This page is a bit of a miscellany …
Dave Plowman
I well remember working on a minor game show for Sky. Made on location. Depending on how far from London, might involve an overnight stay. With a production manager determined to keep costs down.One such was a retreat – not much used weekdays. Miles from anywhere. No catering of any sort. And signs everywhere saying no drinking or smoking on the premises. Of course the PM etc and cast were put up in a nice hotel close to the location.
Alan Taylor
Schemes to fob off the crew with lesser arrangements don’t always go to plan.I did an OB at the Lord Mayor’s Banquet. Just before our dinner break, we had a bit of a tech problem and I told the EM to take the crew and go ahead of us, but to save five places for the sound crew. When we sorted out the problem, we entered the labyrinth of the Banqueting Hall in search of the crew dining area.
Having got totally lost, I spotted a guy who looked like he worked there and asked where the BBC dining facilities were. He asked if we were the five from the BBC. I said yes and we were escorted into a rather splendid little dining room and fed with the most delicious food.
Just as we were finishing, the producer walked in along with four members of the production team and were dismayed to discover that we had eaten their special meal.
There wasn’t time to prepare replacement food for them, so they had to join the crew for beer and sandwiches ( without any beer ).
Nick Ware
The opposite of that happened to me and ‘my’ cameraman, plus our American AP, a local spark, and an interpreter, when in Bucharest shooting a ‘piece’ about the Romanian Olympic gymnasts. Young girls, incredibly fit and talented, but so skinny-looking that you would never believe they had the strength to do what they do. They were all orphan children, brought together for the specific purpose of training as gymnasts. Come lunchtime we were shown to a table that was supposedly for us in amongst all the gymnasts. I’m not sure what we ate, but it tasted fine and was most welcome. As we finished eating, our fixer came into the room looking a bit sheepish, and seeing us there, she said: “You didn’t eat that food did you?” We said we had, and thank you very much. She told us we were supposed to be in another room altogether. “You shouldn’t have eaten what the girls get – it contains steroids and other substances to delay the onset of puberty in young girls”.Well, suffice to say ‘my’ cameraman did act a bit strange for a while, but as far as I know, it didn’t have a lasting effect!
Pat Heigham
I recall a shoot for a corporate video, about continental supermarkets, so we bummed around Northern Europe for a few days. Arriving at a nice little hotel in Belgium, and as we had flown between locations, whereas the producer had driven his Porsche, we were well into dinner before he appeared. Took a look at our plates and said “Smoked salmon! You ordered smoked salmon?”Our spark, never one to hold back said “I expect to eat as well on location, as I do at home!” The client who was with us, said ”Well, I hope to eat better!”
On another shoot for the same producer, he was castigating the cameraman for keeping him waiting between locations.
The cameraman retorted that he didn’t have a ‘show-off’ Porsche and wasn’t going to exceed the limit on a motorway!
Roger Bunce
My ageing Cameraman’s eyesight is now so fuzzy, I’m struggling to see the screen. (Fear not, I have an appointment with a laser tomorrow.)Pat Heigham
Sorry to hear about the eyes. Do all ex-cameramen suffer the same, most of the sound recordists I know now wear hearing aids! I had two cataract ops done and now have better than 20-20 vision.From your and Bernie’s replies, I would say that we all seem to have followed the careers that we were happy in. I loved my time at Television Centre, LG, and TVT and the BBC gave me unrivalled training. But ever since seeing ‘South Pacific’ in the fleapit cinema in Ryde, I wanted to work in films, and on a musical. I’m delighted that I managed both.
I enjoyed every programme that I worked on at Television Centre, and I’ve said before, made some good friends with whom I’m still in touch.
Roger Bunce
The other problem for Cameramen is bad backs, due to heavy lifting. I never had this problem, because I was a goody-two-shoes who always obeyed the safety instruction which said – when lifting, always bend your knees, not your back. The result, predictably, is that my back’s fine, but my knees are buggered!Graeme Wall
I went on to do a lot of hand held work with cameras weighing a dozen kilos so I now have a twisted back!Doug Puddifoot
When we went one man operation in News, I had to carry camera, tripod, batteries, mics, a mains light and stand, and extension cable. Around 25 kilos. So I have a twisted back AND buggered knees.Roger Bunce
In my experience, most studio Cameramen end up a bit deaf in one ear. This comes from wearing one headphone. If we had any sense, of course, we’d alternate ears on alternate days. But we never did.David Wagner
Interesting. I always wore my headphones on my left ear and now I’m much more deaf in my right ear. Could that be because I was mostly in the Sound Gallery with very loud Sound Supervisors? Or it might just be hereditary, my mum was the same.Roger Bunce
Of course, anyone who worked on the studio floor, on "Top of the Pops", is likely to have ended up deaf in both ears – as were most of the singers we were recording.Vernon Dyer
At 76 my hearing is still fine (pardon?) despite a working lifetime wearing cans. Either I’m just incredibly lucky or it’s because of something I always did, and told my trainees to do, and that is as soon as you put your cans on, turn the volume down to the minimum level consistent with hearing what you need to.Dave Plowman
Quite. I spent much of my freelance life with an SQN 4S and Beyer DT48 cans. The latter not universally popular, but I liked them for dialogue recording. And in most circumstances had the SQN monitoring on minimum.And was surprised when standing in for another recordist just how loud they had them. My view was if you had the cans too loud, you’d not ‘pull’ quiet dialogue enough. And spend to much time worrying about extraneous noise.
Oddly, in a studio control room I tended to monitor much the same as others, level wise.
Vernon Dyer
We seem to have come quite a long way from ‘Americans’, but hey!Nick Ware
To bring it full circle back to Americans, then:I’m sure Dave D will corroborate with me the fact that if you’re working with Americans, you won’t need headphones. You’ll hear them plenty loud enough without.
Dave Denness
Ain’t that the truth!Pat Heigham
A movie I worked on, had an American First Assistant director, who was so used to working his bullhorn (loudhailer) that he raised it to his mouth even when he was two feet away from whoever he was talking to!Nick Ware
Wasn’t there a character in “Ready When You Are Mr McGill” who did that? Or somewhere similar? Pat will remember Arnie Ross, who certainly did it – for effect.Chris Woolf
It’s "Ready when you are, Mr DeMille" [as in Cecil B DeMille). A probably apocryphal tale, but good fun.Peter Neill
Nick’s right!“Ready When You Are, Mr. McGill” is a feature length TV drama, written by Jack Rosenthal. ITV produced two versions, in 1976 and 2003.
See: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ready_When_You_Are,_Mr._McGill
Chris Woolf
Amazing that that gives no hint of the origin of the phrase, even though it is obviously an intentional misquote from the legendary DeMille one.There are many versions of the joke, but all based on the epic-level crowd scenes that DeMille used to film, all of which needed multiple cameras because retakes were impossible.
Nick Ware
I did actually mean the Jack Rosenthal “McGill”. The film and TV industry poking fun at itself! No coincidence that McGill rhymes with DeMille. And the main character whose one and only line ends up on the cutting room floor. A true classic in my opinion.Shame that the only complete (2003) version on YouTube is overdubbed into Russian. I wonder what the Russians made of it!
