How an award-winning director went from carpenter to filmmaker

View the original article by Jihee Junn at The Spinoff.

When you decide to follow your dreams, it helps to have some experts in your corner. In the first of a series talking to people who’ve retrained in a new career through Yoobee College of Creative Innovation, director Tom Webster tells Jihee Junn how tutors helped turn his cinematic vision into a reality.

Three years ago, Tom Webster decided it was now or never to pursue his childhood dream. He’d worked in the construction industry as a joiner for much of his career, but what he really wanted to do was write and direct films. He knew the potential for failure loomed large, but eventually he decided that even if he tried and failed, it was better than not trying at all.

Fast forward to 2023 and Webster’s first-ever short film, Embrace, is screening on the international festival circuit, picking up more than a dozen awards in the UK, Ireland, Japan, the US, Australia, and New Zealand. Embrace tells the story of a young MMA fighter preparing for an upcoming match while caring for her ill mother. With the film in both English and te reo Māori, Embrace is at once both uniquely local yet enduringly universal, touching on themes like grief, strength, family, and aroha that have resonated with international festival audiences.

Embrace was made as part of Webster’s final project studying at Yoobee South Seas for his Diploma in Film and TV Production. Keen to jump into the industry as soon as possible with a solid base of practical knowledge and skills behind him, Webster says the one-year intensive course was perfect for making his writing and directing dreams a reality. Set to begin working on his next short film in the coming months, Webster looks back on his time at Yoobee, sharing what he learnt, how Embrace was made, and what he’s been up to in the industry since.

Director Tom Webster. (Photo: Ralph Brown)

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

What were you doing before deciding to study filmmaking?

I was working as a joiner which is like a specialised carpenter for things like doors, windows and furniture. This was with my dad and my cousin at our family business, and I did that for about seven years before I went off to study filmmaking. But ever since I was a teenager, I’ve been acting and performing in theatre, going on to do that right through my 20s. For me, joinery was just a way to pay the bills and spend more time with my dad.

So what inspired you to make the change?

When Covid happened, everything went out of the window. I couldn’t go to work anymore which forced me to reassess things, and that was when I first started writing.

When I was a kid, all I wanted to be was a filmmaker. But then you become an adult and you’re forced to look at your dreams and think “oh, maybe not”. But I’d gotten to a stage in my life where I’d worked on myself quite a bit and finally decided I was going to have a crack at it.

What was behind your decision to study at Yoobee South Seas? What made it different from other institutions?

I liked that at Yoobee South Seas it was just a one-year intensive course. I didn’t want to be spending three or four years studying before jumping into the workforce – I wanted to get right into it with a solid base [of knowledge and skills] behind my work.

Similar courses elsewhere also seemed to have more of an academic focus. They also cost more and I wasn’t terribly keen to sign up to a lot more debt.

I also liked that most of the tutors at Yoobee still worked in the industry part-time, meaning it was actually going to be professional industry people teaching these courses. Lastly, my partner Laura had studied there and recommended it to me which definitely gave me that final push to apply.

Working on a script at home in Auckland. (Photo: Ralph Brown)

What sort of things did you learn during your course?

In the first term, you basically learnt an overview of filmmaking. You learnt a little bit about editing, camera work, writing, directing, production planning, and so on. It was a chance to get a taste of each speciality, which was great if you weren’t really sure what you wanted to specialise in. Personally, I was pretty sure I wanted to specialise in writing and directing, but that first term definitely helped cement that decision for me.

In terms two, three, and four we’d specialise in our field of choice and just work on one practical project after another. Fiona would teach us the basics of script writing and how to use Final Draft, and Murray would teach us things like set terminology and how to be more orderly in our shooting process. That learning would then be reinforced through each project that we’d do, which started quite small but progressively got bigger and bigger, building up to our final short film.

What was it like working with the tutors?

It was great. The tutors were all wonderful. They really cared about their students and were very involved. Murray was sort of my main tutor and he supported me a lot throughout the year so I owe a lot to him. Fiona was also amazing. She’s an amazing scriptwriter for feature films and TV shows, so learning under her was huge.

We also had Sacha who was in charge of documentary filmmaking. She had such a loving and nurturing energy and was like the adoptive mum on campus. Then there was Matt who was in charge of camera, lighting, and audio. He always had loads of ideas about how to shoot something and knew exactly what kind of equipment you’d need. The acting tutors were great as well, with Jamie in particular being very helpful in helping me to find the right actors for my stories.

Photo: Ralph Brown

Embrace was the short film you created for your final project. How did the idea for a film centred on a Māori female MMA fighter come about?

I was doing a lot of looking back on my childhood during Covid and how I had these beautiful Māori teachers when I was at Beach Haven Primary, which was a very diverse school made up of mostly Māori and Pasifika kids. I was thinking a lot about these women, these adoptive aunties, and how all these women – as well as my partner who’s Cook Island Māori – have had a very strong influence in my life. I kind of wanted to write a bit of a love letter to those people and the culture.

I’ve also been a huge fan of MMA for about 10 years so I know the sport really well. I’d heard stories of MMA fighters who’d lost family members during their training camps, like this one guy who’d lost his mother, brother, and I think his best friend over the course of like three months of training. But he had to bury all that because he had this fight coming up that was his livelihood. And when he won that fight, all these emotions just came out of him in the arena.

Did the film go through any significant changes while you were working on it at Yoobee South Seas?

At one point, we had a Dragons Den-style event where you basically got up in front of a bunch of industry professionals and pitched your script. One of things that was said about my script at the time was that the main character didn’t really have a choice to make. Everything just kind of unfolded, so she needed to reach a crossroad in order to decide what she was going to do.

That was an important beat I was missing that I ended up writing into the script. So while the pitch itself was terrifying, I was glad I did it because I knew I’d regret it if I didn’t.

Tom Webster directing his short film, Embrace. (Photo: Supplied)

What projects have you been involved in since finishing up at Yoobee South Seas? And what do you have planned for the future?

Currently, I’m working on the set of Spartacus in the AD (assistant director) department as a driver and onset PA (personal assistant). Before that, I worked on season two of The Gone, which is a really beautiful New Zealand drama detective show.

Once production on Spartacus wraps up, I’ll be doing a music video for a band called Midnight Green. They’re a neo-soul Tāmaki Makaurau-based band and they’ve just released their first EP. I’m also currently writing my next short film which hopefully I’ll be able to start shooting at the end of this year or early next year.

Photo: Ralph Brown

Lastly, what would you say to those considering studying filmmaking?

I think the Diploma in Film and TV Production is a great intensive one-year course, especially if you’re wanting to figure out if this kind of lifestyle and industry is for you. Plus you get to have a lot of fun on the way and meet a bunch of like-minded artistic people. I think it’s well worth it if it’s something that you’re thinking about.