The Rule of Jenny Pen is a bold, genre-blurring NZ feature film that pushed creative and technical boundaries across production and post. This session brings together the Sound & Music team to explore how they worked together to shape its unique tone. From practical decisions to stylized post workflows, discover how a cohesive creative vision, and tight collaboration, powered one of the most distinctive screen experiences to come out of Aotearoa.

Featuring Sound Designer John McKay (The Lord of the Rings trilogy, Footrot Flats: A Dog’s Tale), Composer John Gibson (Coming Home in the Dark, Shackleton’s Captain), and Sound Designer Matthew Lambourn (King Kong, What We Do in the Shadows, Boy). Moderated by Composer Janet Roddick (The Hobbit, Plan 9).

SPEAKERS

JOHN MCKAY

John McKay, CEO POW Studios, has extensive experience in film and television Post Production spanning 50 years.
As a sound editor he has supervised over 50 major film and television projects. His most notable works include sound design, editing and Re-Recording Mixing on The Lord of the Rings Trilogy, The Quiet Earth, Footrot Flats, Coming Home in the Dark, I Am What I Am 1 & 2, The Rule of Jenny Pen. He is the recipient of awards for Footrot Flats, A Soldier’s Tale, Jubilee and Lord of the Rings. John was part of the team nominated for Best Sound Editing awards by the Motion Picture Sound Editors (MPSE, USA) for his work on The Lord of The Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring and The Lord of The Rings: The Two Towers.

MATT LAMBOURN

Matt has worked for 25 years as a sound designer in the NZ film industry, and is well-versed in both large international film projects and local gems. He has led the creative sound direction of POW Studios since its inception. He holds a Masters Degree in Musical Arts from Victoria University of Wellington and has spent time teaching at various tertiary institutions. Matt lives in Wellington with his wife and two children.

JANET RODDICK

After completing a degree in opera singing Janet was a member of eclectic Wellington bands Four Volts and Six Volts from 1984 to 1991 performing gigs, dance and theatre shows.

She has been part of the composing partnership Plan 9 since the mid 1990s when their first score was Forgotten Silver. Their many film and tv score credits include A Remarkable Place To Die, Dark City: The Cleaner, Pacific Mother, Our Big Blue Backyard, What We Do In The Shadows, Antarctica: A Year On Ice, Predicament, Perfect Strangers, and numerous series for Discovery, National Geographic, NHK and Animal Planet. Their score for Peter Jackson’s documentary They Shall Not Grow Old was a nominee for the 2019 Critics Choice Documentary Awards. They have won Best Feature Film Score 3 times at the NZ Film & TV Awards.

In 2021 they were awarded the SOUNZ Contemporary Award for their album The Bewilderness. With her usual collaborators Plan 9 and David Long she co-wrote the dwarves song Misty Mountains for The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey and was singing coach for the actors. The song was used by Howard Shore as one of the main soundtrack themes of the movie. She was the voice of the Ring in the Lord of the Rings trilogy and was involved in creating cultural music and musical sound design for all 3 films as well as composing additional music for King Kong.

Janet is a committee member of The Screen Music And Sound Guild.

JOHN GIBSON

John Gibson composed his first major work at the age of 16. By the age of 24 he had done time as musical director at theatres in Dunedin and Auckland, and acted on-screen as one of the musical quartet in TV drama Heroes. Since then Gibson has composed music for a wide range of mediums, including television, theatre and dance, and co-composing Rain of the Children.
(NZonScreen bio)