The pressure to produce the series on strict deadlines forced Feeney to quickly learn filmmaking skills and, by 1948, he was able to direct.
His first known film was Hutt Valley ... New School for Taita and it is known that he was the editor on Naval Force 75 (1950); his first credit was for 1949’s New Golden Hind Sails North Supplying Raoul & Niue Islands.
[1] In 1951, the NFU ceased production of the Weekly Review and Feeney was put to work on informational films promoting soil conservation and traffic safety.
He was then able to produce documentaries; the result was the four critically-acclaimed films that would start his career: The Legend of the Whanganui River (1952), Kōtuku (1954), Pumicelands (1954) and Hot Earth (1955).
Feeney had intended to return to New Zealand, but he discovered that his delay in going to France and led to the expiration of his bursary and the loss of a promotion at the NFU.
[3] Despite reporting that he found adapting to life in Montreal to be difficult,[4] Feeney stayed with the NFB for 10 years, producing 10 films.
Daly noted that Feeney has a particular affinity for photographing the landscape and put him to work on documentaries about the Arctic and Inuit culture.
")[5] In 1959, while shooting Pangnirtung, in what is now Nunavut, bad weather had forced a stop in filming and, Feeney wrote, he passed the time reading a magazine he’d found about Africa’s Mountains of the Moon, at the source of the Nile.
He attended its 2005 launch, which was held at the American University in Cairo, in the Sony Gallery for Photography at the Adham Center for Television Journalism.
There are eight books, with entries recounting daily events and personal reflections about film-making, travel, administrative and financial matters, and distribution and exhibition of the film.
The diary describes Feeney’s experiences filming in Khartoum, Uganda and the Ruwenzori Mountains, working with the ‘Studio Msir Lab’, and recording the documentary's music.