People on the Tech Ops “forum” have worked with the ADAPT project in the past
– see
http://tech-ops.co.uk/next/adapt-project-sound-technology-and-the-bbc-academy/
and
Discourse on TV Technology over the years.
The project has now gone “Live“
Bernie Newnham
https://www.scienceandmediamuseum.org.uk/whats-on/adapt-live —-
In BRADFORD.
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ADAPT, on its website, says:
“…Join us for a rare opportunity to find out what making early TV was really like 50 years ago. Get your hands on original kit and learn from the pioneers!
Pioneering ex-BBC television crews — responsible for bringing colour into our homes in the late 1960s — will appear live in our foyer along with much of the original kit they once worked with, including the early colour cameras Pye PC 80 and EMI 2001. These huge beasts, which take 4 people to lift and at least an hour to warm up, have been fully restored and can actually record pictures 50 years on.
The veteran crews and kit were reunited and filmed for Royal Holloway’s ADAPT project, which researches the history of television. ADAPT Live brings together crews, kit, and filmed findings for this special one-off event in Bradford. Stories, live demos and screen footage will show you how it was done in those early days…”
The series of events includes:
- Live outside broadcast with original kit from late 1960s/early 1970s
- Memory Booth: your chance to tell us what television in the early days meant to you
- Premiere screening of ADAPT’s filmed footage: our highly skilled veterans successfully recreate an outside broadcast using the original 1970s kit (Thursday only)
- The screening will be followed by a Q & A with our experienced directors, cameramen, sound and lighting engineers (Thursday only)
To find out more about the ADAPT project, visit the ADAPT website.
Ian Hillson
The National Science and Media Museum, Bradford, is well worth a visit – though it’s been quite a while since I did. Lots to see including an Imax cinema (the building used to be a cinema by the way) https://www.scienceandmediamuseum.org.uk/cinema/imax, plus the one man pres desk that came out of Leeds BBC when they used to do regional pres and local news and closedown in 1970/1980s.
The museum is bang in the city centre so it’s easy to find, though getting there is less easy now the London trains terminate in Leeds and not Bradford.
Geoff Hawkes
On the bill are “…Pioneering ex-BBC television crews…“.
I’m not sure I like the description “…huge beasts…” Steady chaps, these are our beloved old friends you’re talking about!
I wonder which cameramen they’ve got hold of?
Bernie Newnham
I assume the crew from the OB remake.
Geoff Fletcher
“…These huge beasts, which take 4 people to lift…”
Four men to lift an EMI2001?
We always did it with two when rigging OBs at Anglia!
I remember this well because when carrying one down some stairs at a college in Norwich one day, my oppo became distracted by a beauteous young damsel and missed his footing. Our up to then stately progress immediately degenerated into a wild Buster Keaton style gallop down the remaining three flights of stairs until we came to a crashing halt against the opposite wall of the corridor at the bottom. Fortunately for me, he was the one who got bashed against the wall at each bend of the stairs. We didn’t drop the camera, but some heated words were exchanged!
Ian Hillson
We were very undernourished “up north” – came from living in a paper bag in the middle of the road. [Ed: “Monty Python” reference].
Geoff Fletcher
I thought you all fed yourselves up on growlers and Theakstons.
Graeme Wall
Four people was the rule in studios, observed more in the breach though.
Robin Sutherland
“…we always did it with two…”
Possibly why you fell down the stairs then! So did we (do it with two) most of the time but we were supplied with a carrying frame with four handles like a stretcher. Rarely used. Two was the norm but three, two on the heavy end and one on the light [Buttimere] end if it was a long hike.
Demonstrated here by Chris Eames and Alec Wright. LO2’s last OB with EMIs 1980.
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Vernon Dyer
Lens in or lens out? Even with a studio 10:1 Angenieux it was a heavy beast – with an OB lens even more so, I should imagine. I don’t recall ever lifting one with less than 4, but then I never used a 2001 on location.
Pat Heigham
When I moved into the film industry, I noticed that the camera and grips chaps had the chippies knock up a carrying box for the blimped Mitchell 35mm and later Panavision cameras. This had removable shafts like a sedan chair, so four or two persons could easily carry the kit. Sounds a similar solution to the “stretcher”.
Dave Plowman
When I started doing location recording rather late in the day compared to some, I was amazed just how awkward the Urstacart traditional sound recordist’s trolley was. Perhaps just fine if you did a total de-rig before moving anywhere, but horrid to carry upstairs etc rigged.
So we set about designing a trolley more akin to a wheelchair. With handles high up so two could carry it upright upstairs with straight backs. And all the commonly used gear like mixer, radio mic receivers and monitor etc fixed down to it. And decent sized wheels so it could roll over things other than a perfect studio floor.
Robin Sutherland
Bernie is correct in thinking it’s a knock on from the Adapt project with North 3 that I and other OB Oldies got involved in last year. Sadly the scanner, North 3 will not now be present as major parking problems outside the Media museum were raised, so there will be a PC80 and EMI 2001 hopefully working in the foyer but in a derig setup. A real shame that the star of the show North 3 can’t now be there.
I can’t say I like the tone of the publicity blurb much but I suppose they’re trying to attract as wide an audience as possible.
I certainly didn’t feel like a “pioneer” when I joined OBs as it had already been going strong for thirty years.
I have been asked to attend this event as Dave Taylor [ex Manchester Camera Sup], who lives locally, is on holiday then. Pleased to see anyone who’s interested and in the area.
Peter Cook
Glad to see the senior cameraman leading and carrying the heavy end! Sounds as though Geoff had the light end?
Geoff Fletcher
Neither of us was Senior Cameraman – he was busy scoffing freebee cakes (it was a catering college).
We were carrying the EMI one either side , not one at each end. I was on the inside of the turns and not the outside wall side. We had a laugh about it later over a pint.
Chris Eames
I think that Peter is referring to Alec Wright, who was the Senior Cameraman on the heavy end.
Normally the best way to carry was for the person with the light end to face forwards, so that the rear man had a more comfortable lift. However, if Alec wanted to do it the other way round , then that’s how you did it!
Actually, I always found side by side an awkward carry. The weight was uneven (assuming that you had the sense not to have a lens installed), and it was impossible to get through a normal width door or narrow corridor. The route to the roof of Buck. House comes to mind.
Anyway, ‘elf’n safety would have a field day today. How do you get on with them on ‘vintage’ shoots?
Alex Thomas
I had the pleasure of working with the Pye Mk VI Image Orthicon Camera when I joined OBs in 1965. It had an iris motor that projected outwards about 10 inches in front of the lens plate. This projection was very prone to hitting walls, banisters and other solid items during rigging and de-rigging.
The Wembley in-house carpenter, one Paddy Colleen, was asked to make a wooden Pye Mk VI complete with wooden iris motor which EMs could take to site recces and try the thing up spiral staircases. Of course the Paddy Colleen camera didn’t weigh even a quarter of the real thing.
Many a cameraman silently cursed as knuckles were scraped and cameras got stuck in awkward places.
“Oh, I got Paddy’s camera up that staircase without any trouble” said many an EM.
I wonder where it is now.
Mike Giles
As a sound man, on OBs I still used to help cameras in derigging, especially as they would often bring back the mics from a distant location if we hadn’t got there in time.
On one occasion at South Cerney, for power boat racing, I had gone to take down a couple of mics out on a spur into the lake and as there were only two cameraman there to make a longish trek back, I volunteered to take the back end of the camera “stretcher”, with mics and stands balanced on top. It was a narrow path back with an eighteen inch drop to water close on both sides, and there were lots of brambles along the way. I managed the proverbial trick of standing on the end of a bramble with one foot and then catching my other foot in the loop. I went down and so did the back end of the camera, but I hung on, with much stumbling and grumbling from the two in front. Mics and stands slid off the top, but we narrowly avoided dunking the camera – can’t think what would have been said in high places if it proved that a sound man had lost one of our very few colour cameras in Bristol!
Terry Meadowcroft
The exhibition “… IN BRADFORD…” ?!
Aha! We do have something very precious up here! 🙂
Being a inhabitant of the lovely parts of Yorkshire that exist up here in the north of the County, like the North York Moors immediately to the North of me as I write, your discovery that the ADAPT Live that you were looking forward to attending is ‘up north’ must have been disappointing.
Think how I am daily disappointed that most things (Like the IPS, tech1@tech-ops.co.uk) are firmly London-centric and therefore exclude me, because I don’t have pots of brass, as we call it up here, for transport and overnights!
(But I am surrounded by beauty and silence!)
I have reserved my ticket (Bradford is only 70-ish miles away from here, and I have my bus pass) and am looking forward to being there on the 23rd, and even if I cannot think of classy questions to ask, at least I will hopefully meet up with friends/colleagues from way back then.
I wonder if any on this forum will make the journey? Bradford is quite clean now, and the air breathable since many o’t’looms were vandalised/shut down, so you do not have to wear your old clothes or a mask!
Pat Heigham
Some time ago, my film sound guild (Association of Motion Picture Sound) arranged a visit to the Bradford Museum. They had a working 3-strip Cinerama theatre as well.
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Cinerama have released Blu-Ray restored versions of some of the films. They have done a super job at evening out the joins between the three screens, and presented with a curved format which they call Smilebox. Very effective projected onto a large screen in Hi-Def.
Also, Bradford has several excellent Indian restaurants – well, it would, wouldn’t it!
John Howell
I remember on one of our rare visits to London my folks taking me to see “Cinerama Holiday” somewhere in the depths of Soho. It was very exciting until the middle projector broke down. The other two kept running and there was no sign that the middle one was being repaired so we left. This, according to my Dad’s diary was in the Summer of 1956.
Bernie Newnham
I was checking out the trip to Bradford on the train home this evening. From West Byfleet four hours and four changes, so not really a day trip.
I have been to the museum, and it was interesting and irritating . They do a tour of the behind the scenes stuff, and when I went all the other people due to be on my tour cancelled, and I had a personal guide. He took me into a large room full of old gear that was completely unlabelled. I said “I can find you people who know all about this stuff”, and later I emailed the main address and said the same thing. No reply, nothing. So when you’re there Terry, have a look.
