Alec Bray
I suddenly sat bolt upright on the sofa: I couldn’t believe my eyes!!!
There in the middle of the screen was a MOLE CRANE!
The shot was the nearly last but one shot of “Landscapers” (Sky Atlantic/Now), telling the story of Susan and Christopher who murdered Susan’s parents and buried the bodies in the parents’ garden. The shot was of a film set in the back lot of a studio.
The two protagonists were fantasists, and not only did they collect film memorabilia, they loved the old movies, especially Westerns, and especially those with Gary Cooper and those made in the fifties – the couple were going to ride to the distant (sunset) as the cowboys used to do of old….
And I thought … why a MOLE? And then I thought that someone had done some real research – the MOLE was first manufactured in 1949 (Houston-Fearless) (and also manufactured by Mole-Richardson under licence) and so was right for the fifties Western sequence. So full marks for research.
But then, but then…
The Mole crane in this picture is a sort of Television Version of the crane – it has proper wheels, there is the steering wheel at the back. It is not running on tracks, but on a platform – and is being pushed, rather than running off the motor….
Sorry, sound guys – you’ll have to work out yourselves what boom is being used!!
“Landscapers” was a very interesting production – it repeatedly broke the fourth wall – characters were seen rushing from set to set to present their side of the story. This particular scene starts with Susan in her cell – after the verdict – and dreams about riding out as in a Western… she gets up, walks towards what would be the cell wall, but there is no wall, she walks straight out into the back lot…….
(Apologies: the sunset is not a sunset, but a reflection of an uplighter which I did not notice until now…)
Graeme Wall
Mole boom? (says a cameraman!). I note they’ve got the crane column pumped up and the bucket extended.
Alec Bray
But not many weights in the extended bucket as far as I can see1
Wouldn’t have though a single Panavision camera (??) would weigh that much more than a 4.5 inch IO?
Graeme Wall
Should have had a focus puller but the TV version had no facility for the extra seat. If I recall correctly, the BBC’s Nike had a focus puller seat available from stores. We used it on the Rod McKuen show in TC6 once to have the singer foreground while we tracked along the dancers in the background.
The oldest swinger in town
Doug Puddifoot
An extended bucket story. A live Saturday evening LE show from the TV Theatre, may have been Val Doonican. We started with an extension on the front of the Mole. A metal frame with seat on which the artist sat. The effect was that only the background moved when the Mole tracked. When the first number was over the action moved to the side set for the second song shot on two cameras, while the rest of the crew removed the extension, unloaded two sets of lead weights, pushed the bucket back in, and reloaded it. All in about three minutes. The sort of mad thing you did in those days.
Pat Heigham
That trick was used in “Singin’ In The Rain” A good few years earlier!
Chris Woolf
The so-called “flying chair”.
I dimly remember doing a play that involved that arrangement – must have been somewhere in TC – but I can’t remember any other details, other than that it took a lot of swinging.
Dave Plowman
Thought it was called a Bosun Chair?
Chris Woolf
Nah! A Bosun’s chair is the rope seat affair for transferring people between ships at sea.
Geoff Fletcher
Anyone remember the Bongo Trolley used with a Mole?
Peter Neill
About 35 mins in
Peter Fox
There were two devices, one was attached but stayed on the ground, and the later one could fly. I never saw them in action, although Ron described them both. I guess Bongo Trolley and Flying Chair would apply respectively.
There were later ventures with a Nike crane and artists stepping off. The craning brake was good enough to cope with that until the lock pin was inserted or someone else stepped on. We tested the brake by two of us heavies jumping up and hanging on the camera platform to see if the brake would slip. It didn’t, and that was twice the expected change of weight.
Doug Puddifoot
The full name of the Mole was the Motion Picture Research Council Camera Crane, no wonder we called it a Mole.
Graeme Wall
If I recall correctly, the tech recs always referred to the MPRC crane
Pat Heigham
A mole in daylight – at first I thought you were referring to the furry, tunnelling creature!
Reminded me of an occasion, when a friend and I went to walk around Sheffield Park gardens, an NT property in Sussex. Sitting in an arbour, I idly wondered if either of us had seen a molehill under construction. Just 10 feet in front of us, the lawn suddenly erupted, on cue!
No sign of the actual animal, though.
Alan Taylor
There was a bit more historical television gear on TV last night on BBC Four, “The Golden Age of Steam Railways”. About halfway through was a sequence showing two B&W OB cameras doing a live broadcast on board a narrow-gauge train. The gear looked to be circa early 1960s, maybe a little earlier, but I didn’t get an opportunity to look in detail.
Alec Bray
As usual, Bernie’s Tech Ops web site has the answer
http://tech-ops.co.uk/next/talyllyn-railway-ob-summer-1957/
