in any way. As our film is submersed in nature we really wanted our viewer to experience what it’s like being at Zealandia by using sound to create the atmosphere as well as working musician Solomon Crook to create a sound track that teleports you into tranquil escape. We have been focused as a group with the details by using close ups and establishing shots to create the sense location but also be clever with the closeups to let the viewer see the textures and finer details in our shoots. As a group we did a lot of research of documentaries to give as a platform to go off, this shaped the way we created our style as a group, also giving us ideas on what shots we’d want to use. Films like “A walk in Nature” as well as “Denali” and “Important Places” ect. All of these films had attractive themes and as a group we really liked the films where surrounding nature and understanding the importance of it too. We were inspired by this and as a result we thought Zelandia being an urban eco-sanctuary would help us achieve these similar themes in our own unique way