| From Bill Jenkin If this story isn't true it should be. A cameraman (no names to protect the innocent) was sitting in the gallery during the warm-up on an LE show. He suddenly realised that the rest of the crew had gone down to the studio floor and that he was now late. He leapt from his chair and raced down to the studio floor. Running along the side of the audience rostrum he bumped into someone before rushing out to his camera. The person he had bumped into was the star of the show about to make his entrance. So instead of the star appearing in the follow spot to huge applause it was an out of breath cameraman! |
| This happened on recording of a 'Call My Bluff' in TC2 in about 1970. A fairly junior cameraman was preparing himself for a very quick change of shot. He repeated to himself mentally "after the next shot I've got the quick move" and got himself keyed up to make the move. The result was that when the red light came on he made the move - a classic mistake which wouldn't wouldn't have been so bad if the audience hadn't been treated to the spectacle of our colleage almost shouting "Jeezus" and throwing his cans off while kicking the ped. The cameraman who shall remain nameless later went on to vision mixing and eventually became a producer. |
| From John Holmes This is a story about John Staple who was sadly killed in an air crash in Rhodesia (as was then). I was a grams.op at the time and we were working in TC1 doing the Kirov Ballet in "The Stone Flower". John was the sound supervisor but all he had to do was look after the communication boom while I played all the music off tape. During rehearsal it was all going along swimmingly, the tape was running and John, as was his wont was conducting away furiously with the full orchestral score spread across the desk. As was also his wont he had unbuttoned his trousers to take some of the strain off his stomach. The phone rang, Dave Hedden answered it and said to John "Its for you". Whereupon John sprang to his feet, his trousers fell about his ankles and he hobbled to the wall mounted phone. The look on the production secretary's face as she saw John standing in his underpants talking on the phone was an absolute picture. It still remains one of my treasured memories of a real character. |
| From Jack Rooke In the days of Gardening Club in the studio at Gosta Green in Birmingham, we had a greenhouse without any glass as a part of the regular set. Percy Thrower would demonstrate potting etc in here. On one show the featured greenhouse item concerned some exotic potted plants. The regular sound supervisor, Bill 'Beau' Woods, loved to put the old electro voice lanyard mics in assorted positions to collect effects, Percy was well aware of this. After rehearsal, Bill put one of his mics into the foliage of a plant in the greenhouse, Percy spotted it, and the take included the line 'these plants need copious watering ' together with some very realistic water effects! Another feature of working on this show was the collection of captions built up over the years by Sheila Brayford the production secretary. These 12 x 9 's were an assortment of letraset typefaces and some made with dymo tape. One of the first tasks for a new T.O. on camera was the caption camera. This was a Marconi Mk111 image orthicon without orbiting so it was essential to stay out of focus till the last minute then focus and frame up in time. Anything too early meant a 'stick' and too late meant you were never sure of the caption being in frame, in focus, or even on the right lens. |
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