Mike Minchin’s impressive collection of photographs taken while shooting The Forsyte Saga [ http://tech-ops.co.uk/next/forsyte-saga/ ] prompted some discussion about exactly how it was edited.
Dave Buckley
Could I correct a statement made in the first paragraph of this very interesting webpage?
Mike states that ‘Editing was non-destructive (no sign of a razor blade), sometimes involving 3 VT machines’.
However, Chris Booth’s excellent vt old boys site under https://www.vtoldboys.com/evolve.htm states ‘It is with pride that early videotape editors look back at those ‘physical’ edits of the sixties. Some of the last major BBC drama to be cut edited were the classics, Forsyte Saga and Six Wives of Henry the Eighth.’
I knew that the Saga had been cut edit but not Six Wives.
Alan Taylor
As for the way the editing was done, I obviously have no reason to doubt what the VT Old Boys say, but I also trust what Mike says because he was so personally involved with the production. Does anybody know more about the editing process?
Could it be that in early episodes they cut the VT tape, but by the end of the series, technology allowed them to edit non-destructively? After all, they spent a hell of a long time shooting it at a time when technology was rapidly changing.
It’s entirely possible the both the VT guys and Mike could be correct, physical cutting might have been employed at times and non-destructive editing at other times. With a series divided into blocks with different directors, it seems entirely plausible that one director went with razor blade editing, while the other adopted those new-fangled three machine edits.
Mike Minchin
Said “No Cut Edits” on The Forsyte Saga on the evidence of the DVDs : I will concede that earlier episodes could have been “Cut Edited”, but the last was certainly “Dub Edited”, with mixes from and to the final scenes. Which in my way of seeing, it had to be a three machine edit, hence my statement.
I accept all you say about the Old VT Editors and monochrome shows. BUT. I knew two things.
Firstly, the Forsyte Office went on to produce Vanity Fair, perhaps the first colour serial later in the same year as we finished Forsyte (1967). As far as I knew it was almost impossible to make a good razor blade edit with Colour Tape – so I assume that was done by “dub-editing”.
Then, around the same time we worked on a series of Sherlock Holmes, in black & white, and there was this “exciting new editing technique” called “Editec”. It involved shooting the script as live with pauses for scene or costume changes. At each pause the master tape was marked at the edit point. Then, when we were ready, the master tape would run up and at the edit point it would switch from Play to Record. Bingo, you had a transmission ready tape. This I assumed was essentially the process that was used for “dub edits”. (In practice these instant edits turned out to be noisy, and the Back-up tape had to be used for a razor-blade remake.)
When I was writing my notes on Forsyte Saga I assumed the Holmes serial was earlier, and seeing an undoubted 3-machine sequence in the final episode, I jumped to the conclusion that the process was in use throughout Forsyte. Now I have looked at my records, and find that Sherlock Holmes was actually in 1968. So I now think the transition to non-destructive editing was gradual during 1967-8 (or even 1969).
Dave Plowman
I was just thinking back to the first show I remember editec being used on. Troubleshooters. Think if an editec wasn’t right, you didn’t know until you reviewed it at the next recording stop. And if wasn’t good, had to go back and do it again. Plus the incredibly clunky way the BBC had derived of doing it. IIRC, it was soon abandoned on the series after several massive over-runs.
Spool forward several years, and I moved to Thames. Only to find it in use on Rainbow. Where the vision mixer put on the dot rather than an engineer in the basement. Had a sound feed off the editec system so you could foldback the run up to the studio, and the (experienced) actors take their own cue (often). And it worked as intended. The prog totally TX ready at the end of the recording time. But could be it was so successful being used by a prog where everyone was very experienced at it. A drama could well be different.
Paul Thackray
Editec was still being used by That’s Life up until the TV Theatre closed. It was a Sunday early evening pre rec for tx later that day. Some weeks it was needed, others the show was done In a single take. (All on 1 Ins)
Once the TVT shut the show moved to TVC with Friday rec for Sunday TX, so plenty of time for full 3 machine edit.
Alan Taylor
Editec was certainly still in use in 1972. I worked on some location inserts with Engelbert Humperdinck and The Young Generation. We did dance sequences to one of his songs. The director was Stewart Morris and consequentially, everything was on an epic scale. Nearly every show generated an amusing story related to some sort of disaster during the filming.
The dance sequences were shot using a two camera MCR ( I believe it was MCR 21 after it was converted to colour ), sometimes with a radio camera too. The music track was first of all laid down onto VT and all recordings were then vision only, with the audio track being fed to speakers for the dancers. Sequences used the vision mixer for cutting between cameras and then Editec was used to drop into vision only record for the next setup. Because the dancers needed to get up to speed and take their cues, they used lengthy run-ups, maybe four or eight bars of music.
During a sequence in the afternoon, Editec somehow dropped into record early and wiped everything from the moment the VT machine was run ready to record. When the VT editor buzzed through what had happened, everybody in talkback went silent, expecting Stewart to go ballistic.
He just calmly asked “ You are not joking are you? “. Then after viewing the tape announced that we will be going back to set up shot number one and redo everything before the light failed. Warning everybody that they’ve already had all the rehearsals, everything needed to be a one take wonder.
Very much against the odds, it was all done in time and viewers would never have noticed anything different.
Now obviously none of this relates to Forsyte, but it does seem as though Editec or something similar would have been a workable way of editing Forsyte. Being a multi-camera studio production, scenes would have been recorded as complete items. Maybe more than one scene at a time. Therefore unlike modern VT editing, the VT edit was not so much a creative process, more a matter of assembling finished scenes in the right order.
There was another unusual aspect to Forsyte which makes be believe that this could be possible. Apart from the opening and closing, Forsyte didn’t use any background music. Normally composers write music cues to be dropped in and music cues are frequently used to bridge transitions from one scene to another. If there had been incidental music like that, it would have been incredibly challenging to do VT edits of that type. Without any music, cuts between scenes become much more straightforward.
It looks as though most people could have been right all along. Mike being right by stating that they did use non destructive editing and the VT Old Boys are right in stating that three machine edits hadn’t been invented at that time.
