Sheep shearers Sam and Emily Welch were scouted out to train the actors in Lee Tamahori's upcoming film 'The Patriarch'

A thumbelina-sized pair of hessian moccasins hang pride of place from the rearview mirror of Sam and Emily Welch's van. They have twine laces and the little slippers are stuffed with lamb's wool.

The North Waikato shearers hang the keepsake where most would put their fluffy dice or a pine air freshener. Sam Welch looks at the delicate slippers and smiles; "Once you've made 40 pairs, you've got to make one more as a souvenir, right?"

Making 40 pairs of old-school shearing shoes from used sacking was just one of the unconventional jobs Sam and his wife Emily undertook behind the scenes of the new Kiwi movie The Patriarch, directed by Lee Tamahori and based on Witi Ihimaera's book Bulibasha: King of the Gypsies.



It was the first time Sam had made a pair of the moccasins worn by shearing gangs in the 1960s, and no one wanted to show him how.



Sam shows us around his garage, filled with shearing comb grinders, gumboots and fitness equipment, and

Photo: Rebekah Parsons-King/Fairfax NZ Sheep shearing world record holders, turned celebrity shearers Sam and Emily Welch in their North Waikato woolshed.

grins as he tells the story of how he got the old boys on board, He waited in the changing room at a shearing competition with an old sack and a pair of scissors. When the veterans entered the shed to take a load off, he started hacking at the sacks. They were quick to tell him he was doing it wrong and argued over what the right way was to make a pair of moccasins - "I tricked them into it".

The first pair Sam made took an hour and he realised he was undercharging at $15 a pop. By the fortieth pair, $15 wasn't looking too bad for 15 minutes' work.

The Patriarch is Tamahori's first New Zealand film since Once Were Warriors, twenty years ago. Set in the 1950s and 60s, the story follows two families, the Mahanas and Poatas, who battle for shearing supremacy, the competition coming to a head at the annual Golden Shears.



Sam and Emily were called in to help find extras for the movie and teach the actors to shear but an early conversation between the experts and the crew put an end to that plan.



"They realised that actors are actors and shearers are shearers - shearers can't act and actors can't shear," Emily says.

Photo: Rebekah Parsons-King/Fairfax NZ Sam Welch shows how it's done in his Waikaretu woolshed.

That's when the pair started their hunt for body doubles who would fit the bill - professional shearers, under 35, Maori, no tattoos, based near Auckland.

From there, it spiralled. The Welches, who were also juggling four kids under seven and a business, had to teach the actors the basics of shearing safety and technique, advise on the Golden Shears scenes, find body doubles, extras, help scout locations, teach the actors how to cut scrub (the old-fashioned way thanks to Sam's Dad's traditional leanings), lend their dog, their sheep, and of course, make the moccasins.



Emily sips coffee at her parents' cafe - thankfully they live just down the road and take the children when needed - while she talks about the hundreds of hours and phone calls put into the movie.



There were trips to the airport, 4am casting calls and at times up to eight guests sleeping at their Waikaretu home.



She feeds her six-month-old boy Eli while Sam fries up homemade sausages for lunch. One batch is wild turkey and Kawakawa leaves, one has some cheese in it - you have to figure out which is which. It's their welcoming attitude which explains how this unlikely couple came to be The Patriarch's behind-the-scenes stars.

It helps that they work well together, but then they've never had much of a choice, Sam says.

Photo: Rebekah Parsons-King/Fairfax NZ Sam Welch shows how it's done in his Waikaretu woolshed.

Married for nine years, together for 11, they've been side-by-side in the woolshed for much longer. Emily, who learnt to shear at 20, says they're good at chopping and changing tasks on the farm and on set. Each one knows what the other's thinking - even when it comes to the end of a sentence.

While they don't plan on leaving their shearing business and sheep stud for Hollywood, they've also learnt never to say no.



"We tell everybody that we deal with that we'll never do it again, but we will," Sam says.



"If you say yes, you don't know what the opportunities are gonna be," Emily adds.

It's not the first brush with the glitzy world of film and television for these unlikely celebrity shearers.

Photo: Rebekah Parsons-King/Fairfax NZ 500 sheep were sheared during the making of Lee Tamahori's latest Kiwi film The Patriarch.

They've featured on Country Calendar, Maori Television's sports show Code, and several advertisements, including one for the Highlanders rugby team and another with a singing sheep.

Sam also sheared for Prince Charles on Auckland's Viaduct but was too afraid to look at the royal in case he strayed from the page-long list of etiquette instructions.

Both are world record holders - Emily holds the solo women's record, for shearing 648 strongwool lambs in nine hours. And in 2012, Sam and Stacey Te Huia set the two-stand world record when they sheared 1341 sheep in nine hours.

Photo: Rebekah Parsons-King/Fairfax NZ Sam Welch sharpens his shearing combs in the woolshed.

Te Huia, now based in Australia, was meant to be among The Patriarch cast but personal commitments got in the way.

Te Huia's glad his mates are on set to make sure the shearing industry is well-represented, even if he can't be there.

"They are top of the league for professionalism," Te Huia says. "Sam and Emily are perfect role models for the shearing industry to be part of this movie, they've got their head screwed on and they're all for the industry and not for themselves ... they're not big-headed or pig-headed people so they're gonna make sure everything's done right and it wouldn't be all about them either."

Photo: Rebekah Parsons-King/Fairfax NZ Sam and Emily Welch taught actors to shear, cut scrub and chop wood for Lee Tamahori's latest New Zealand movie The Patriarch.

Te Huia says the movie is true to what shearing was like back in the 60s, a history the Welches are familiar with, and he believes The Patriarch will no doubt strike a chord with Maori audiences. "There's not many Maoris who never had a play around in the shed."

Unfortunately, cut sheep and shearers who overindulge after a long day's work are often the focus rather than the hard labour and years spent honing the skill, Te Huia says, adding that the movie will be a good thing for the perception of shearing.

For Sam and Emily, their work on the set of The Patriarch isn't just about being part of making a $9.4 million movie; it's about educating Kiwis and the world about the industry at the heart of New Zealand culture.

Photo: Rebekah Parsons-King/Fairfax NZ Sheep shearing world record holders Sam and Emily Welch worked on the set of Lee Tamahori's latest movie The Patriarch, training and assisting crews with everything shearing and farming-related.

Sam says it's our chance to give the rest of the world a taste of what New Zealand sheep shearing's about.

"If it becomes a big feature film that sort of takes off, a classic, then there could be a lot of education going on in there as well."

Despite New Zealand's agricultural foundations, most Kiwis have never been in a woolshed, let alone sheared a sheep, he says.

Photo: Phototek Sam Welch demonstrates his craft at Ambury Park Farm Day, South Auckland in 2013.

"I don't know how many people in New York and stuff think the sheep gets killed to get the wool off it."

The book Bulibasha explores the world of rough shearers, where cut sheep are part of the job but the Welches didn't want to add fuel to the animal-cruelty fire so the cut sheep were removed from the movie.

Shearing already gets a bad rap with animal rights organisations around the world. that meant the slaughter scene wasn't a slaughter scene.

Photo: Supplied Waikato shearer Sam Welch during his successful 2012 world record attempt with Stacey Te Huia in Te Hape, east of Benneydale in the King Country.

Of course it would have been easier to kill the sheep in real life, Emily says.

Instead, it was covered in fake blood for the shoot before the couple transported it across Auckland in an open trailer. It took about three weeks in the paddock for the dye to wear off.

Along with his many behind-the-scenes roles, Sam plays an extra, with one of his six brothers, Richard, for the Golden Shears scene, as part of a Pakeha shearing gang before taking their place in the stands to cheer on the others.

The Patriarch wrapped at the end of May after a 35-day shoot across 12 Auckland locations.

Actor Temuera Morrison plays Tamihana; the figurehead and leader of the Mahana family, with Nancy Brunning cast as his wife Ramona, and 14-year-old Augs Keefe as Tamihana's teenage grandson Simeon.

Ihimaera says watching the lead actors and the rest of the cast and crew putting their hearts into the film has been "both thrilling and humbling. I think they have made a movie that the country will be proud of".

The film, which was funded by the New Zealand Film Commission, New Zealand On Air, Māori Television, Hopscotch eOne, Wild Bunch, and private equity investors, including 200 people who contributed through crowdfunding platform Snowball Effect - in a first for a New Zealand feature film - came in on time and on budget.

Sam and Emily worked closely with producer Robin Scholes and Tamahori but they aren't awed by the big names and glamour of the set.

Sam admits he'd never heard of half the actors before he met them. "I just try and treat everybody like how you'd like to be treated."

One day Emily was handed the phone: the person on the other end was asking for directions to their house. Morrison had been instructed to take a lesson in wood cutting and the bosses pointed him in Sam's direction. "He kind of turned up and he jumps out of the car and he goes, 'where's the wood pile? I've gotta learn how to cut wood'. So I give him an axe and he was straight into it.

"I don't know whether he was clowning around pretending that he hadn't or not. But I asked him; 'have you never cut wood before?' And he said 'no, I've always just had a heater'."

Sam says Morrison enjoyed hanging around the woolshed and spending the day on the farm.

"And he even said… 'This is New Zealand? Where have I been all my life?'

"So that was kinda cool."

THE PATRIARCH BY THE NUMBERS:

35 Shoot days

390 hours shooting

37 cast members

300 extras

110 Crew members

500 full-wool sheep… and then 500 shorn sheep

1 cow

5 chickens

6 horses

12 Auckland Locations

22 Vintage cars

The Patriarch is expected to be released next year.

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