The Open, Royal Birkdale July 2017
Alec Bray
A very unexciting picture of The Open at Royal Birkdale taken from a car on the Formby to Southport coastal road.
We (me, wife, grandsons) counted some 5 hoists – all about the same height – that could be seen from this road – plus one scaffold tower.
(Click on the picture below to see larger version:
use your Browser’s BACK button to return to this page)
Alan Gomery
If I’d known you were driving down the road I would have waved at you, Alec!
You would have seen three camera hoists and two comms hoists.
I was on the 43m hoist behind the 7th Tee. It took pretty shots of Blackpool tower etc., visibility and wind permitting, but my main task was to track balls from the 6th tee, sideways tracks from the 6th fairway and reverse tracks from the 7th tee – a par three hole.
No glory of a hole-in-one for me on this occasion!
The hoists, with nice 95:1 zooms, tend to upstage the lower cameras, and tracking is usually easier the higher you go (but 7th tee tracking from behind, against the sun, was harder than the 7th Green facing track).
We on the hoists are, in turn, upstaged by the pesky aeroplane.
At 70, I think I might qualify as the oldest cameraman on site (total of 115) but I’m not sure, there are quite a few Oldies. We have all been asked to Carnoustie for the next Open….
Pat Heigham
I have the utmost respect for the poor guys on the high hoists!
Working at Wimbledon for either NBC or HBO, our PSC unit was taken up on the Simon hoist. Although I don’t mind heights, I found it most unnerving, as at full extension, one could not see what was holding you up! Like Pinocchio – No visible means of support!
Is it the case that to see the ball well enough, that the viewfinder brightness is screwed right down? Or do you have colour v/f these days?
Peter Cook
You can usually spot a dinky toy or matchbox series lorry at the far end of the steel box section to which the platform is attached. This steel arm is flexible and bends in the wind; like an aircraft wing this is handy because if metal does not bend under stress, it breaks. Which principle is why there is always a leveller under the camera panning head so that the horizon can be adjusted.
I have looked down on Nelson: his column is a mere 57 meters to my 65 last time I was on the corner of the Mall / Horseguards Approach for Trooping.
Now of course a drone can do much of what an aerial platform does. I have never understood the term ‘Cherry picker’ as I have found no cherry trees 200 feet up in the air!
See also: http://tech-ops.co.uk/next/Hoists and Cherry Pickers/
Not Golf, but “Growing Rich”
Geoff Fletcher
A picture taken from a 210 foot cherry picker we used on Anglia’s 1991 drama serial “Growing Rich” at Sennowe Park in Norfolk.
(Click on the picture below to see larger version:
use your Browser’s BACK button to return to this page)
I was expecting one of my crew to man the camera up there. It was also well worth it for the view over North Norfolk!
John Cox
While rehearsing for the arrival of Prince Charles at an especially built railway station at Caernarfon, Martin Wyatt the cameraman was up high on the cherry picker when the whole thing started to tip forward, back wheels in the air. Martin calmly called us on the talk back, Then he was safely brought down. You men were very brave!
British Grand Prix at Silverstone
Robin Sutherland
Alan Gomery has probably done more hoist cameras over the years than most, and has more hair-raising stories than most to tell about them…
When I find the pictures of one incident at Royal Ascot I’ll share them with you.
Here are a few of mine from The British Grand Prix at Silverstone circa 2004-5. I did the 72 metre hoist there for about 15 years. It was a great position that could see virtually the whole circuit and I was usually first in the lunch queue as it parked was at the end of the main site.
Memorable hairy moment was suddenly hearing and feeling the heat of an RAF Tornado passing close by at high speed below me! Post mortem established that local ATC were aware of its low level arrival but not that the BBC had a 72 metre hoist up at the time…
Pictures below show:
(Click on the pictures below to see larger versions:
use your Browser’s BACK button to return to this page)
My view from the top:
My hoist from another [total 5 in shot] (Silverstone 2003)
Me signing for the 10 hoists used on the OB (Silverstone 2004), nine carrying cameras and one for comms.
Tony Grant
Oo-er missus, hoists,
Not my favourite camera mounting, I had the (dis)pleasure of being on the hoist at the Nursery end of Lords in their worst recorded thunderstorm in the early 1980s. Fortunately, play had been suspended, and I descended as quickly as possible, but once down, huddling under a green tarp, I framed up a shot of the pavilion with a large expanse of black, thundery sky overhead. Whilst the shot was cut up, and the commentators were doing their best to fill in live on air, there was a fantastic flash of lightning in the air over the pavilion, followed by a satisfactorily deep roll of thunder. It almost made the previous day worthwhile, since the day before the wind had been extremely blustery, and for the whole of the day’s play I’d been wobbling around up there, feeling very (sea)sick. I doubt the shot was cut to more than once or twice the whole time (just as well, as it probably resembled the worst of today’s wobblycam).
On the subject of flypasts, I may have mentioned before when I was at Brand’s Hatch for the British Grand Prix (first year of the’ skirts’ – on Dingle Dell corner, extension pan bar to help, as soon as a car started to corner, I simply threw myself at the pan bar, and 90 per cent of the time managed to keep it in frame round the bend) but I digress. Before the race, there was to be a display by the Red Arrows, and for those of you who know Brand’s Hatch, the pit lane is possibly the lowest point on the circuit, with the main spectators on the opposite side to the pits on a large embankment. Over t/b we heard that the planes were about to arrive, and boy, did they – right down along the final straight! Even from my position, I could hear the huge volume of intake of breath from 30,000 odd spectators, above the flypast.
And even more off topic, it’s one of those things you have to experience live, I’d frequently seen them on TV but ‘in the flesh’ – wow! Same for fire eaters, I’d often seen their act on TV, but on one of the variety shows I did in TVC, we had a fire eating act, and I had the nearest camera – scorched? Even cowering behind the camera, I was close to meltdown. Thank goodness for the size of 2001s.
More golf…
Roger Long
I managed to kick Arnold Palmer’s ball off the green at Birkdale in 1968.
We were walking backwards with him hand held for Transworld Golf International.
The authorities were utterly dismayed, an Umpire was called. Arnie was cool and unflappable, a total gent.
I got ribbed by Jack Nicklaus but Phil Pilley, the producer, said nowt…
