[Tech1] Carpet pulling

[Bernard Newnham]

Not carpet pulling, just change.

Pat, when you pressed the key on your computer to type this, you killed 
the electric typewriter industry, the manual typewriter industry, the 
fountain pen industry and much of the post office, the quill pen 
industry, and all the way back to the man scratching on a clay tablet.

The other day I set out for a lunch date in London. When I got to West 
Byfleet station there were no trains, courtesy a jumper at Surbiton.  I 
walked home, trying to work out the best way to get into London, as it 
was important to me. After much planning and changing of mind  I stood 
outside my front gate, got out my phone, ran the app and booked an Uber. 
He arrived five minutes later. I knew in advance his name, the car type 
and registration, and how he was getting to me. He dropped me off at 
Hatton Cross tube, and whilst I waited for the train I gave him five 
stars and a £2 tip via the app. There was a map on the screen which 
showed our route and below it was a map of my last use of an Uber - 
hotel to the airport in Saigon just over a year ago. It's everywhere, 
and it isn't going back the way it was. It's sad for those chaps who 
spent years doing the knowledge, but after all, their ancestors had 
killed the Hansom cab industry, with the coach makers, the ostlers, the 
stables, the farms and the dung carts.

Change happens, no matter what we want.

In the early nineties I was running Points of View. The general level of 
letters wasn't brilliant, and I looked for other ways to get material. 
Thus it was that I had the first internet connection at Television 
Centre. At our ISP, the man knew me after various conversations. He 
loved the idea that he could pick up the phone and talk to a well knows 
BBC producer, and I loved it that he could tell me about new stuff. We 
had started with Archie and WAIS, and he was the one who introduced me 
to Mosaic and the World Wide Web, pretty much as it started. Anne 
Robinson said "What use is this internet anyway?" so I went back to the 
office and printed off some academic stuff about women's issues from a 
university server in New York. She had all the resources of a London 
daily newspaper, but she couldn't do that.  I think that my early 
introduction has come in rather useful down the years.

All change.

When the Sony VX1000 was released, all over the world an awful lot of 
people went "Oh, wow!". A combination of circumstances meant that in the 
BBC, I was that first person. Soon after I was asked to make it do 
something useful, so I did.

Morning Surgery was seven weeks long, and for the last three we were 
joined by Chris Eames and his enthusiastic OB crew. The inserts were 
made by highly experienced Science Dept film directors, who for the 
first time had to do camera and sound themselves. They didn't make it 
complicated. They couldn't.

We learned a few things about how those cameras changed the organisation 
as we went along. I produced the first film, a piece about RAF rescue 
helicopters - commonplace now, but new then because there hadn't been 
sensible technology before. I worked my way through the item in my head 
in the traditional way........then I realised that we had three cameras 
available, so we took all of them. Not three crews costing lots of 
money, just three of us.

We got to know the medical staff well, and one doctor in particular was 
a star. At one point he was telling us that he had to do a night shift 
at the weekend. Jack Weber and I looked at each other and asked if we 
could film it.  Our boss, Caroline van den Brul, did a lot of iffing and 
butting, but as Jack and I pointed out, it was just us. No overtime, no 
night pay, just us volunteering to make something that wanted to do. It 
worked an absolute treat, but if it hadn't, all we would have lost was a 
half a nights sleep.

I've had discussions about this ever since, especially when I was 
lecturing on it around the place. People had a tendency to think I was 
dreaming it up as I went along and made criticisms thinking that they 
were the first. The other day I found a long email from a man at Pebble 
Mill on the subject of dubbing. I'd said we didn't need a dubbing 
theatre on Morning Surgery, and that for many uses they were out of 
date. He accused me of being a no-nothing producer, but actually the 
person who had shown us was our very experienced BBC picture editor 
called Peter Parnham. His brand new online Avid could do the job 
perfectly well.  I haven't been in a dubbing theatre since.

Those "You're runner, go on a two day course and you'll be a cameraman" 
didn't last long. No producer wants to hand in rubbish. I've just done 
eleven years teaching kids to multi skill on three year degree courses. 
Just as stupid to my mind, but that's what they paid me for. Lots of 
them went off to make television, though.

Change will happen. In doesn't care about people - people have to be 
aware and roll with the punches. See you at BVE in February.

B





On 01/01/2019 13:03, patheigham wrote:
>
> Having read this, Bernie, I can only say that I regret that you were 
> instrumental in denying work to all the technicians who painstakingly 
> earned their craft over several years. It doesn’t matter what the gear 
> is (horses for courses), what does matter is the (in)competence of the 
> user.
>
> I really feel that you pulled the carpet out from under us. How can a 
> two day familiarisation supercede eight or more years of careful 
> in-depth training?
>
> When I transferred into the film industry, I obtained work on the 
> basis of my expertise and competence, and largely very grateful to the 
> splendid training offered by the BBC. Your article reveals that you 
> betrayed us and chucked all that out of the window to save money!
>
> However, I had a (now misguided) idea that everyone wanted to work on 
> a movie for the sake of the reflected glory of a splendid production – 
> until I realised that the Savile Row suited, cigar chomping producers 
> were only interested in ‘how much money was it going to make’ Blow the 
> acting, script, locations etc. Where are the $$$$.
>
> "*/ARS GRATIA ARTIS/*" (Art for Art’s sake) is used as a motto by 
> Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer 
> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer>, what a cynical 
> standpoint.
>
> Artistes in TV get residuals, technicians do not, unless it’s a 
> particular German production, I believe.
>
> It’s lucky that I’m out of it all, now, as I would have loved to 
> confront a highly paid ‘star’ with the premise, that:
>
> “You are being paid tens of thousands more than me, but I’m expected 
> to get _my_ job right, every single take, in case you get it right _once_!
>
> Now who’s worth the better money?”
>
> Yes, crews do not sell a film and bring in the punters, but a well 
> made product does.
>
> Run Run Shaw, the Hong Kong filmmaker was reputed to pay everyone the 
> same, whether artiste or technician, but I can’t find any
>
> corroboration of that. Not a bad idea, though.
>
> Pat
>
> Sent from Mail <https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=550986> for 
> Windows 10
>
> *From: *Bernard Newnham via Tech1 <mailto:tech1 at tech-ops.co.uk>
> *Sent: *31 December 2018 18:40
> *To: *tech1 at tech-ops.co.uk <mailto:tech1 at tech-ops.co.uk>
> *Subject: *Re: [Tech1] Can I take you back to the summer of 1986...? 
> (photoident question)
>
> I wrote this back in 2001. It was an article for the GTC magazine. 
> reading it again after a long time, it still seems to pretty much 
> reflect the way things were and are.
>
> +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
>
>
> I stopped being a BBC studio cameraman, and GTC member, 24 years ago, 
> back when men were men etc, etc. For the next good, long time I minded 
> my own business as a producer, sitting in edit suites and studio 
> galleries, standing on grotty locations, and trying to learn how to 
> type up my scripts, back in the office.
>
> In late 1995,1 was asked to work on a show called Morning Surgery - 
> Hospital Watch for a daily morning audience. The production had put in 
> a budget of a million and a quarter pounds but had been told they 
> could only have the quarter and they were looking for ways to get 
> round this. I am the guilty person who specified the brand new DV as 
> the answer to their prayers. I created the first BBC DV kit, now seen 
> in their hundreds coming out of White City every day. I cut the foam 
> innards with an electric carving knife in my kitchen, and when nobody 
> in the resource departments would help, soldered up the first sound 
> adaptors at my office desk. I taught science producers to do basic 
> camera and sound, directed the shows and made some of the film 
> inserts. Morning Surgery was hailed as a major technical triumph, and 
> I’ve been lecturing on the fallout from it around the country and the 
> world, ever since.
>
> *So – why DV?*
>
> I understand and sympathise with the criticisms from camera people in 
> Zerb and elsewhere – mostly, they are absolutely right. But to get a 
> proper sense of why,  you have to take a much broader view. Let’s work 
> from the top down….
>
> We live in a market economy – most of us don’t rear chickens in our 
> gardens on the best corn feed – we go down to Tescos and buy what’s 
> cheap today. In turn, Tesco buy the cheapest they can get away with 
> selling us – if they go too down market and we don’t buy, they adjust 
> accordingly. Television is exactly the same.
>
> If you are a satellite or cable company, you need product. You aren’t 
> going to get subscribers if you offer a couple of extra channels; you 
> need to offer a bountiful cornucopia of joys to suit all. You aren’t 
> too bothered about what it consists of, so long as it sells and makes 
> a profit. You bundle channels together, so that your punters have to 
> buy as many bundles as possible to get what they want. To get Cartoon 
> Network for my son, I have to buy about four other channels that I may 
> dip into for about five seconds a week or less. It’s cheap, so I don’t 
> worry. If it got expensive, I’d dump Cartoon Network.
>
> If you are a programme providing company, you sell what you can, to 
> whom you can, for whatever profit you can make. As a very senior 
> accountant at a major ITV company said to me, “carriage is all”. If 
> they can sell their product to a cable or satellite company, and you 
> and I buy it in our bundles, they are home free. It doesn’t matter 
> whether we tune in or not – we’ve paid for the product. Cynical, isn’t 
> it? But the difference between profit and disaster in this area is 
> very narrow – see Mr Micawber – so the programming needs to be cheap.
>
> You can see where we’re headed here…
>
> You are a producer and are offered a long series of docs at £8,000 per 
> half-hour, instead of £80,000, do you take it? Well, it depends – do 
> you want to pay the mortgage or not? Of course you take it, and then 
> you work out how to make it. The first thing you look at is what you 
> can lose and still keep the customer happy – just like Tescos. You 
> have heard about this DV stuff and seen some good results, so you 
> pitch right in and dump your crews. They cost £800 a day, so that’s a 
> decent start. A bit later on, you dump your editors too. If the 
> results you provide please the customer, end of story. If not, you 
> argue a lot and they either take their money elsewhere, or give you a 
> bit more and see if things get better – Tescos again.
>
> *Sadly for crafts people, they don’t set the standards, the market 
> does – he who pays the piper etc. – and that’s it.*
>
> In the UK, the BBC is in a slightly different, but similar situation 
> to the commercial people. They cannot afford, if they are to survive, 
> to be two channels amongst, say, 160. They have to make more product, 
> but they have a fixed income. Yes, they can hack back on the 
> bureaucrats, but programme costs still have to come down. Yes, 
> presenters cost, but presenters sell shows and crews don’t. Yes, 
> sometimes it looks pretty average to the professional eye but, if the 
> customer – in this case a channel controller – is happy, then that’s 
> that. The BBC and all TV companies are just like Tesco; they do the 
> best they can for the money.
>
> *There are other aspects to DV, at the programme making level..*
>
> A good crew, or editor, is a joy and a bad one is a nightmare, but 
> sometimes there’s just no substitute, no matter what. But, at the end 
> of a shoot, the crew is off to the next one, whilst the director takes 
> his rushes to the edit suite, in hope and trepidation, and carries 
> that project through till it’s on the air. If he didn’t like what the 
> crew provided, he can go elsewhere next time but, right now, it’s too 
> late. Even the best of crews have to be looked after. They are human 
> beings who are working for you and they need to be managed, one way or 
> another. Take them away and, if you can do DV well enough to please 
> the customer, it’s one less thing to worry about – you’re on your own, 
> but you look down your own viewfinder, and hear what you are putting 
> onto the tape – there are no surprises, good or bad. You work for as 
> many hours as you want, and as many days as you want. Sometimes you 
> have to work in delicate situations, and two people from the TV 
> company are far less intimidating than four or five – or fourteen (in 
> the old ITV days).
>
> *The whole DV thing can be very liberating, if you can do it.*
>
> Which brings me to training, or the lack of it. It’s true that quite 
> often a researcher, who has done a two-day course and then turns out 
> wince-making results, is replacing a cameraman with many years of 
> experience. This seems stupid and, if it were a fair world, it 
> wouldn’t happen. But it’s not, it’s market driven and all the 
> professional standards in the world aren’t going to make a difference. 
> The customers choose – first the channel controller, then the viewer – 
> not the camera crew. But the days of rubbish results are hopefully 
> numbered. More and more often, when shows take their staff on, they 
> want them DV experienced, and want to see proof. So colleges are 
> beginning to turn out people who can do what’s needed – a different 
> kind of person is beginning to make television, multi-skilled and 
> pretty comfortable with it.
>
> *Where does all this leave the traditional camera crew?*
>
> Well, if it’s holding a very expensive Beta kit, I’m sorry. Change 
> isn’t going away – so if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em. There’s a huge 
> shortage of cameramen who don’t insist on bringing macho sized kit and 
> attitudes to the party. A DV camera at £2,000 is almost identical to a 
> Digibeta at £40,000 – it’s not as good, but it’s not a twentieth of 
> the quality, and it has its own very clear advantages – for example, 
> have you ever done a two-camera shoot in a London taxi? Why not dry 
> hire yourself without your kit, and don’t whinge on about prostituting 
> your art, just because you are holding a VX1000 – it’s the story that 
> matters, and you can help to tell it. Do you want to pay the mortgage 
> or not?
>
> ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
>
>
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