Geoff Fletcher

I found this in my BBC box:

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The numbers in circles are of course indicating the Angenieux zoom buttons, as is "N" for narrow – i.e. the tightest it would go. 1 to 4 were set to correspond with the 35, 24, 16, 8 degree fixed lenses on the old turrets. I used "W" for the wide end of the zoom. Using our buttons like this, plus the old blue timber crayon to mark the ped position, meant the shots worked 90% of the time provided the actors hit their marks, and also meant that we didn’t get in each other’s shots.

When I moved to Anglia it was a nightmare on studio dramas at first because only the ex BBC guys like Jules Greenway and me used this button setting / ped position marking method. All the others mostly just framed their shots as they remembered them without ped position marks and using whatever zoom angle worked, so they were never in the same position twice and kept getting in shot. Gradually things improved, however.