Dave Mundy
During the Olympics in Barcelona my sports PSC was sent to the Theatre de Lyceu, down the Ramblas, as the most famous singers were due to give a special Olympic performance. ‘My’ cameraman (Roger Prior), an opera buff, was eagerly looking forward to the day!We had Gary Lineker as our interviewer. The sports AP approached all of the most famous stars in the opera world and asked if they would mind doing an interview with Gary. Gary had played for the Barcelona football team and had learnt to speak Catalan which made him a ‘God’ among the natives. All of these most famous stars in the world of opera immediately said ‘YES’. Needless to say the interviews all went well! Even ‘my’ cameraman got one of his records signed!
London Marathon. A British Telecom (lunatic) decided that he would run the smallest and the biggest Marathon in the same weekend! My sports PSC (Trevor Wimlett and me) arrived at Coventry airport and boarded a six seater twin-engined light aircraft. The brief was for Trevor to interview this GPO engineer on the way up to Benbecular in the Outer Hebrides. Amazingly, British Airways have a presence there as it is a NATO rocket base! After the BA flight had landed and departed we were on our own! The airport terminal closed down and that was that! We hadn’t eaten by then!
We contacted the military and told them about the shoot and they volunteered an army Land Rover for us to use to track the race. We set off following our lunatic and while hanging my 416 on it’s pole out of the back of the Land Rover I suggested that the driver switched off the engine and we free-wheeled down the hill. This was the highlight of the whole trip! Total silence apart from the padding of his feet on the road and the baa-ing of the sheep behind him! After that we had got enough footage and we met the locals including the lady air-traffic controller. We offered her and her assistant an airborne trip round the island and then went back to her place for a cuppa and she and her friend made up a pack of sandwiches for our return trip to the main land!
We dropped our lunatic at Glasgow airport where he got a scheduled flight back to LHR and then he went to the traditional pasta feast in the Royal Lancaster Hotel, before the Marathon proper. I understand that he didn’t win but he did finish the course! Another lovely day on the Sports Unit!
Alan Taylor
I did a job where the start of the story is almost identical to Dave’s. It was a show featuring product placement from SsangYong, the Korean motor car company. As a result we got issued with their top of the range car in those days, a SsangYong Rodius. We were told that it was the only one of its kind in the UK and it was perfect for our filming. Over the course of four weeks or so, we came to despise that car. Not only was it stupendously ugly, it was unquestionably the worst car I’ve ever been in and that includes Trabants.We were shooting a sequence comparable to Dave’s one, on private land, on a grassy hill, filming runners jogging down the hill. The tailgate was wedged open, which was a pretty standard way of working. The cameraman laid tummy down on the floor, with his Betacam pointing out of the back, mostly overhanging the back of the car. Somebody was hanging onto his legs as a safety precaution. I was sort of wedged across the back of the car, using a 5 metre fish pole to reach back and cover the runners. The director was troubled by the engine noise on take one, so she asked to do a retake, coasting with the engine off.
You probably know that the power braking on a car ceases working when the engine isn’t running. Unfortunately the researcher who was driving was blissfully unaware of this trivial detail and when we started to get ahead of the runners, she discovered that the breaks had failed and got into panic mode.
Meanwhile, the hill was becoming steeper, we were gathering speed alarmingly and being bounced around quite badly in the back of the car. Myself and the cameraman had sussed out the problem and were shouting for the driver to start the engine. The director was shouting that the last thing we need is more speed, while the driver kept screaming. Somebody pulled up the handbrake, which made a marginal difference. At least we were no longer gathering speed. Then the driver put it into gear and released the clutch, which being first gear abruptly locked up the wheels and we skidded alarmingly, ending up pranging into a bush which was more solid than it looked and proved to be much more solid than a SsangYong Rodius
There were a lot of lessons to be learned from that adventure and probably a classic accident report sheet too, but fortunately nobody had anything worse than some bruising. We felt that one good thing might emerge from it. We would no longer be stuck with that dreadful car because it was the only one in the UK.
Unfortunately, while it was the only one four weeks previously, a few more had arrived since then and the following morning we were presented with another bloody SsanYong Rodius.
Dave Mundy
‘My’ cameraman and I were dispatched to cover the start of the Fastnet Yacht Race from Cowes which involved boarding a helicopter at Southampton Airport and my man sitting with his legs outside resting on the landing skids and being strapped in by two long harnesses. I sat behind with the U-Matic recorder with a 416 on its Panamic pole outside for GFX.Another great shoot from the same location was for the America’s Cup trials where we started on the Champagne Rouge motor cruiser in Buckler’s Hard, cruising down to the start, and doing some ‘pretties’.
Refreshments were freely available and although I don’t like champagne I had to force myself to be sociable! We then went on board one of the yachts sitting on the foredeck trying not to scratch it with the recorder etc. I was sad to see that the Southampton Boat Show had been cancelled this year as it was a regular ‘good’ SUE shoot to do! Taking a million pound yacht down the Solent for a fun trip was amazing, if only I had the money! Many more stories about that shoot!
Graeme Wall
My Southampton Boat Show story was as follows, I was shooting a story for TVS and a local BBC crew were doing a piece to camera alongside a multi-million pound speedboat on one of the pontoons. The cameraman walked along the pontoon to tighten the shot but, unfortunately, had one hand on the boat to steady himself. He forgot that boats curve towards the bow and followed the curve straight off the pontoon!Pat Heigham
Would that be a Tech-oops story?Alan Taylor
For those not familiar with such things, the Southampton Boat Show is an outdoor, floating show. The boats are exhibited on moorings and can be taken out onto the sea to be put through their paces.In the late 1970s, it was decided to do the show with a floating scanner on the Solent. A small two camera scanner was driven onto a tank landing craft which set off to various locations around the Solent. Boats would be persuaded to come out to a rendezvous point to be televised doing what they do best.
The fun actually started before the tech crew arrived. The landing craft beached at a nearby Naval establishment for the scanner to drive on. There was a concrete ramp most of the way down the beach and due to the low tide, a short stretch of sand before the ramp of the landing craft. The rigger supervisor was concerned that the scanner might get bogged down in the sand, and decided that the best strategy would be to get a run up and let inertia do the hard work.
He was right on two counts. The sand was indeed soft and momentum did what it does. The scanner sunk into the sand, but with many tons of mass and a good turn of speed, it was axle deep in the sand by the time it reached the edge of the ramp, which neatly shaved the bottom off the engine sump. The Marines winched the crippled scanner on board, which sat in an ever growing pool of oil on the deck. Working out how to fix the engine could be left for another day, the scanner didn’t need to drive anywhere because it was going to be ferried around for the next few days.
Ian Leiper was sound supervisor and I believe that the director might have been Ken Griffin, so it was inevitably going to be a fun shoot. I would guess that the scanner was the mid 1970s LO21, with LDK5 cameras. I was the SA1 on that truck and it was decided that the way to cover that show was by using a small assault craft, which was a bit like an aluminium punt with two outboard motors. The assault craft was used as a water taxi to ferry myself and another sound guy to the various boats. One of us would board one boat at sea, while the other boarded the next. We each took with us a high powered radio talkback transceiver and a high powered radio mic, the sort used on golf tournaments. We would either transmit sound effects or use personal mics to interview the people. Production staff were not boarding the smaller boats, so we were combining our technical responsibilities with acting as floor manager, relaying instructions to the people on the boat. Typically it would be to stand by until the previous item was in the can and then sail past the landing craft in a specified manner, turn around and pass in the opposite direction and maybe do a two way interview or something similar, or position the boat in specific ways to show appropriate angles to the cameras on the landing craft. Sometimes the landing craft would reposition to the other side of the boat to get appropriate shots and it would sail to a different location for each item, so that there was a variety of backgrounds.
The boats we were boarding could be anything from a Mirror Dinghy to a multi million pound luxury yacht. Transferring the tech gear and clambering aboard while at sea could be quite an interesting exercise, but you soon work out a way to make it work for various types of boat.
One sequence involved a RIB with two immense outboard motors, each producing at least a squillion horsepower. Ken asked me to tell him to stand by and then on his cue to whizz past at top speed about twenty metres to port, overshoot the landing craft by 100 metres or so, do a rapid turn and stop ready for a similar run. You sit astride a ridge along these boats and there wasn’t much to hold on to, not that you have a free hand anyway, with the talkback brick, radio mic brick, gun mic and a bag of bits to cope with whatever might be asked of us.
I might point out that because we were frequently in shot, we listened to talkback on an earpiece in order to look less conspicuous. I would also point out that at that time, I was unable to swim and we wore self inflating life jackets.
I sat directly behind the RIB driver and passed on Ken’s instructions. He turned around and asked “Do you really mean flat out ?” and when I said yes, he did a rather evil grin. The next thing I knew, we accelerated in a way that I never imagined a boat could manage and were travelling at a ridiculous speed, leaping from wave to wave in a most spectacular and unnerving manner.
I couldn’t believe that I remained on board all the way to the other end. My earpiece had come out and I was unaware of how thrilled Ken was by the shots. I got my earpiece back in my ear once more, just in time to hear Ken asking for the same again, but even more spectacular if possible. Like a fool I passed on that message verbatim , whereupon without waiting for the bit where I say “…. On my cue”, he gunned it before I had even regained my composure, or indeed regained my grip.
The ride was like I imaging those mechanical bucking bronco rides to be. Holding on by squeezing my knees inwards for grip and using my arms for balance, while pressing my feet outwards against the tech equipment to wedge it against the buoyancy chambers. Miraculously I somehow remained on board. When I returned to the landing craft, I was shown the VT. My earpiece flew out as soon as we built up speed and trailed horizontally behind, like a comedy Biggles scarf. Then after we passed, with spray and waves crashing all around, we did this ridiculously tight turn, banking almost vertically and stopped dead in the water. I could be seen ashen faced, replacing the earpiece, while simultaneously puffing as much air as possible manually into my life jacket in anticipation of the near certainty of ending up thrown overboard, pausing to pass on Ken’s direction, followed by a look of abject horror as the boat abruptly took off like a rocket, but with renewed vigour.
A subsequent sequence on a luxurious gin palace served as a most welcome contrast.
Pat Heigham
We can find ourselves in some fascinating and possibly dangerous situations – all good fun! Couple of stories from me, around the Solent:The raising of the Mary Rose
I worked on a PSC unit for “Chronicle” (BBC). We followed the top frame down Southampton Water and through the Solent with our brave detachment of Royal Marines, to the huge crane barge Tog Mor.The weather that day was not good enough for the drop of the lifting frame, but there was a possible window very early next morning. ‘My’ cameraman, Bob Jones, realised that although we had rooms booked in Southsea, we would not be able to get back out there in time, so he asked the skipper of the barge if we could stay aboard Tog Mor. He said to help ourselves to a cabin each in the accommodation block, “And I suppose you want supper, too, eh?” The Director and PA didn’t want to push the hospitality, so spent a very uncomfortable night on board the dive boat, which stank of fish and diesel fuel. Bob and I each had a very comfortable bunk with an en-suite hot shower and loo!
During the night it blew a Force 8, but the Tog Mor was such a huge vessel that we never felt a thing.
Chris Woolf
If you think Keith cut things fine you should have tried "Michael" from the same helicopter establishment. MMS was as skilled a flier as Keith but even more of a daredevil. He would run VNE checks on aircraft at extreme low level just because he could – and swore blind that he was above 500ft and the altimeter must be faulty.He did get the low level stuff wrong on one occasion when he went under some 33kV power lines and got a flashover that welded the doors. It took several months to get that aircraft flying again.
Both pilots were ex air-sea rescue and the flew with a level of verve that none of the current civilian pilots can quite equal.
Pat Heigham
Chris’ story about flying under power lines is really scary! A very good friend is ex-Navy and knew Keith. My chum flew helicopters at sea – his Wessex is in the museum at Yeovilton.Gin Palace:
LWT produced “It’ll be Alright on the Night”. On the 25th episode, Denis Norden wanted to shoot his links from the Bermuda Triangle, as he reckoned that’s where most of the off-cuts ended up! There was no possibility of chartering a luxury yacht out of Bermuda, as they were in and out the same day, so arrangements were made to hire one out of Monte Carlo and venture far enough out to not see any land. A lovely boat, but I had a horrendous hang-over, however, I managed to get all Denis’s links very clean of anything else, at various places around the yacht.The Director rang me at home later, and said: ”Pat, I can’t hear the engines!”. Excellent, I replied, for I had supplied lots of different FX tracks so they could be laid in as required. I was working on the feature film principle of providing ‘clean’ dialogue.
Another watery story:
Working on a 7 part BBC series following the McLaren F1 team around a few bits of the world, the last race of the season that year was in Adelaide, and was fairly laid back. Apparently the local yacht club (at Brighton, on the coast!) usually issued an invitation to take the teams’ mechanics for a day’s sailing. The President of the club, on hearing that a film crew was shadowing McLaren, insisted that we come on his boat. Nick Struthers was the cameraman, and when he saw the vessel, was ecstatic, as there were only two built in the world, and he had sailed on the other one! It was stripped to very basic fittings, and the President was determined to win the little race that had been organised. We set off up the river for a while, and one boat lost its mast when it collided with a pylon! Turning out to sea, I had never seen, or been in, waves of that height! After a while, Nick decided that it was too dodgy to continue filming, so we strapped the camera and sound recorder kit into two hammocks in the cabin, and I positioned myself on the companionway steps as being the centre of gravity, and less likely to affect me with the boat’s motion. I was really relieved to return to a hot shower in the clubhouse!Dave Mundy
Grand National Preview. The shoot was to start near Brighton at a racing stable there. We left before the hotel breakfast started and got back after the chef had gone home! Next, we travelled to Lambourne and did interviews etc. and the AP wanted us to so more stuff but the schedule was that we had to arrive in Greystoke, Cumbria by 1900 for dinner, or else! We had to decline all the extra footage the AP wanted and he reported my ‘man’ for being ‘unco-operative’! Any, I drove all the way up to the Mill Bridge Hotel and we got there just as ‘Mine Host’ was standing on the doorstep ready to serve the starters!After that we went to the Grey Court Stables and set off for Nicholashayne in Somerset, the home of Martin Pipe, where we had been many times before. We stayed at a pub nearby and it all ended happily, a long week but a job well done!
PS. The hotel in Cumbria was booked for the next week by BBC DG Michael Checkland for a week’s walking holiday – I did think of accidentally leaving a radio mic. in his bedroom, but I needed it on my next shoot!
Pat Heigham
This was an update shoot on the progress of a water treatment installation on the shores of the Red Sea, in Saudi Arabia.The first buggeration occurred when getting the camera kit through Jeddah airport customs. They wanted the equivalent of £3K duty! We explained that we were working for their government water board – no deal. It was a national holiday, so there was no one in the city office, especially not an accountant who could have issued a cheque.
So, kit left at customs, and we re-located to the splendid Red Sea Palace Hotel. Very swish and comfortable, until, ensconced in the bar, a cheerful lad wandered around pushing a drinks trolley, offering us a cocktail. Fine – G & T please. ‘No alcohol, sir!’ Fruit juice?
In search of amusement, we went into town. There’s a great deal of money, there, spent on expensive motors – Rolls, Mercs, Bentleys etc, but nowhere to drive them, outside the city is boring desert sand, which seemed to be a universal dumping ground for rubbish, so the streets of Jeddah are blocked with the sheiks showing off their wealth with their drop-dead motors and the place is a permanent traffic jam.
After three days holed up in the very splendid hotel, without G & T, we eventually rescued the kit and passed a pissed-off American, who chucked a VHS cassette into a bin. We asked why. ‘Bastards’ he said. ‘That was my pitch for a contract, but they wanted to view it in case it was pornographic! I’ve lost the window for presentation’.
As we had not appeared at the local airstrip for the water site development, when we made it, there was no transport for us, so a taxi was engaged. On the road, there was a police check point. The water company minibus would drive straight through but our taxi driver dutifully pulled aside and stopped. The ‘official’ virtually barely clad in a loincloth, wanted to peer into all our boxes. After which he set about our personal bags. Emptying my wash bag he seized upon a tube of salt tablets.
I mimed that he should sample them , knowing that if he did, without water, it would make him throw up! Didn’t rise to the bait!
Eventually arriving at the site, the cameraman, Alastair Cameron, was very circumspect, and insisted that we didn’t work outside for more than an hour, before going back to our air-conditioned cabin for a cool off shower, as we were not acclimatised.
The engineers onsite wanted to know if we had brought them any films on tape – sadly we hadn’t, unaware of their need of entertainment – but on the experience of the American at the customs, it might have extended our passage by some days!
As I wish to mention, the catering on that site was exemplary. French or Belgian chefs, as the engineers were that nationality. A couple of the French guys took us swimming on the Red Sea, I ruined a pair of lightweight shoes as it was too hot to walk on the sand, and I didn’t fancy stepping on a sea-urchin!
The evening entertainment was fascinating – we sat very still while the land crabs came out to play. If we made a sudden noise or movement, they dived into the nearest sand hole. Sometimes this was already occupied and the new infiltrator came flying out like a Tom & Jerry cartoon!
Priceless!
