Gary Critcher

I was watching the “Tale Of Three Cities” doco from BBC4 (tx 07/02/2014). The subject was New York, programme presented by Dr. James Fox (for one fleeting moment I thought it may have been the actor of the same name but no).

Very early in the programme there is a shot of the presenter looking back at the New York skyline from the back of one of the harbour ferries.

As it ran through I immediately thought ‘There’s something funny about that shot.’ So re-wound and looked at it again,  didn’t spot anything.  On the third pass I realised what it was  —  it was being played backwards!

In my picture of the sequence, you can see him looking back at the skyline, but the movement is TOWARDS the skyline, but you can see the ship’s wake in the shot…..they are moving back over it! Very strange!

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Graeme Wall

Just before that there’s a pull focus to the Statue of Liberty that looks a bit strange as well.

Barry Bonner

If anybody remembers “Round Britain Whizz” where an RAF jet fighter flew the entirety of the coastline of Britain in an hour (methinks?) not only was it speeded up but was entirely backwards. “Coast” on quite a few occasions had helicopter shots of the coastline where you can see the waves rolling backwards!

Chris Booth

Indeed it was – to avoid the lens getting totally covered in flies/bugs before they’d even got off the ground.

The original programme duration was 29’ 15”.

We monitored at full screen, but were all feeling violently ill by Beachy Head, hence the quarter frame Quantel!

The longer version which went out on Boxing Day 1988 was at a much more modest speed, but lasted 2 hours.

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Land’s End:

Albert Barber

Of course the great feat of engineering was the OB from Calais. “A Tale of Two Cities”. Not to mention the circus performer with three breasts. Work it out for yourselves as Max Miller would say or was it Frankie Howard as Lurchio?

Ian Dow

I was the EM on “Rail Watch”, a series of live OBs three times a day for a week from the East Coast Main Line, based at York Station. We sent a PSC crew to observe the overnight activity at Edinburgh Waverley. They edited on site and had to get the tape onto the 6am train to York for our morning transmission, but were short of a shot of a train arriving – and were tempted to run a shot backwards in order pack up and get to bed.

I remember waking them in their hotel by phone immediately after the tape was transmitted to let them know of my horror at seeing a shot of a High Speed Hoover entering Waverly station with red lights on the front – and sucking diesel fumes out of the air!