Tony Crake
Sound Trolley Story 1
After some large show round the TC1 end of the Road we were desperate to get up to the Club for a drink….
Time was running short so we got up a hell of a speed round the ring road with 6 of us pushing!
When we came to the Tech Stores Corner we hit something like a stage weight lying in the loading bay and came to a bit of a stop. One of the small mic stands atop the trolley leapt off and buried itself in the side of a Maurice Placquet Delivery Van ( Music Instruments). Quick as a flash one of our intrepid band wrestled it out and we kept going right into Tech Stores in a four wheel drift. Ron, the famous storeman, wanted to check everything but we left him to it!
Sound Trolley Story 2
When I was on Crew 9 with Dave Hedden and Simon Brocklehurst , one day we had something really boring to do like a "Sportsnight" in TC7. Very quickly it was rigged (Rev Q button, Deaf Aid, ECMs, studio LS etc etc). Dave went on up to the Club to get the drinks in, as was his wont! It was then discovered by the SS that we had forgotten the overall spare standby 451 in the middle of the desk (on one of those MZT little stands). Simon and I said we would do it right away, charged down the steps into the studio, unlocked the trolley, took out the cable, mic and stand. It was rigged in a flash! Then we went to lock the trolley up and be on our way to the 4th Floor! Not to be, sadly, as it very slowly dawned on us that some silly sod had stolen the sound trolley padlocks and the keys. Not just for the one door we had opened but BOTH LOTS! It was quite some time before we got to our beers.
It had to be reported to so many different people!
Sound Trolley Story 3
On "Warship", Trevor Webster wanted some ‘authentic’ rendition of PA Speaker Systems on board ship. The Prop Buyer had an Admiralty Pattern Loudspeaker in his ‘Cage’ so we borrowed it and attached wires to it and lo and behold it worked! It was buried in the Sound Trolley with a 4037 stick mic for company and hidden away in the back of the Tech Stores!
It was deemed a great success!
Patrick Heigham
This is not a trolley story, but a PA speaker system story.
On the Bond 007 “The Spy Who Loved Me” the tanker/submarine set was built in the huge stage at Pinewood.
It was necessary to have a PA system to direct the extras and crew, so we, the sound crew, suggested mounting active speakers in vision as part of the set. My colleague and I spent a splendid weekend wiring them all up, with a four area distribution, so that the shooting area could have a lower level.
The system was also used for acoustic pick-up of scripted announcements as part of the action.
I was hoping to liberate some of the speaker units afterwards, but as Special Effects had to set the place alight, not a lot survived! I did manage to save quite a lot of decent cable though!
Michael Cotton
Sound Trolley Story 4
One Friday evening we did a pre rig in the lower canteen for an OB insert into a play. Very early (so as not to interrupt service) on Saturday we turned up to put the heads on and so on only to find that the SCR was still locked and thus the keys to the trolley hidden in the usual place under the gram desk lid were inaccessible.
Swift application of a stage weight to the trolley lock sprang it without causing any damage to it. Canteen set rigged.
During the action a revolting pop group pelted each other with food and then used us as a target. The director, Piers Haggard (?), suggested we should have thrown the missiles back.
Second reminiscence regarding trolleys involving John Midgley and a C12 has been posted before.
The scene crew once took pity on us when we had 2 trolleys to take back and loaned us their "Teddy", almost like F1 compared to the weedy things we had to use.
Patrick Heigham
Extra story.
As a freelance sound guy (having moved to film), I worked for several USA channels, one of which was Entertainment Tonight. A cameraman and I would go throughout Europe, picking up interviews with the stars etc.
One such job took me to Majorca, where we joined the boat playing the part of Onassis’ yacht in the miniseries Onassis and Jacqui Kennedy.
My delight on boarding was complete – when faced with collecting the background footage, we need co-operation from the feature crew. Having worked in Features, I was overjoyed to find that their Sound Mixer, Jim Willis, was one I had worked with as Boom – no problem with getting a radio feed of the dialogue on rehearsal and take.
Their camera operator was Jimmy Turrell, whom I knew from “Fiddler on the Roof”, and the Director —- Waris Hussain!!
We didn’t manage the interview with Jane Seymour on that day, so had to stay over. My cameraman put the batteries on charge in his hotel room overnight, but when we set up on a beach location, none of them were charged.
Jim spotted that we were in difficulty, and asked if we realised that our hotel was 110v.
Our charger was not self sensing!
With a few words in Spanish, Jim had the genny fired up and a cable fed out across the beach for us to run our camera off the mains power supply.
So – IT IS WHO YOU KNOW!
To this day, I believe the US Director had no idea how we pulled it out of the s**t!
