One picture, lots of stories…

Here’s a picture taken on That Was The Week That Was, probably in 1963 –

Robin Sutherland found it on the Museum of the Broadcast Television Camera website, and it turns out to have been taken by cameraman Michael Barrett. Robin wondered who the cameraman in the picture was, taking his ease in a typical studio pose.

The answers ……

Doug Coldwell
This looks like Dickie Ashman (demon cyclist and George V look-alike ) .

John Henshall
It’s Dickie Ashman sitting on that pedestal!

Tony Crake
Is it Dickie Ashman? who was later a TM.

Peter Booth
That’s Dickie Ashman and probably with a roll-up in his hand!

Chris Wickham
I am pretty sure that the cameraman was the late great Dickie Ashman, for years the No 2 to Ted Langley. Dickie kept the crew running. He once told me he had not taken a day off work through illness in his life but sadly within six months of retirement he had passed away. He did not own a car but used his bicycle everywhere and was a pillar of the YHA. He was always full of fun and will be remembered kindly by all who knew him.

Clive Doig
Pretty certain this Dickie Ashman, who I believe was for a while on crew 4 in the late 50s. I certainly worked with him for a while. A great funny guy who had lots of stories. An ardent cyclist he used to ride a racing tricycle to work, which is an impossible velocipede to control. Once one has grown up, thrown away the stabilisers and is used to the two wheeled variety, you try to balance by leaning and simply go round in circles.

Dick Hibberd
I didn’t recognise him at first without his cycle clips on!
Or perhaps this was after his bike was run over by a steam roller, and Dickie lost his sandwiches, as well as his bike that day!

Colin Widgery
Dickie was late for work on one occasion and after the crew took the mickey at this rare event he explained he had been involved in a road accident.
He had been waiting at a junction when a steam roller came up behind and its central front bar caught the back wheel of the bike. The bike wouldn’t move and the steam roller didn’t stop and Dickie had thrown himself off and watched as the bike was severely bent.
The tyres were still in perfect condition and he wrote to Dunlop explaining the event and praising the high quality of their tyres. He was hoping for a free supply of tyres at the very least but all he got was a letter saying they would expect nothing less from their products.

I love a good story!

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EastEnders begins – a write up by Dave Howell

Dave with his Children in Need bow tie

Dave with his Children in Need bow tie

Dave Howell was one of the first people to work on EastEnders, as one of the two Gram Ops

This is a reprint of an article that appeared in “The Walford Gazette” in November 2004, (twenty years after the start of EastEnders) about the early days of the twice weekly ‘Soap’

From 1970 I was working as a ‘Soundie’ in Tech Ops at Television Centre on the general mix of programmes, from “Grandstand” to “Playschool”, “Dad’s Army” to “The Good Life” etc, etc.
In November 1984 was asked to be one of the two Gram Ops, (one for each Crew) to work on a new twice weekly Flagship serial drama.

Producer Julia Smith wanted it to be lively, raucous and have the reality of an east end market environment. So in mid November 1984, before we even shot one scene, John Relph (my Oppo on the other team) and I went off to Ridley Road Market with a Nagra Tape recorder to capture some new market and train sound effects etc. We were immediately struck by how much music you hear from various stalls in Markets! All non-clearable of course, but we did manage to get some clean and lively effects.
It started to rain so we decamped to a covered stairway to continue recording and would you believe it, a copper came up to us and said “Ello ‘ello, and what are you two up to then?” And we even had it on tape !!!

 

college park pub

The pub at the top end of Wood Lane in 2011

Whilst we were in the area we decided to go and see the east end square on which Keith Harris had based Albert Square (the original series designer, not the one with his hand up a green duck….) We were amazed to walk into Fasset Square and realised that 3 sides of Albert Square were an almost exact replica of what was before us. We walked into the garden, but when we turned round nearly jumped because there was a blooming great white building behind us that shouldn’t be there! It was a several storey white carbuncle of a building which was in fact a german hospital. But it didn’t belong there, not when you were used to Albert Square. I believe The Queen Vic was based on the College Park Pub at the top of Scrubs Lane W12.

The Queen Vic

John and I put a lot of effort into compiling various sound effects and music reels all spliced with colour coded leader (to supplement the BBC sound effects library on 7” 33rpm vinyl discs.) But as we were to sound dub in a Sypher suite at Television Centre we had to duplicate everything for there too. During a week of ‘Prep and rig’ in Elstree Studio C we were given the title music master ¼” tape and so started making copies of the various versions. I don’t think the ‘Honky Tonk’ version was ever heard again! I always seem to whistle the last piece of music I’ve heard, and twenty years ago I still had enough energy to go to the gym after a short 8 hour day’s prep. So all through the evening I was whistling the EE Sig tune thinking, no one knows this yet, but they soon will !

One of our FX wildtrack recording sessions involved going into a pub and getting some real east end pub chat. Unfortunately I saw the funny side of a group of sound guys all sitting with pints and a recorder in a bag but not talking, and I got the giggles, so a large chunk of the recording was useless!
Originally the EastEnders lot just consisted of Bridge St and three sides of the square (The B&B side was a later addition) The interior sets were all in Studio C using its own control room with an antiquated Neve sound desk left by the previous owners ATV.

Bridge Street

We used to have a ‘Tech. Run’ of the studio stuff in the Sets in Studio C, when the whole cast would ‘perform’ and technical crew would watch, listen and make notes of the complete action in story order. Bearing in mind that the cast were working on just two episodes at a time they were generally word perfect, but they did have the script well ahead and it rarely changed. I do remember how cold, gloomy and depressing it seemed in the studio with just the house lights on! My endearing memory of tech runs is of Anita Dobson and Gillian Taylforth giggling incessantly and Bill Treacher dashing onto the set with a cheery “Hello, y’alright son”

In the original rehearsal script the working title was “East 8” and dear Ethel’s dog was called Phillip, but by the time we got the camera script it had changed. Obviously less comedy potential from a royal than Ethel’s Willy !!!

The lot inserts were recorded (several times for perfection) in a small van that was called ‘Insert Unit 1’ and would drive into the lot and park up hopefully somewhere out of shot. It had 2 cameras and contained one reel-to-reel VT machine & VT Op, a Sound Supervisor, sound desk and Nagra ¼” tape machine, a ‘racks’ engineer to deal with colour balance, a vision mixer to cut between the 2 cameras and a production assistant to call shots and log takes. Generally the lighting director would be peering in through the door with black drapes round his head to see his contribution to God’s lighting. It was incredibly cramped and got unbearably hot!!!

The Inserts Unit

With long cable runs to the mics mounted on poles skilfully operated by the sound crew to ‘collect’ the sound, induction (breakthrough) of Radio 2 on 1500 metres Longwave often necessitated re-routing cables to minimise the interference from DJ’s David Hamilton, John Dunn, or The Jimmy Young show!
The radio Talkback system was pretty unreliable and apparently when it failed it was quite usual for 1 toot on the van’s horn to indicate that VT was up to speed and 2 toots for VT stopped!

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-lfODZmHlMc&feature=youtu.be[/youtube]

A trail shown before the series started

So it was a week in Mid December 1984 it really started, just 2 studio days with recording in the evenings only, down the line to Television Centre! We rehearsed all day, complete scenes, in story order, with cameras and booms rushing up and down between the only sets we had: Vic, Fowlers, Café and Launderette, Doctor Legg’s Surgery and a grotty flat. The studio cameras were the excellent, but enormous, EMI 2001’s which required one and a half hours line-up before recordings!

Last day of the 2001s

Lunch break was invariably an hour at 1 o’clock, we had a 15 minute tea break with a real tea lady with trolley and cakes at about 4 with all the cast & crew congregating in the long corridor, and Supper break was one hour from 6 plus a half hour Line-up. So we would record 7.30 – 10 pm at Television Centre.
We were crews that had been trained on ‘as live’ drama such as “Softly Softly”, “Onedin Line”, “Play for Today” & “Crackerjack” etc ! The tradition in those days was to provide as complete a programme as possible, and so I played in all the sound effects on-the-fly from three enormous ¼” tape machines, leaving only the Vic & Café music off until the dub, just in case of the occasional edit. Every time anyone opened any ’outside’ door it would be a gentle pull on the exterior fx fader and a lift of the high frequencies. Just think how many times that café door is opened in the average episode! Every phone or doorbell that rang, run up or downstairs, oov line, car horn & taxi arriving outside was played in. The east end brought to life with sound effects.

 

The very first scene included Den, Arthur & Ali coming up stairs, out-of-vision, entering a room to find the first character to be seen on Eastenders who was………Reg………. almost dead! The shortest part ever. The most memorable line in the first Fowlers Kitchen scene with all the family trying to get breakfast, was from the original Mark Fowler “Mum, where d’ya keep the bog rolls?” A classic!

There were rarely errors. We might pick up the odd shot for soft focus, boom shadow, or a line that went slightly awry, but Julia ruled with a rod of iron and woe betide you if you weren’t 100%.

I remember at the end of the 1st episode (Directed by Mathew Robinson) Nick Cotton had an out-of-vision shout on exiting the Vic. It sounded awful in rehearsals doing it just off the set, so I took him outside and recorded it outside for a very real ‘exterior acoustic’
We arranged with John Altman that we would play that line in off tape, but of course, pressure of the first night, he forgot and so we got both. Mathew growled and virtually climbed over the production assistant to berate us for causing a retake, even though it was in the pursuance of art!

Geoff Feld on an early episode

At the end of the second recording day I played the ¼” closing music and the Aston character generator operator was to cut between captions on the beat of the music. Unfortunately the chap was cutting anywhere but on the beat and so by take 3 Julia said “Cut, we’ll do it at the Edit” and the guy had to endure just a little wrath from Julia. We never played the closing music in the studio ever again. Then we were amused to have a drink in the Vic with practical beer pumps on the set, cast, crew engineers & production team all congratulating our combined efforts.

After the edit the Studio Sound Supervisor and Gram Op would dub their own pair of episodes at the end of the next week in Sypher 1 at TVC. Two sessions prep by the Gram Op & the following day to dub, when the roduction assistant and director would arrive. Quite a sociable affair.
This is when we would smooth any bumps that the VT edit had given and add music to Vic & café scenes from a selection of pre-cleared tracks that were predicted would be in the charts 6 weeks later for the Transmission date.

Sypher (borrowed till I get my own from VT Oldboys)

During the dub Mathew had been furiously scribbling notes and I thought we had a lot of changes coming, but after the review he said “Can we record a vocal track to the music in here?” So he persuaded his lovely welsh assistant to sing his lyrics to the EE Sig tune and we recorded it on ¼”. And pretty good she was too!

So the routine had started. We continued honing our operation to a peak by transferring all the background effects to cart machines that would play them in an endless loop.
Every door open/close, lock, bolt and back gate was recorded, edited, catalogued and card indexed, and all duplicated for TVC! As we rarely met the other team we started a ‘Dear Dave/John‘ Diary to pass information on.

Just before the first episode transmitted on Feb 19th 1985 we were all called up to Bridge St for a team photo of the production & technical team, similar to the ones that you see on display of the cast. A snapper from The Telegraph was up on the bridge looking down Bridge St towards the gardens so we arranged ourselves accordingly and stood around for ages while the guy took about 30 photos.

I duly bought a copy of The Sunday Telegraph interested to read the article about the BBC’s newest programme and to see the double page photo. It was in the early days of colour prints in newspapers and it was awful. It was all out of colour registration so everyone had a fuzzy aura! At least the article was in focus!

After my first 6 months on EE passed I was back to TVC for a variety of other live & recorded programmes to allow another gram op onto the rota so we had some cover for leave etc.

Many changes occurred such as afternoon recordings and recording-out-of-order as the production process evolved. The Launderette 2nd shift arrived with June, and Pam followed.

Even VT machines on site after a whole recording session was lost when a digger went through a cable between Elstree and TVC !!!

In between working on other programmes, I have been back working at Elstree on and off ever since, in recent years as Sound Supervisor.

EastEnders really does seem like an old friend. (One you want to shout at occasionally !!!)

Dave Howell

Sound Supervisor

2004

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Stories 6

Diaries by Bernard Newnham

All cameramen keep diaries, because it’s the only way they know when they are working in a very irregular lifestyle. I stopped being a cameraman in 1977 – 25 years ago as I write – but I still have all the diaries from my 11 years in tech-ops.

On the rare occasions I look at them I always regret that I wasn’t any kind of Samuel Peyps. The days just have a programme title and a studio. For instance, on 22nd to the 24th November 1967 I was in TC3 working on a Wednesday Play. That’s it – I know no more. The 20 year old me had no idea that the Wednesday Play would later be regarded as a milestone in the development of British television.

Of course, for tech-ops anoraks, the date and place tell a lot about the technical aspects of the production. It would have been shot in black and white on six Marconi MK4 cameras, probably all with turret lenses – except perhaps for poor old camera 6, who may have been lumbered with a large Angenieux zoom lens with a dodgy “quick start” servo. Camera one may have been on a Mole crane, or if unlucky a Mk1 Heron – the one without the pedals, and some poor tracker would have suffered the whole three days trying to hit very accurate marks with the machine from hell!

The play would have been rehearsed for most of the three days, and recorded in scene-sized or larger chunks on tape or 35mm film. Video tape machines were the earliest VR1000 2-inch type, and any editing would require physical cutting of the tape. If the production decided to do this, it had to actually buy the tape from VT, so most tried not to (and that’s the way much valuable archive was lost). This particular drama probably could have afforded it, but they might have preferred to cut 35mm film instead. One of the jobs of junior chaps like me was to go down to the studio during recording line-up, and uncap a camera and turn off the orbitting so that film recording could set up. I used the time practicing crabbing and craning in the hope that some perspicacious senior cameraman would notice a genius – but either I wasn’t or they weren’t, generally.

Picking another arbitrary date from an arbitrary diary – TC3 28th September 1970 1130-2215, followed by 29th Sept 1000-2230. A typical two day drama schedule. By now, three years on, TC3 is colour, with EMI 2001 cameras – the best of studio colour cameras and in use for 20 or more years. The drama was Jude the Obscure, with Robert Powell, newly a star from Doomwatch, as Jude. The crew had done all of Doomwatch, so we were all good friends, but as the drama became gloomier each episode, so even cheerful people like Robert became ratty. A high – or low – point came with the nude scene. We’d been working up to this for a couple of episodes, and the actress really didn’t want to do it. When the time came, the atmosphere was electric – she was only going to do it once, and those of us involved were incredibly nervous. My colleague on the next camera over had to track in past her. It was fine on rehearsals, but when she finally got her top off on tape, he crashed loudly into the bed and the shot wobbled badly. That’s the way it stayed. We all have our embarrassing moments, and I was glad that one wasn’t mine!

I only opened two pages in the diaries, and there are around 4000. Each one sparks memories of the time when television was the daily centre of our culture – and we were there!

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I thought of trying to write an intro to this next piece to explain what “Pres A and B” were and other relevant stuff to help visitors, but I’ve decided not to – if you weren’t there you won’t understand what this is all about – you just need to understand that once upon a time, making tv was such fun….

From Mike Cotton…

I’m sure you remember the procession of Sound people sent to mix in Pres, I did my share and also volunteered to stay in Pres B for quite a while. It was the only chance we had of mixing music then.

It was hard work on one’s own but great fun. I even chatted to Paul MaCartney when he was in the gallery sitting next to me watching his then girl friend Jane Asher being interviewed. My daughter was disgusted I didn’t get his autograph! Then there was Kiri Te Kanawa in her early days – couldn’t get the microphone far enough away to avoid overload – no such things as attenuators then.

Fanny Craddock standing on her BK6 (lanyard mic) and the mic falling onto the floor and all the standby stand mic picked up was her thumping hell out of a chicken. Being accused of racism (jokingly I hope) by Larry Adler. I’d recorded a backing track with the musicians without him being there and on transmission played the last section in after his solo in the wrong place! I was given signed copies of two “Hollies” albums after a 1/2 hour show directed by Steve Turner – I hoped this would not be counted as Payola.

All those times down in Hospitality – Tom Corcoran had a wheeze of pouring the sherry away and filling it up with Whisky as they only replaced empty bottles. Unfortunately after a couple of such escapades they gave us a different trolly so some poor sherry drinking person had a shock. One evening I was asked to entertain a pop group in B205 until the studio was ready. The group didn’t turn up but I had to check the contents to see they were potable. I only ever got stopped once on the journey home, I was driving a Land Rover at the time, for one of the side lights not working. How ever did we survive unscathed in those days before the breathaliser and how do you explain getting home at 5 in the morning having spent the night in VT watching “City Varieties 100th edition”, at least thats what it was labelled!

The only sour note came when **** (if you were there, you can insert appropriate name. B.) heard that “Humph” was going to play and insisted on mixing it. I don’t think he had ever worked so hard with the primitive facilities we had available – no limiters and echo room 2 if we were lucky and what microphones weren’t in use down below.

Pres A……..

I think the scariest bit was down to Pat Hubbard. In order to release the “Voice” he got us to record the VT sound and then add the OOV to it and then VT would record in sound only the composite sound track. It involved getting the pip at -4 synced up. The only item I missed in the years I was up there was when “Daniel Christianson” (Ray Moore under an assumed name so that he could be paid as freelance whilst still having a BBC staff job. B) and I were sent off the bar. We returned to see the transmission lights going out and Pat Hubbard saying ” don’t worry, I’ve done the sound before” It was Christmas time after all.

I never could work out how one camerman did the late weather.They threatened to make me do it one night. One night we recorded the sound of the late weather on the tape machine and got Jack Scott to review the VT (“Was it OK? Jack”) and played the sound in with a slight delay. He didn’t even notice it. He towed a huge caravan round Scotland with a Morris 1100. Bert Food used to amuse us with his days on weather ships in the Atlantic and how they nearly claimed salvage on an abandoned ship.

Dick Graham, another regular OOV voice, could speak backwards and on replaying forwards it sounded quite reasonable. He even managed to carry on when we put his own sound from the replay head of the recording tape machine back to his headphones. He used to regale us with tales of “Dwoil Flunking” (don’t ask) at village fetes. Putting network sound onto the studio speakers took some getting use to and a degree of trust on both sides so that the weather man didn’t jump the gun and cause a late fade and we didn’t fade up before the hand over had finished. Deaf aids, what are they?

Who was the director who started his trail for the forthcoming attactions with a close up of the word “TURD” and came out in seies of zooms to reveal the full SaTURDday. I think he got sent to Manchester as them upstairs didn’t appreciate it. He also insisted on having the series “British Empire” called “Brutish Empire”. Pehaps he came from the antipodes. Film ‘xx and “call me Chuck” Heston.

Some people resented having to work in Pres, but I thoroughly enjoyed my time up there, apart from Christmas time. I still have some of the (audio) tapes after, heaven forbid, 35 years (and it don’t seem a day too long. Sorry, wrong song) The AP shift pattern meant I could “dig” with the Museum of London all over Roman Brentford on days off , and on those days when “B” wasn’t wanted until 1600, were spent digging and then a quick shower and off to work. I did this for about 7 years off and on.

The enforced STO course I went on was spent drawing Roman Pottery and small finds for publication and I even managed to pass with 66% without any work at all which was more than some of those who sweated over the exam (We SA1s were incumbents whose posts had been uprgaded and didn’t need to pass but had to go to satisfy the requirements) The vision lads did tell me to answer the vision questions with “PAL corrects errors in hue at the expense of saturation” and “Second shelf operation cures moire patterning”, what ever that means. The other memory is of Graham Wilkinson only exceeding 100mph going uphill on the M40 and passing cups of coffee between vehicles going at high speeds.

Don’t tell the grandchildren!

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Stories 5

A few memories of Riverside Studios by Peter Ward

I was hoping that recent trawls for missing BBC programmes would unearth 35mm copies of ‘Troubleshooters’, the BBC drama series about the oil industry. In the mid-sixties I took part in a short lived BBC trial using 35mm Arriflex cameras with an industrial type vidicon camera bolted to the side deriving its image from, I believe, a special mirror shutter fitted to the Arris. I think a similar system using Mitchell cameras had been called ‘AdVision or ‘AdiVision’.

The intention was to produce ‘Troubleshooters’ in the normal way ­ a two day rehearse/recording using three cameras as if recording on tape but instead of a video tape master, the end result was to provide a 35mm film copy that could be sold overseas without the degradation of converters. The recording took place at Riverside Studio 1 and the show was rehearsed and shot as a multi camera production.

The vision mixer cut between the non­broadcast industrial cameras to provide a video ‘guide’ track whilst also running the Arriflex cameras just before each shot was taken. Her job was to economise on film and therefore she would run the appropriate film camera from the gallery just before it was required and when it was up to speed, cut to the industrial vidicon then run the next film camera, cut to that, and then stop the first camera. On a fast cutting sequence the cameras were left running but the system hiccup from the cameraman’s point of view was that as the film camera got up to speed his picture, derived from the shutter, broke up completely and only settled mini seconds before the shot was to be used. At the crucial moment when the shot was needed, after re­positioning and framing, the viewfinder picture broke up and by luck and by golly you hoped that it was sharp and framed at the point the picture settled and you were instantly cut to. Film from all the cameras were then edited against the ‘non-broadcast’ video master.

But as cameramen, our troubles did not end there. The 35mm Arriflex, heavily blimped, were hefty items to crab and crane around on their peds. We attempted to shoot ‘Troubleshooters’ with normal video camera development but found it an uphill struggle. When we saw the finished result ­ the film from the three cameras edited together and projected on a normal cinema screen we discovered even worse problems. The low quality industrial cameras provided a low quality viewfinder and the focus zones were so much more obvious on a large projected image than they had been in the viewfinder. Any camera movement on shot jumped and bumped over Studio 1 floor and that gave us cause for concern as well.

The condition of Riverside Studio 1 floor was the result of a number of ‘tough’ productions across it in the preceding years such as ‘Six Five Special’. There was a musical called ‘Carissimia’ with Ginger Rogers and David Hughes set in Vienna complete with mini canal and Gondolier – the canal leaked during transmission.
And there was a Western (I think starring Rod Steiger) using Studio One and Two. I believe the production could only afford one horse so it was constantly led back and forth at the end of the western street in long shot.
Hancock, Quatermass, Dixon of Dock Green and an ill-fated weekly soap ‘Starr & Co’ also came from Riverside.
A rowdy gang of teddy boys once threatened to disrupt a live transmission of Six Five Special. Their favourite “joke” was to stand on camera cables and bring you to a shuddering stop. An enterprising floor manager a few minutes before transmission ran into Studio Two where Dixon was being rehearsed to follow on from Six Five and enlisted the help of a number of police “extras”. The South Kensington actors in uniform enjoyed their moment of glory and cleared the offending teddy boys out of the studio.

Riverside Studios, before TV Centre was opened, was better equipped than the Grove and was certainly a more pleasant place to work. There was a terrace outside Studio 1 overlooking the Thames which was a favourite ‘resting’ place during summer afternoons. It was often used to mount a camera for the Boat Race but for one edition of Barry Bucknell’s ‘Do­ It ­Yourself’ programme, the director put a camera out on the terrace. The programme often started with a shot of the item that Barry was going to build or repair. For this edition, the camera panned across Hammersmith Bridge at the top of the show, no doubt attracting considerable interest from do­it­yourself enthusiasts across the UK who fancied themselves as hardboard bridge builders.

Barry was known by sound mixers as the hesitant hammer. He had a trick of starting a sentence, raising his hammer as if to strike thereby causing the sound mixer to pull back the fader to avoid an overload. Barry would then speak a few words to finish his sentence forcing the sound mixer swiftly to bring the mod back up again just at the moment Barry crashed the hammer down wrapping the PPM needle around the end stop.

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The First Time I Tracked a Mole Crane by Roger Bunce

1965. I was a very junior trainee Dolly Operator, newly arrived at TV Centre. And I hadn’t been to Evesham yet, so my ignorance of all things technical was profound. I was rigging in Studio E, Lime Grove, when I received an urgent call from Allocations. Could I go immediately to the Studio next door, where the Crew were short handed?

I hastened to Studio D. It was “Blue Peter”. The Crew had rigged and rehearsals were just beginning. They urgently needed someone to track the Mole Crane. I hurried to the Mole. The Cameraman was Mike Figini. He was offering a Wide Shot of presenter Christopher Trace, who was sitting in a mock-up of a tube train.

Even as I climbed aboard Mike was signalling me to track in to a closer shot. I had never used a Mole before, nor even seen one, and, having missed the rig, I had had no opportunity to ask anyone about it. I quickly checked the controls. It all seemed straightforward enough; two throttle levers and a steering wheel.

Then I looked for the “Dead Man’s Handle”. The only dollies I had tracked before were the Heron and the Vintern Motorised. Both of these have a Dead Man’s Handle, i.e. a pedal on the Tracker’s platform, which had to be held down by the Tracker’s bodyweight in order to activate the motor. It worked as a safety cutout. Should the Tracker dismount or fall off the platform, the pedal would be released and the motor would immediately be disabled. I saw a bar, just in front of my toes. I put my foot on it and it depressed satisfactorily. Clearly, this was a pedal. It must be the Dead Man’s Handle.

Thus after a split-second’s self-training, and feeling that I knew what I was doing, I attempted to track in. I put my foot down firmly on the pedal and pushed the throttles forward. The whole crane shuddered and trembled. Then it began to move forward, very slowly, in a series of jerks and twitches. Despite holding the pedal down with my full bodyweight and pushing both throttles fully forward, the Mole was only managing a very reluctant, stuttering movement. Everyone was staring at us, puzzled. Evidently there was a fault on the crane, but we would sort that out later. The priority now was to line up the shot.

After a long embarrassing judder, Mike Figini felt that the shot was tight enough and signalled me to stop. So – I took my foot off the pedal – – –

The crane shot forward like a rocket.

Instinctively I stamped my foot down again, and pulled back the throttles. We stopped violently, but not before Mike’s Mid-Shot of a smiling Chris Trace had crashed into a Big Close Up of a terrified Chris Trace! We had almost pinning him against the set. To his credit, Mike held focus remarkably well. And, once he had recovered from the shock, Chris Trace thought the whole thing was very funny. In this drastic way, I first learned that a Mole Crane does not have a Dead Man’s Handle – just a brake.

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Stories 4 – Pres B

Here are two not-tech-ops stories about Pres B

These are re-prints from stuff I’ve written elsewhere……..

Pres B was a small studio on the fourth-and-a-half floor of Television Centre. It isn’t there now, as it was destroyed for some network control rooms that were used for a very few years then abandoned. Pres B was pretty historic, as it had hosted Late Night Line Up and it’s descendants such as Colour Me Pop and Old Grey Whistle Test, and lots more. The famous mechanical Christmas Symbols lived there for a few days each year. It had hosted Film 90-something since Film 90-something had been Film 70-something, and also Points of View.

When Producer Choice came along, the studio scheduling department became a cost centre, renting building space (the studios) from Premises Operations, and selling it on to productions. As the selling process went through, the overhead cost grew heavy with the weight of employing more accountants, on top of the weight of the film library, the gram library, the programme complaints department, etc etc. So BBC studios cost more than outside studios, and as producers could choose to work anywhere, they took their BBC money – which could have been spent inside on facilities owned by the BBC – and spent it elsewhere, turning it from an internal cost to real cash – effectively chucking money away. It made sense on a producer’s budget sheet though, because they spent less of it at Teddington – or wherever – than they did in the building where their office was.

The producer of Film 90-something, Bruce Thompson, and the producer of Points of View, me, Bernard Newnham, thought all this was pretty stupid, and carried on using Pres B. It was a few yards from my office, so very sensible and convenient to use.

Then things started to go wrong for the studio schedulers. They couldn’t balance their budget – the one they didn’t have before Producer Choice. Their “customers” – as they were now, rather than colleagues – were producers with cash budgets that were always being cut back. The producers made savings on their balance sheet by going outside, or turning the office into a studio. So the main studios weren’t being used, but the studio people’s overheads didn’t go away. They needed to cut back, so they – for reasons I don’t know – decided to close Pres B, and stop paying rent to Premises Operations for it. They put a padlock on the door so we couldn’t sneek in.

Studio Operations set Points of View up with alternative locations, initially in the under-used large studios. It was very strange to do PoV in TC1 – 100x100x50, built for huge operas and LE shows. We were in a tiny corner. Then one autumn they didn’t have any room, so they offered us 13 weeks at Elstree. We had a disused studio – B, I think – with our own small OB truck outside next to an OB VT truck. It was all quite fun, apart from the cost of going there each week, which was added to our budget so we could afford it. After the quarter was up, we went back to touring the big studios.

Then one day, on the way to an edit, I bumped into our studio scheduler lady in the corridor “I’ve been meaning to tell you”, she said, ”we don’t have a studio for you next week”.

“What????”

Points of View was, in those days, a BBC1 staple – 8.50 Wednesday evening every week for years . “I’m sorry but we’re unable to bring you Points of View this week, as a studio wasn’t available” . In earlier days they would have fallen on their sword rather than not give us a studio, but now we were just a rather minor customer. 9 million viewers each week meant nothing.

Enough, I thought, and joined in the game. I called OBs and asked the boss a hypothetical question. Then I called Head of Premises Operations and asked if I could rent his Pres B for a day each week.

“It belongs to Studios” he said.

“No it doesn’t, they gave it back to you – put a padlock on the door”.

“It has their gear in it”.

“Doesn’t matter, OBs will bring a truck round the back and run cables over the roof, it’ll be an OB”.

“I’ll have to think about this….”

In the meantime I needed a studio in a few days, and after various trips and discussions, went to SSVC at Chalfont.

Then, completely unannounced,  I got a memo from Studio Operations – they’d agreed with Premises Operations to only rent Pres B from them on days when they had a booking, thus paying no pretend money when they weren’t getting pretend money from us.

They removed the padlock. I had played the silly Producer Choice game and won.

So after one week at SSVC, we, and Film thing, were back in Pres B as if we’d never been away. What a wonderful thing Producer choice was.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

And……

Making a trail for a Hitchhiker radio programme on TV – where the pictures aren’t all in your head.

First go to http://www.tech-ops.co.uk/bern/h1.wmv where you will find a somewhat battered copy of the subject of this piece.

January 1980…..

I must admit that the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy passed me by when it was first on radio. Given that I spent huge amounts of time working in television and actually being at TV Centre, it isn’t too surprising.  As a promotions producer in the BBC Presentation department I worked a three weeks on and one week off shift pattern, month after month, with very long days in the building.  We really didn’t get out much, and we slept away much of the week off.

In each block of three weeks, the three members of a promotions team generally made 10-15 trails – that’s not including “next week, tomorrow, tonight” versions of the same thing – all for programmes in the “operational week”,  the third one. The most prestigious and difficult thing was regarded as the Radio Times trail.  Of course, this was really an advert, and rather against the rules, but had been made since time immemorial so had kind of grandfather rights. What you had to do was make a trail for one or more programmes, and sort of notice that they were the ones featured in this week’s Radio Times.  It was regarded as a chance to be original, and given the pressure of time, was often the only chance there was to do something that wasn’t just programme clips edited together.

Most Radio Times front covers featured a tv programme, but radio was grudgingly allocated a certain number each year.  In week 4 1980 (19-25th January)  it was their week, and they picked Hitchhiker. Series one was being stripped through the week as a intro to series two, so although series one had been on several times before, this was in effect a high profile launch.  As tv promotions producer for that week, I first took notice of the things we would have to trail around the back end of the previous promotions cycle, before the off week. I discovered that there was an LP of the first Hitchiker series and got hold of it from BBC Records. This was the first time I’d listened to the series and I quite enjoyed it, though I wouldn’t say I was a  huge fan. It has to be said that after 14 years in tv by then, and having worked on many programmes in my days as a cameraman, I could never really be a huge fan of anything made in the factory where I worked. We used to play inside Daleks in the scenery runway, whilst Dr Who fans obsessed outside the gates

What you could always do with a radio cover was chicken out and do a few tv programmes featured inside the magazine and just mention the cover story in passing.  Unless I had a workable idea I was certainly going to do exactly that. I must admit that the challenge of making a trail for a fantasy radio programme did appeal, but I needed a visual idea which I would have to think up myself.  After this long time I have no memory at all about how the idea came into my head. Actually, one thing I’ve discovered is that I can never work out where original ideas come from. They don’t happen too often, and seem to just pop into your head. In this case, before the “chicken out” deadline came along, I had that good idea.  I would show a version of the Guide, though not an actual book – at least, not one for humans.  I decided that out there somewhere in the universe aliens would have a prism as the book. I thought that if I shone different colours of light through the prism I would get appropriate rainbow effects – sort of words for aliens.  This was of course well before the age when computers would do this sort of tv effect. When the Hitchhiker tv dramatisation came along the following year they would use prosthetics, plywood and 35mm film animations, and they had a decent budget.

When the cycle of week 4 began on Monday of week 2 and ten days before the first transmission of the Radio Times trail on the Wednesday of week 3, I asked the props people to find whatever prisms they could come up with.  I wrote a script for Peter Jones and got in touch with Geoffrey Perkins, the producer.  It turned out that they were making series 2 at that moment, so it would be convenient for me to go along and have Peter record my material during their time.  From endless trail making I had an ability to mimic styles of writing of various shows, and the team, presumably including Douglas Adams, happily accepted what I had written. Mr Adams wasn’t a familiar face in those days, so I have no idea whether he was there or not. Peter recorded his piece onto quarter inch tape.

Back at TV Centre I asked our senior graphics designer to Letraset “Don’t Panic” onto the end of one of the prisms that had turned up from props. I do remember him saying “just that?”.  He obviously hadn’t heard the programme either.  Lying around in the corner of the office was a sheet of card with a shiny textured surface, also a trainee, a somewhat irritating one, to hold it up and wiggle it as required.  The promotions turntable would come in useful too.  That was it until the day in the studio, Wednesday of week 3, a few hours before transmission. I had a dozen or so other trails to make.

On the Wednesday we had the afternoon studio session scheduled to us.  It would start as always at 14.30 and run till 17.00. That was our slot, with no extensions, and we would have had a good number of other trails to make in addition to the Radio Times. The good thing was that nothing else would need much in the studio itself, apart from the odd caption or two, so I could set up with plenty of time and space.  We were working in Pres B, as our studio, Pres A next door, was being refurbished. Pres B is famous as the original Old Grey Whistle Test studio, and I as I write this the tv is running Guitar Heroes at the BBC on BBC4, with a video of The Who playing in the same small studio.   I pulled around the black cyclorama as a background and set up the prisms that I had in a group on the turntable and set it going. I have to admit that I still didn’t quite know what it was all going to look like. What I wanted was a fan of rainbow light which would vary over time, or something that would convey a similar weirdness.

It didn’t work. I had forgotten that what I really needed for the effect was sunlight, and that was one thing that wasn’t available. Also the prisms were props, and although I’m sure that the law of optical dispersion still worked, it didn’t work well with tungsten light on not-very-clear glass.

Luckily, because I had never been sure of what result I would get, I had various backups.  One was the good old Dr Who opening titles howl round. Point a camera at a monitor showing it’s own output, and you get the video equivalent  of putting a microphone in front of a louspeaker.  The camera moves around whilst you mix in a second camera with – in this case – a pile of prisms, and you get lots of piles of prisms. Spooky.  The lighting man set up drastic variations in the colours of the lights and cycled through them. The trainee waggled his shiny board in the background. Peter Jones was played back from tape. And it sort of worked.  I had a scene crew man with a smoke machine to add even more visual mystery. He filled the small studio with smoke, but hard as he tried, we couldn’t really see much of it.  Never mind – after a few takes we decided we had something weird enough for a fantasy radio programme trailed on television.

The Radio Times front page at the end of the trail was zoomed up using the Blue Peter ship technique. This was done on the end of every BP show at the time. You mount the ship picture – or RT cover – on a 20x16in caption card and put that on a stand in the studio. Then you have the cameraman zoom all the way out. This reveals much of the studio, so the card is lit brightly with a spotlight. The iris on the camera has to be closed right down, and everything except what’s on the card disappears. Crash zoom in on cue and it’s done.

And that was it. The Radio Times trail was always shown from Wednesday to Friday, maybe 6 or so transmissions, then it was gone forever.  But most of us liked to keep some of the things that we made, and at that time we saved them on Philips cassette. Eventually we moved on to VHS, and I copied my stuff across using a dying Philips machine and a sticking tape.  So the quality of my early stuff isn’t too good. The 2″ masters are of course long gone, but that’s television. At least I have a sort of reasonable copy of something ephemeral – and trails are about as ephemeral as tv gets.

…oh – when I left the studio, I ran into the BBC1 continuity announcer, a pleasant but rather, er…. precious man. It turned out that the aircon in Pres B recirculated  through the whole presentation area, so my smoky studio became everyone’s smoky working area. He said “I’m not going back in there till they put the fire out”, and wouldn’t believe it was just me. Smoke was never allowed in the area again.

Bernard Newnham
11/07/2009   –  29 years on.

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Dick Hibberd’s Memories

Dick Hibberd is Honorary President of the Guild of Television Cameramen. Here’s a short biog, written by him for the GTC website. I’m hoping that Dick will write up some more……

“I started my career in this industry as a trainee film director with a small company in Edinburgh, specialising in documentaries. After spells with both Ferranti and Decca Radar filming top secret flight trials, I moved to BBC Lime Grove as a Technical Operations Cameraman on Crew 1.

ATV beckoned with more money and I stayed there for 8 years doing multi-camera studio and OB work before moving on to Alpha TV in Birmingham, and then again to TWW in Cardiff. It was here that I began to see the necessity for an organisation to cater for the needs of television cameramen. From this realisation, with the help a few dedicated television cameramen friends, the Guild was born.

After TWW became HTV, I continued to work there as Head of Cameras for studio and OBs for 14 years.

My next and last move was to Thames TV to work as a technical supervisor, sometimes filling in as a lighting director, then studio supervisor, and finally as a production manager.

At the age of 80 I am still very active in the world of television. I now work (unpaid) as cameraman, lighting cameraman, director and tea boy gofer on amateur video productions. I am still fascinated by the media, with all its never-ending developments, and feel as strongly as ever about the need for a Guild of Television Cameramen, catering for both men and women the world over.”

Some of his memories of a long life in television….

I shall always be indebted to the BBC for the excellent training they gave me at Wood Norton, and like so many on my Tech Ops course I learnt to play table tennis quite well, and at 80 plus I still enjoy a game.  I made very little use of the technical knowledge that I acquired at Evesham whilst I was operating cameras at Lime Grove and Shepherds Bush Empire, but it was put to good use when very many years later I become a Studio Supervisor at Thames TV (A sort of TOMs job), and I had to ask engineers to make technical arrangements for various productions.

Of course you will appreciate that I am of a somewhat earlier generation, and indeed sadly there are very few of my contemporaries still around, but it seems that some things changed very little at the Beeb for very many years.  I left Aunty’s warm embrace shortly after the start of ITV, and followed in the footsteps of Colin Clews, Jock Watson, Tony Flanagan, Bill Ward, and quite a few others to join ATV. But that is another story.

Strange isn’t it, although I worked for 7 different companies during my TV career,  I am often introduced by my friends to newcomers, as “This is Dick Hibberd, he used to be a BBC TV Cameraman” .  I feel very proud when they say that.

………………………..

Bryan Cowgill had a reputation for being somewhat vitriolic on talkback.  Fortunately I never experienced this first hand myself. I am reminded of the way that my first Senior Cameraman, BBCs Lime Grove Crew 1, Ted Langley, acted and responded to a similar totally unwarranted torrent of verbal abuse from a Director.  When I first knew Ted, he was getting on, he had white hair, a white moustache, wore spectacles, one arm of which had been repaired with an Elastoplast.  He had quite an intimidating presence, and we junior members of his crew were at pains to do as he bid us, and immediately.  Ted also had some gravitas.  On this occasion, he signalled to his tracker on the Mole Crane, to stop, lower and lock the arm.  Ted dismounted from the camera, and without hurrying walked from the Studio floor.  The Director was screaming and shouting nonstop, and could not grasp what was happening.  Ted walked up the stairs into the Production gallery and stood behind the screaming Director.  Ted tapped him on the shoulder, and asked quite mildly,  “What exactly is it you want me to do?”  The transformation of the Director was amazing.  Suddenly he was all sweetness and light, and whilst a moment before, he had been talking to machinery, he was now talking to a human being, which was quite different.  The Director explained, Ted went back to his camera, and a much calmer Director continued with the camera rehearsal.

That anecdote was true fact. I was there and I remember it well, but for me, as I grow older, I wonder if my memory plays tricks on me.  I certainly worked on ‘Captain Pugwash’ at Lime Grove, ‘The Grove Family’, ‘In town Tonight’ with John Edisson.  There were of course many, many more.  It was on ‘What’s My Line’ with Barbara Kelly, Dame Isabel Barnett, Gilbert Harding, and David Nixon, that I had the first opportunity to operate a television camera ‘on air’. My number 1 cameraman was the diminutive Dicky Ashman.  Dicky set up the shot, and I simply framed and focused, and panned between panelists, as directed.  My heart was beating so fast, and I was probably sweating with excitement.  If I did anything wrong, then millions of people would notice, this was ‘live’ television.  Fortunately I didn’t, and they didn’t. I don’t think that it was ever so frightening again, but right to the end of my career, if I wasn’t slightly scared or worried before a recording, or transmission, then there was something wrong.  Once you were ‘on air’ you were too busy to worry about what might go wrong.

Most of my time at the BBC Television Theatre, Shepherds Bush, was spent as a ‘tracker’ moving the camera and operator on a Vinten pathfinder, backwards and forwards along the centre ramp, to give the correct framing with a fixed focal length lens that the cameraman had selected.  Apart from ‘What’s my Line’ there were other shows, such as the ‘George Mitchell Singers’, and a show that I didn’t enjoy, probably because I found Eamonn Andrews slightly twitchy manner acutely embarrassing –  ‘This is Your Life’.  When I left the BBC, I thought I had seen the last of TIYL, but no.  Thames Television also ran the series, much later in my career.

I remember operating a camera which had a faulty viewfinder at the ‘Empire’.  Both the line hold, and frame hold were free running, and you could only guess at your framing.  A request for help from Vision Control went unanswered.  This particular fault happened to me a number of times, and as a result I was having dreams in which the pictures that I saw in my mind would sometimes have line tearing, and frame rolls !

The BBC were extremely good at ‘training’ for which I have been for ever grateful.  For newcomers to the Beeb, there was what was known as an ‘induction course’, where we were moved from department to department to enable to have some understanding of the operations of the whole television system.  We were expected to ‘operate’ in each of these areas, under strict supervision. On one occasion when it was my term to spend a spell in master control, ‘The Goons’ were doing a show from the Shepherds Bush Empire, which concluded with Neddy Seagoon, and Bluebottle, having a duel with swords, across the footlights, and out of the front of the Theatre.  We then had a shot from Master Control, where I was in Lime Grove, with the announcer, probably MacDonald Hobley, linking us into the next programme, a couple of minutes away.  There was a crash as a door was slammed open and in came Harry Seacombe, and Peter Sellars, still fighting with their swords, from one side of the continuity set to the other, and disappeared from view.  Mac Hobley totally ignored their presence, as was required, and that was the end of the excitement, and my introduction to the workings of master control.  How they had managed to get so speedily from Shepherds Bush, along Goldhawk Road and up Lime Grove and up many stairs to Master control, I just don’t know.  Of course nowadays, such a joke would be meaningless, as we all know we can pre-record anything, and there is no longer anything such as ‘real time’ but it was all ‘live’ then, and the viewer knew it,  and I hope enjoyed it. I know I did.

I wonder now, did it really happen, or am I just imagining it……….!

I know what did happen, and that was the fact that every now and then, part of our crew was required to work from Alexandra Palace in north London.  We would be bused up there to do the news.  The cameras that we operated had laterally inverted pictures, and whilst ones natural tendency to compensate for a slight shoot off a caption to the right, would normally mean a slight pan left, you had to control your natural instincts and pan slightly right.  It was a bit of nightmare to start off with, but you fairly quickly became accustomed to it.  Sometimes it was a bit dodgy when you had lots of adjustments to make left and right, and you had to keep  a firm control on not doing what came naturally!

Sadly for me, there is no official record of what programmes I worked on.  The only record I have is in the few remaining diaries I have left, which recorded weekly where I was supposed to be working.  So unlike our brothers in the film world, who are and always were,  quite rightly, ‘credited’. Why this anomaly arose in the UK is difficult to fathom.  All other crafts in television production received a credit but not cameras. A strange anomaly that still sometime  happens today.

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