A man who spent who spent more than three decades producing some of the country\u2019s most popular television programmes can be found these days tootling around Arrowtown on his beloved e-bike, espousing the life-changing magic of power-assisted pedaling. Meet Dave Gibson 2.0 \u2014 the slowed-down (sort of) southern version of the fast-paced man who led Wellington production powerhouse, Gibson Group. He\u2019s now the architect of Cyclorama, New Zealand\u2019s first e-bike festival.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dave was supposed to move south to be with his Arrowtown-based partner Iris Weber in 2014, but the lure of a shiny new job (CEO of the New Zealand Film Commission) scuppered that plan. Four years of long-distance love followed: \u201cWe were massive fans of FaceTime,\u201d he says. \u201cRather than sitting down to talk to each other seriously in the evening, we got into this habit where we\u2019d just FaceTime while we were cooking or having dinner or breakfast, so it was a much more organic thing.\u201d (Iris grins at this positive \u201corganic\u201d spin. \u201cI think it was probably because you had to fit me into your full day.\u201d)<\/p>\n\n\n
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<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\nThe pair\u2019s expansive southern home with high ceilings, no neighbours, and stunning mountain scenery is the polar opposite of their petite urban Wellington bolt-hole.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When Dave finished up those full days at the Film Commission in 2018, it was time for geography and romance to align. Iris had fallen for the Queenstown region 25 years earlier after traveling to the area from her native Austria to work on a film shoot. She\u2019d grown Batch Film from there, too (offering production services to international filmmakers and photographers), so the prospect of relocating to Dave\u2019s inner-city Wellington apartment held little appeal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI always said I didn\u2019t move to the other side of the world to live close to neighbours. Down here, the neighbours are all cows and sheep.\u201d (If they had known about Dave\u2019s equine-unfriendly urban digs, Iris\u2019 horses, who reside in a paddock next to the couple\u2019s one-hectare property just outside Arrowtown, would have been similarly unenthused.)<\/p>\n\n\n
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<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\nThe move south wasn\u2019t without trepidation. \u201cI was a little nervous that I might get down here and, apart from hanging out with Iris and digging in the garden and riding a bike, it might get a bit thin on the ground. But it turned out that she had some lovely friends down here. We have a great social circle, which has been a hugely pleasant surprise to me.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Iris adds: \u201cThe beauty of Queenstown is not just the landscapes \u2014 the diversity of people is quite extraordinary. It\u2019s not one-dimensional \u2014 not all golf courses, fancy cars, and people with lots of money. There are a lot of other things going on. I like to demystify that image.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So how does new southern Dave compare with northern urban Dave? \u201cI\u2019m certainly more active than I was in Wellington. My exercise there was pretty much walking from my apartment to the Gibson Group or Film Commission office. Iris is good at saying, \u2018It\u2019s a great day. Let\u2019s go for a bike ride or climb a mountain or go for a swim.\u2019 She\u2019s a lot more attuned to the outdoors. I wouldn\u2019t say she drags me along, but she prods me, and that\u2019s great.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n
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<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\nThe region\u2019s mountain vibe wooed Iris 25 years ago when she visited Aotearoa for a work trip: \u201cI left New Zealand thinking, \u2018God, can I go back to normal European life after this?\u2019 I returned for a year to check it out again and never left.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n It was this prodding that gave rise to Dave\u2019s two-wheeled adventuring. \u201cI didn\u2019t really bike until I met Iris \u2014 she\u2019s the bike influencer. There\u2019s that thing in relationships where one person influences the other and encourages them into something they might be a bit lazy about.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n After initially exploring the trails around his newly adopted region on a regular bike, Dave decided a spot of electrical assistance might be the thing for Arrowtown\u2019s more vertiginous slopes. He purchased an e-bike and was soon thoroughly smitten with its puff-reducing ways. Dave and Iris began using their electric wheels to get to meetings and social events as well as for recreation. \u201cWe take our e-bikes to dinner at friends\u2019 places and ride home at midnight. I don\u2019t think we would\u2019ve done that on the acoustic bikes. On an e-bike, you can arrive in a gentle way with a bottle of wine and be pretty relaxed. And less sweaty.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Iris would love cycling to be as ubiquitous in Aotearoa as it is in Europe. \u201cIn New Zealand, biking is still seen more as a sport, whereas everyone bikes for transportation in Europe. If you go to the opera or theatre there, it\u2019s tradition to go by bike. You frock up, put all your glam on, and figure out how to get your skirt over your bike.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n Dave and Iris work from home alongside Scooter, the ginger cat. Dave says Scooter provides moral support when things are busy. \u201cHe\u2019s not much help with the secretarial side of things and occasionally sleeps on the computer keyboards, but he doesn\u2019t need regular performance reviews.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s cheer-inducing, too. \u201cBiking home with the wind in your hair is the biggest fun, and it\u2019s that joy that we\u2019d love to see in New Zealand \u2014 the realization that if you leave your car behind and bike home after your day in the office, you\u2019re going to be a much happier person.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n A desire to help spread some of that good cycle cheer got Dave thinking about the merits of an e-bike festival. He\u2019d spied one in the Swiss town of Verbier while ogling e-bikes online and could see the potential of marrying low-oomph cycling with compelling activities in the scenery-splendid Arrowtown\/Gibbston Valley region.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If Cyclorama helps reconnect people with that childhood thrill of two-wheeled bliss, then mission accomplished. (Or, in Dave\u2019s case, improve on those first youthful bicycle memories. His earliest wheeled excursions around Pahiatua were more style-compromised than he would\u2019ve liked. \u201cMy first bike was a second-hand girl\u2019s one that my mum bought. My uncle welded a bar on it and painted it so that I wouldn\u2019t feel like I was riding a girl\u2019s bike.\u201d)<\/p>\n\n\n The festival\u2019s target audience? \u201cWe\u2019re aiming at a demographic that\u2019s basically me \u2014 people who want to have some weekend fun. It\u2019s as much about getting off the bike and doing interesting things as the actual bike riding. The idea was to be very inclusive and not competitive.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n This recalibrated, bike-embracing, nature-chasing Dave owes much to The Iris Factor, but the herculean task of nudging him towards a more moderate pace is still a work in progress. Dave\u2019s notion of semi-retirement equates to a regular person\u2019s full-time schedule. Not that he seems to clock this fact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWhen you\u2019ve worked 60 hours a week for so long, it\u2019s good to be able to ease that back a bit. The drop in hours is just great. But after a while, you start thinking, \u2018Oh, maybe I could create a bike festival.\u2019 Something always fills that hole.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Iris is mystified at this mention of a yawning gulf in Dave\u2019s days. \u201cThere was no hole. He\u2019s eased off a bit, but there was never a hole to fill. The reason Dave thinks he\u2019s only giving a small part of his life to work is that he\u2019s just unbelievably smart and fast. He sucks up a script that would take the average person a few hours and can turn it around really quickly.\u201d Besides screen consultancy and executive producing and organizing an e-bike festival, he also coaches the junior A basketball team at Wakatipu High School.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI was a basketball tragic,\u201d says Dave. \u201cI went to a very rugby-oriented school [St Patrick\u2019s College, Silverstream] and wanted to play basketball more than anything else. I refused to play for the first XV because they said I\u2019d have to give up basketball.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n Dave has coached the sport on and off over the years. \u201cUnfortunately, it got to the stage where coaching was starting to get in the way of the Gibson Group, so I had to give it up.\u201d When he moved south, he offered himself up for teen basketball wrangling at Wakatipu High School. \u201cWe drive three hours to Invercargill on a Friday night, play a game, then drive three hours back. We get home about midnight with six hours of rap music in our ears and an hour of basketball under our belt. It\u2019s fun and very rewarding.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Between basketballs and bikes, southern Dave has plenty to fill that mythical gaping hole \u2014 the one only he can see.<\/p>\n\n\n\n AND NOW BACK TO WELLINGTON\u2026<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n Dave would have been a teacher if a Bolex 16mm movie camera hadn\u2019t got in the way. Lured by the alchemy of documentary-making, he set up Gibson Film Productions in 1977 (later Gibson Group). Over the following decades, he produced feature films and television programmes that aired in more than 80 countries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Shows ranged across all manner of dramatic, comedic, documentary and children\u2019s territory, including the satirical puppet show Public Eye Series (1988-89), New Zealand\u2019s first urban cop show Shark in the Park (1989-91), police drama series Duggan (1997-99) arts and issues show Backch@t (1998-2000), and drama series The Strip (2002-03) and The Insider\u2019s Guide to Happiness (2004).<\/p>\n\n\n\n Dave wanted to keep a foot in his old Wellington life so he could visit his mum, friends and Featherston-based grandchildren. So the couple employed architect Tim Wernham (of Constructive Architecture) to turn a small and generic inner-city apartment into something with \u201cambiguous\u201d, free-flowing living spaces.<\/p>\n\n\n It\u2019s practical and texture-rich. <\/p>\n\n\n\n But that\u2019s a mere smidgen of Dave\u2019s output and industry reach. So significant was his contribution to the screen that when he left Gibson Group in excellent hands and health in 2012, Dave was made an officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit (ONZM) for services to the film and television industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.cyclorama.co.nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/02\/Unknown-4.jpeg\")
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<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\nCYCLORAMA<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n