Alan Taylor
Was this the first Director’s Viewfinder?I spotted this little item in Radio Times, January 1938. I’m now trying to imagine how actors rehearsed with dignity while the director peered at them through a modified bog roll tube.
John King (the lovely Bristol based director, not that rascal from Kendal Avenue ) produced his home made device for lens selection at a site recce. It was a measuring tape with a metal flip-out aperture. He looked through the aperture, with the end of the tape close to his eye and extended the tape measure until he saw the shot he wanted. The tape measure then revealed that he would need a 16″ lens or whatever. He also had a x2 adaptor for it, which was a second, smaller flip out aperture, used when the telephoto lens size was longer than his arm.
Roger Bunce
Years ago, circa 1965, (purely for reasons of extreme silliness) I invented something similar. It was a tie – in the days when people wore ties – but this was an old tie which I had calibrated into lens angles. There were four painted marks, along its length, corresponding to the four lenses of a standard turret. You had to ensure that the knot was tied in the right place, but then – to see how the world would look framed by a 24 degree lens (say), simply grip the 24 degree mark between your little finger and ring finger; raise the tie until it is near horizontal, and taut; use your thumbs and forefingers to create a frame, in the traditional manner, and there you would see a 24 degree image from your viewpoint (very approximately!)Pat Heigham
Presumably a kipper tie would give you 16:9 widescreen?Mike Giles
Ah yes! John King! Arrived in Bristol from somewhere exotic in Africa, I believe it was, and began as a West of England Home Service announcer. He soon put the cat amongst the pigeons with the senior technical guys, who disapproved of people wearing casual clothing when reading the news, or whatever, and was the subject of many oaths muttered below the breath whenever he was in the booth. I couldn’t see what they were complaining about, but it has to be said the he was not of the same mould as our Senior Announcer, Hugh Shirreff (permanent plum in the mouth, even off mic), or two of his colleagues Douglas Vaughan, who had the perfect radio voice, and Douglas Leech who had the strongest of Devon accents, my dear, until he switched his mic on, when he adopted perfectly rounded Received Pronunciation, I suppose you would call it.Douglas Vaughan it was, who helped de-rig after a recording of the BBC Training Orchestra, for the Third Programme, and came into the Radio OB truck carrying two ST&C 4038s, (ribbon mics with strong magnets) which he promptly laid down on the programme tapes which were just inside the door waiting for a courier as they were wanted for playing up the line that evening. We thanked him profusely as he left and slapped the tapes back on the Studers to hear exactly what we expected ~ tapes totally unusable with large chunks wiped almost completely clean! I have no idea what was broadcast instead, but to my knowledge no-one ever told Douglas what had happened. I can’t imagine why we didn’t record in duplicate, even if a third machine had to run at 7.5 ips to cover the duration, but with only two machines built into the truck, we used both to achieve an overlap when the first reel was getting near the end.
But back to John King ~ he soon moved into Television Production and took over “Going for a Song” for a while, but that didn’t keep him happy for long and in no particular order, he took the Bristol OB unit to Cornwall to record a spooky drama in a delightful old Manor House, whose name entirely escapes me, but it was my first experience of location drama and I couldn’t believe the liberties that were taken with that very fine old building ~ I believe quite a sum was required to rectify the damage that had been done, particularly to the floorboards by hefty camera and lighting tripods and seemingly hob-nailed boots. We finished shooting that a day early and went to a deserted aerodrome the following day to fill in the available time by following polythene bags being blown across the countryside by the wind. The riggers were charged with chasing each and every one of the bags after they were out of shot and I think a year’s worth of expletives were probably expended during that one afternoon! I think this went out on regional TV to accompany some poetry, which also escapes me, but perhaps it was prescient of “Blue Planet” and the damage which polythene bags are doing to the world.
I also recall being in the gallery with him and watching another drama he had shot on film, I believe, which ended up with a man in a small tent reciting the Lord’s Prayer, very slowly, which John told me was every director’s dream ~ recording someone doing a meaningful Lord’s Prayer, that is, not a scene in a small tent, but I can’t say that I ever heard that wish expressed by anybody else.
The other memorable John King episode in Bristol was a pilot for a blokey programme, which I believe had the imaginative working title of “Men Only”. This involved a bit of Top Gear type car stuff, a bit of DIY, I fancy, and a naked lady on a high bed in silk sheets, blowing smoke rings. There was also a bit of poetry, involving an incredibly slow track-in to the reader, across the studio diagonal to gain length. I was tracking the Vinten Pathfinder (?), which was entirely manual and it was the very devil of a job not to speed up as you reached the distinct brow of the Bristol Studio A floor and we had to time the track to finish on a very tight close-up on the closing two words, without actually hitting the actor! I can’t remember anything else of the poem, but the closing words were “……AN EXCREMENT!” ~ said very loudly in a Brian Blessed sort of way. John proudly told us that Paul Fox loved the programme, but really didn’t think he could get nudity and swear words past Mrs Fox!
John’s son, of course, is the naturalist Simon King.
Alan Taylor
Whenever I saw the name John King on a forthcoming show, it didn’t matter whether it was the Bristol one or our London one, I had no doubt that it was going to be a great show to work on. I don’t know whether the two of them ever worked on the same show. It would have been confusing and fun in equal measures.We had a vision supervisor at KA also called Alan Taylor and we were always receiving mail intended for each other. We had different middle initials and I encouraged people to remember that A. P. Taylor did pictures, while A.S. Taylor did sound. There was an occasion when we were both working on an FA Cup preview programme with the West Ham player Alan Taylor. We had a photo taken of the three of us together.
When I went to Moscow for the 1980 Olympics, it didn’t surprise me that my airline tickets were sent to APT, such confusion was routine. However when I got to Moscow, I discovered that all my accreditation details were actually his, only my ID picture was really me. I had a discreet word with Frances Freeman the PA and explained that I was basically in Russia under a false identity and if anything went wrong, I would be relying on her to sort it out. When I got back to England I thought it best to warn APT that if he ever considered travelling to Russia, as far as the Russians were concerned, he had previously been there. He went ballistic and tore into the admin people for sending his personal details to the USSR.
After I went freelance another vision supervisor called Alan Taylor appeared on the freelance circuit and again people would confused us. He tended to get sent my call sheets, while I tended to get sent his cheques. He was at least ten years younger than me and unfortunately passed away unexpectedly. When word of the sad news circulated, some of my clients deleted me from their databases as they assumed that the older Alan was gone. It took me a couple of months of minimal bookings to suss out what must have happened and I had to make a few phone calls to delicately remind people that I’m still here.
Meanwhile, getting back on topic …….
As a postscript to my initial posting on this thread, bog roll inners had been superseded by the end of that year and in Dec 1938, a proper optical viewfinder was used during rehearsals, as seen in this clipping.
Roger Long
I did many films with John (and Simon) King.John would come into Shangri-La (the film hut) and expound on his latest epic:
- A 90 minute Rock Opera for BBC2 featuring Motown artistes
- An LE show with a singer he found by chance
- A Natural History show featuring the film librarian and young Simon
- 30 minute dramas shot on a shoestring in winter in Cornwall
- Endless Antiques
Many of his directors were from the antiques trade, knockers and runners – Robin Bastard from Plymouth, we buy junk and sell valuable Antiques, that sort of thing.
His shows were always a challenge, but they proved useful to develop technique and ingenuity. Sad when he died young.
Simon is a gifted filmmaker and natural history cameraman, shunned by the Beeb because of on screen placement of product…
