From John Barlow

Two videos which he used during lectures to trainees when he was Head of Cameras at the BBC.

The first is Ron Green on the front of a Mole crane crewed by trainees, doing a tricky run round a piano - the sort of thing that Ron did many times in the great days of LE television, long before Technocranes and Steadicam. The chap pretending to be Barry Manilow is Chris Price, the trackers are Nigels Taylor and Saunders and the cable basher is Carol Sadler

John Barlow says "When I was H Tel Cams I used to visit each TO course at Evesham and spend an afternoon discussing what the new recruits would actually be doing and the expectations that we had of them. I put together a series of clips (one being the Ron one) to use during the 'Lecture' part. My best guess is that this dates from 1988 as that's what it says on the box! "

Nigel Saunders has more info - "....the reason the tape was made was as a demo for the Crane Training Days Nigel and I ran - we showed the trainees the tape and with the aid of shot cards and bar count they recreated it with Nigel or me on the front of the Mole. They were also given a number to produce their own camera script to with interesting results!"



The sequence starts with the shot itself, followed by the "how it's done" at 04.27...



Also from John's lecture tape, this intro to the world of working in tech-ops.