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It’s a sign.
It’s a sign.

MediaMay 7, 2020

The Spinoff is hiring

It’s a sign.
It’s a sign.

Three new permanent staff positions and casual shift work available. 

We entered the level four lockdown in the unfortunate position of having lost a few key senior staff in recent months, without yet having found their replacements. Now, with the white-hot first phase of the story starting to ebb, we’re recruiting some much-needed reinforcements.

Our tight, dynamic team based on the city fringe of Auckland is seeking people able to work out of our Morningside office. That said, with the journalistic roles, if you’re out of Auckland or can’t work full-time, we’d still like to hear from you. We’re absolutely prepared to be flexible if we find the perfect candidate.

These are the roles we’re looking to fill – if that sounds like you, please get in touch.

Senior feature writer 

The Spinoff has always cared deeply about writing, about carefully chosen words and how they land. We are seeking a superb magazine-style writer of at least three years’ experience working at or regularly contributing to major national outlets. We are open to hearing from those relatively early in their careers, or decades in. Critical qualities are:

  • Writing that leaps off the screen.
  • A boundless supply of ideas.
  • A deep contact book, and the desire to expand it.
  • An abiding interest in this country and its stories.
  • A strong work ethic and hunger to make work that leaves a mark.
  • The ability to write across multiple forms: general features, profiles, investigations, commentary, essays and more.
  • You don’t need all of the above, but the more the better.

If this sounds like you, please send a CV and a cover letter explaining why you would be great in the role, along with links to or copies of two of your best pieces of published work, to jobs@thespinoff.co.nz (subject: Senior feature writer) by 5pm on Monday, May 18.

Senior news reporter

We’re seeking a superb news reporter of at least three years’ experience working for major national outlets. We are open to hearing from writers relatively early in their careers, or decades in. Critical qualities are:

  • Hopelessly plugged into the news cycle.
  • Particular interests in politics, business, te ao Māori or science encouraged.
  • A deep interest in this country and its stories.
  • A strong work ethic and hunger to make work that leaves a mark.
  • Tenacity to bust through barriers to news.
  • An OIA enthusiast; loves a phone call, loves a doorstep, loves digging through data and official reports.
  • Clean, ready-to-publish copy.
  • A sense of what makes stories pop, from concept to headlines and sells.
  • The ability to create fast, accurate, informed reporting or analysis when news breaks.
  • A history of finding great original stories.
  • Experience in investigative journalism.
  • You don’t need all of the above, but the more the better.

If this sounds like you, please send a CV and cover letter explaining why you would be great in the role, along with links to or copies of three of your best pieces of published work, to jobs@thespinoff.co.nz (subject: Senior news reporter) by 5pm on Monday, May 18.

Office manager

We’re looking for someone to join our small team to manage our office and assist various departments with key administrative tasks. We need someone to make sure our operation runs smoothly, help with HR, manage all incoming member and reader communications, and assist editorial, commercial and production teams with relevant tasks.

We’re looking for someone tech-literate, comfortable running new online systems, and an exceptional written and verbal communicator. We need someone hyper-organised and with excellent time management skills – as well as a lot of energy, and enthusiasm for the work we do.

We need someone who can work proactively and juggle multiple work streams, who loves putting systems in place and refining them. Previous office management or administrative experience is preferred, as well as HR administration or event coordination – though neither is strictly necessary. We are comfortable with candidates whose background is in production or other applicable fields.

As a team we’re social, energetic, care deeply about what we produce, and pride ourselves on our relationships with our audience, clients and members. We’re looking for a candidate excited to join a future-focused media organisation and play a key role in supporting our talented and hard-working team. This is a full-time position that must be based in our Morningside office in Auckland.

Note: This is not a journalism role. 

If this sounds like you, please send your CV and a cover letter to jobs@thespinoff.co.nz (subject: Office manager) by 5pm on Friday, May 22.

Casual reporting and production shifts

As our stories break and team and scope grow, as sick days or holidays come around, we sometimes find ourselves short-handed for short or long periods. If you’re a freelancer with a background in reporting, subediting or other key roles in the journalism-industrial complex, and are interested in working casual shifts for us on either an occasional or ongoing basis, please get in touch.

We’re particularly interested in:

  • Fast, accurate, driven news reporters.
  • People with experience working in digital news production, from social media account management to sub-editing.
  • Journalists keen to work weekend shifts.
  • Beat reporters with good contact books available to freelance on specific stories or as relevant work arises.

If this describes you, please send a CV and cover letter explaining what you’re best at and your availability to jobs@thespinoff.co.nz (subject: Shifts) by 5pm on Monday, May 18.

NB If you’re applying for one of the above roles, but would also like to be considered for casual shifts, simply note that in your cover letter.

Keep going!
A screenshot from Duck 3D: 2D Busta’s, Flat Earth Globalist’s entry in VF48Hours, and one of our selections to showcase. (Photo: Supplied)
A screenshot from Duck 3D: 2D Busta’s, Flat Earth Globalist’s entry in VF48Hours, and one of our selections to showcase. (Photo: Supplied)

VideoMay 6, 2020

48Hours Lockdown Showcase: Duck 3D: 2D Busta’s

A screenshot from Duck 3D: 2D Busta’s, Flat Earth Globalist’s entry in VF48Hours, and one of our selections to showcase. (Photo: Supplied)
A screenshot from Duck 3D: 2D Busta’s, Flat Earth Globalist’s entry in VF48Hours, and one of our selections to showcase. (Photo: Supplied)

The 48-hour film festival is back, self-isolation style. While the judging panel is deciding the winners, The Spinoff is showcasing seven films from the competition. We’re sharing one a day in the lead up to the one-hour awards special, airing on TVNZ2 on Friday, May 8, at 9.30pm. Today, Duck 3D: 2D Busta’s from Flat Earth Globalists.

Duck 3D: 2D Busta’s is a short film about a family of mafia dogs that will do anything it takes to get money, including kidnapping Johnny the dacker (duck-hacker). It’s packed with absurdities, dimensional anomalies, and made with about as much software as you can name, if not more.

Flat Earth Globalists is a film collective made up of Corey Fuimaono, Tyler Baikie and Glenn Frederic. Fuimaono works as a video content producer in Tāmaki Makarau, Tyler is a screen producer living in the depths of Murihiku and Glenn is a production-focused IT specialist at a VFX company. With their powers combined they, quote, have ‘once again been able to spread the good word of a truly globalist agenda with homegrown entertainment.’

The filmmakers, after prompting from The Spinoff, interviewed each other in a fittingly hectic style about the process of making their weird and wonderful film.

What’s the story behind your team?

Tyler Baikie: We all studied film and animation together, but Corey didn’t study with Glenn.

Glenn Fredric: He was a year above me. I saw him across the room sometimes and I saw him on a newscast gag for our end of year film festival. But Tyler, you’ve been the anchor.

[To Corey] Have you been a flatmate with Tyler?

Corey Fuimaono: Yes.

GF: So we’ve technically all been flatmates together.

TB: This is the first project we’ve all done together though.

GF: But also it’s all been through Tyler. Me and Corey are like random acquaintances that barely see each other because Tyler’s just like “let’s meme on this shit!”

TB: I make sure to keep my friends very segregated.

Did you do any preparation for the film, and how did that set you up for the ‘shoot’, such as it is?

GF: Tyler and Corey each created loglines before I came in at 7:30.

CF: And the thing that I liked about Tyler’s logline was the fact that it flipped what urban fantasy was on its head.

TB: That’s right. One of my first ideas was that there’s this 2D duck with a photo of a 3D anime girl. So he thought that there is another dimension where his waifu was, and the next dimension was the fantasy element.

The original trumpet boy meme. (Photo: KnowYourMeme)

TB: The other component of our test video video we made last year based on the trumpet boy meme. We were just bored.

CF: That meme was big!

GF: I never saw it. I wasn’t even interested in this project until I saw that meme.

TB: When we sat down and thought we’re in lockdown, we’ve got a tiny team, what can we do? Make an animation?

CF: Yeah, my camera was locked up at work. I thought Tyler, this dumb animation demo we did, which is totally hilarious to some people but completely dumb to others because they miss the point, why don’t we just do that for this 48 hours film? What are we gonna lose? Nothing. This thing is free this year dude, like, let’s do it. Let’s just do it.

What were the big difficulties of working in lockdown, and on the flipside of this, what opportunities did this provide you?

TB: The biggest difficulty of working in lockdown is you can’t directly work with people. Outside of that there wasn’t any difficulty.

CF: We had all the tools we needed to do this remotely. I think it would have been the same if we were all in the same room, if not worse.

GF: Honestly, being able to get food, being able to survive in your own introverted environment and make sure you can get done what you want to get done… it wouldn’t work for everyone, but because the way the team was set up the team could focus a bit more.

TB: We were always on Discord 24/7. We never had like, weird meetings where we’d come together then split to do our job. We were always communicating, running ideas past each other. A lot of screen sharing! So if someone did something they thought was hilarious and they wanted to show us, we’d just jump in and watch it. Every single time we pissed ourselves laughing!

A typical screenshot from Duck3 3D: 2D Busta’s. (Photo: Supplied)

What was the most technically complex thing in your film to do?

GF: I think we need to list what programs we actually used for this.

CF: Photoshop, of course. Then Tyler hit us up with Blender.

GF: Audition. Audacity.

TB: After Effects to bring everything together.

GF: We also used websites like Pexels, Unsplash.

T:B A website called Miro for planning. Google Sheets to organise and track assets and shots.

GF: Miro was huge. Also Discord. But having the ability to find things you need online? That is a nightmare. So I think we learnt some things there.

TB: The most technically complex thing for me would have been the 3D duck. Doing a cloth simulation when he got shot with the magic laser. It wasn’t tricky or hard, just more complex than other steps. Then the next most complex thing was the Daily Keno sections I animated. There were probably about ten layers at times of Photoshop recorded green screen elements that had to be composited together. My computer couldn’t play it back in real time which is a rarity.

CF: The technical aspect for me, and something you can complicate very easily, is the sound. Last time I did a count I had about 40-50 separate audio tracks for different sections of sound.

TB: On a regular project of this size you’d probably be stretching it at 10 or 20. Glenn, what was the most technically complex thing you did?

GF: Social curation.

TB: What does that mean?

GF: I probably looked through thousands of images and audio files, figuring out what you guys would like, what wouldn’t fit for the scene, but also not overloading you guys with content. I was trying my best not to do that. So what is going to be the most useful? What can they actually use? That was the fun part. It wasn’t one of the hardest things, but you have to find the thing that works, then find if it’s useful, and not spam them with it, and also share it in a way they’re able to find it and not just scrolling so it’s lost in the ether.

TB: There were so many dogs!

CF: So many. On all fours, two legs, or they look angry looking off to the side.

TB: Just the weirdest poses. And the chihuahua images, wow. We only used one though.

This interview was edited for length and clarity. You can find the other films that The Spinoff has selected to showcase here.

Flat Earth Globalists are just one of a record breaking 2,111 teams who created three-minute masterpieces from their bubbles.  The Vista Foundation 48Hours judging panel, including Sir Peter Jackson, will select finalists to be screened on TVNZ2 in a one-hour awards special on Friday, May 8, at 9.30pm.

VF48HOURS: LOCKDOWN is made with the support of NZ On Air, New Zealand Film Commission and The Vista Foundation.