Nick Rodger
Please no one forget the gentle giant of the Camera Department, the wonderful Dave Mutton, and Crew 14: "Pennies from Heaven" and "Abigail’s Party" to name but two.
Alec Bray
I was on Crew 14 for a short time: Crew 14 was the crew for “The Idiot”: and the Senior Cameraman was Dave Mutton. Yes, he was a great guy: I think it was Dave who did the crab down the PBU for the opening titles each week. At this time (1966) Crew 14 was a general purpose crew. I left in mid-1967 so things obviously developed after that!
Geoff Fletcher
And of course Dave and Crew 14 did “Portrait Of A Lady”.
Pat Heigham
Going back a bit, I think I remember Dave Mutton as being the mole swinger on Crew 3 in the days when we occupied TVT – B&Ws and Billy Cotton, not to forget "Crackerjack"! (1992-95?).
I have some 8mm film of the Mole in full flight across the stage.
I think “Abigail’s Party” is available on DVD – a rare TV milestone production. “Pennies from Heaven”, also, I believe. I have the “Singing Detective”. I bought a B/W copy of “The Year of the Sex Olympics” on which I was Grams, from the BFI, cost £90 – I gather from Charles Norton, the young BBC archivist, that there is a colour version stored, so I’m working on him!
Dave Plowman
Dave didn’t need to ‘swing’ the Mole like mere mortals – more just chucked the bucket from hand to hand.
Geoff Fletcher
I can vouch for that . I was on Dave Mutton’s Crew T and again on his Crew 14. I was always a tracker by preference and ability as regards the Mole, but one day on Crew T Dave decided to swap us around.
I found myself swinging Dave – not an easy task even for a good swinger. After a while spent up front suffering in merciful silence at my ineptitude, he dismounted and swapped places with me. I was then moved through space effortlessly and at some speed as required. I looked back at one stage, and indeed, Dave was doing just what has been described – chucking the bucket about from hand to hand. Amazing!
Another little quirk concerning Dave M which I recall was that we had to have an outrider on the front of the Heron to hold the driving wheel down on the corner opposite Dave’s seat if he was working with it at right angles to the body of the dolly – especially if there was any sort of dip in the studio floor – R1 and R2 come to mind.
Crew 14 did a lot of other drama work as well as the aforementioned Portrait. “Les Miserables”, “Champion House”, “Hand Me My Sword Smith”, “The Dispossessed”, “The Resurrection”, “Detectives”, and “30 Minute Theatre” were all grist to Crew 14’s mill. I enjoyed my time on Dave’s crews – a good atmos and good mates to work with bar none, and a great guy in charge.
BBC Tech Ops: I wouldn’t have missed a second of it for the world!
Nick Rodger
Another example of Dave’s advantages over mere mortal cameramen was with a studio ped.
If any of the rest of us had to crab a ped straight left or right, you’d bias your body to the left or right of the ped, according to your preferred technique, and then push or pull it, utilising your body weight, and usually give it a shove with a foot as well.
What did Dave do?
Stand four-square behind the ped, left hand on his ram~rod straight pan bar, right hand on the ring~steer, and just move the bloody thing. Apparently effortlessly.
It still annoys me.
Clive Gulliver
Does anyone remember the days before ring-steer?
Preventing drift to left or right with no hands free meant nudging the tiller with one’s knee!
John Vincent
I got promoted to be Dave’s Deputy.
What a gent. Totally supportive whenever I had problems with them upstairs.
It was at the time when he had to go for overnight dialysis 3 times a week. It must have been tiring for him but you wouldn’t have known it. He was on top form.
So it came as quite a shock when he was called in for a transplant and didn’t make it through the operation.
He and the crew were down to do "Much Ado About Nothing" in the Shakespeare series. I was trusted to lead the crew on it. Thanks to amazing support from Dudley, John Morris and Bob Glaister we did a rather good job! We were nominated for a Bafta.
So it was mixed emotions.
Good memories of Dave. He showed me how to be a Proper Camera Supervisor!
