Richard's early career plans
Select default video size
Use the tabs on the right, to select a default video size.
You preference will be saved for future videos, but can easily be changed at any time using the tabs.
Transcript
Sarah:
And my question was when you left high school, what did you actually want to become?
Richard:
OK, that's a very good question because a lot of people don't know what they do finally for their life's career until they're in their mid-20s, late 20s.
From a very early age, from about 11 years old, I knew that one day I wanted to make things - do art - for a living. I was never very good at art unfortunately. I'm not a gifted artist like so many people that we hire, but through hard word I can still do an OK job. So I set about teaching myself how to do art.
There wasn't really an art class at my school and no-one had ever sat fifth, sixth, or seventh form art at Wesley College. So myself and a teacher at the school set about building an art class in the back of a social studies class and from that I did my fifth, sixth, and seventh form art and in turn now that art class has continued on for the last 20 years.
But I knew from a very early age, as did my partner, Tanya - we've been together since we were 13 years old. We met at Ohope beach when we were 13, just outside Opotiki, and we, from the age of 15, talked about how we wanted to make models. We thought they may be for shop window decoration or for displays for, er, peoples' private homes or sculptures for gardens.
And it wasn't really 'til we came to Wellington and discovered this wonderful film industry that we realised there was a career but we always knew that we wanted to do art.