Early Colour Experiments

The BBC started colour transmissions in 1967. The first colour studio at Television Centre was Pres B, and I remember hanging around outside the gallery watching a jazz group play, and marvelling at the colour of the cymbals on the monitors.

But colour had been around for a long time before that - Studio H at Lime Grove had been used for, amongst other things, the famous naked lady colour balancing exercises, at least that what they said they were. And even before that, there were tests from the BBC's original studios at Alexandra Palace. Roger Brunskill was there..

"In the winter of 1956/7 colour transmissions were originated live at AP in the middle of the night and received by various brass hats. I was the vision mixer for a few months. We did two productions on alternate nights. One was a variety show featuring Elton Hayes , a well known singing guitarist, and dance routines by Gillian Lynn and Una Stubbs. The other production was a play called "The Revolver" a play based on story by an eminent Russian classic author - I forget who - with two or three actors. We had two colour cameras and a colour slide scanner. The cameramen were Maurice Fleischer and Tom Fawcett. The S.Tel.E was Tony Stanley and the engineers were Ken Howe, Eric Spain and Bill ?. The producers, directors and set designers were Barry Learoyd and Stewart Marshall. Make Up was by Maureen Winslade and costume by Olive ? These last four spent hours gazing at postage stamp sized colour samples on colour charts."

Roger points out the recent Prospero obit for Maureen Winslade, and has some more to say about those times..

"Gillian Lynn is now the mega famous choreographer who now does Broadway and West End shows. In those days it actually used to snow in London! Some times the BBC bus could'nt get up the hill and we were stranded there. The engineers I spoke of were mad scientist types - one of them used to throw light bulbs about. I also remember being outraged when Tony Stanley made me solder some Jones plugs. I stupidly thought that we Tech Ops people were above that!"

---

Hansel and Gretel

In the 1970's, director Brian Large made studio operas for the BBC. They were big money stuff , taking up two whole studios for up to a week, one of which contained a whole live orchestra (with all those MU tea breaks etc).

In late 1976 (tx 27th December, I just looked it up on INFAX), Brian made Hansel and Gretel. It was lots of fun - bright, flamboyant stuff. We started with two days of special effects, with half of TC1 completely blue, and a flat bottomed boat parked in the middle. Nearby there was a model tunnel, and between us, Robin Barnes and I contrived to sail the large boat down the small tunnel with the help of Dave Jervis on electronic effects. I must admit to still being proud of this, 27 years later, because although it was supposed to look stylised, the boat still had to appear to stay on the tinfoil surface, and not float above it, whilst both cameras moved together, panning and zooming continuously.
....I was just a few minutes ago killing some time by looking down from the observation gallery at an empty (again) Studio One, remembering......anyway, the sequence was used in a special effects seminar, and much seen around the world, and still doesn't look that bad.

Having completed the special fx, we went home, and in the way that the BBC used to be able to manage endlessly, next day when we returned TC1 was a forest with a cottage in the middle.
I didn't get many shots, because a large chunk of the next two days was take up with being the camera for a glass shot. This is where (or was, before computers) a large clear glass panel is set up and a camera pointed through it at the set to give a wide shot. As the top of the trees and the roof of the cottage didn't exist, and the area was full of lights and hoists, a "matt artist" imported for the occasion used a monitor to paint on the glass to add more set. This is a technique that was much used on film - for instance, when Butch and Sundance jump into the river - but almost not at all on tv. So the artist was much horrified when the engineers insisted that the camera be taken away from his carefully lined up work of some hours to do technical line up with the others instead, and I must admit I rather agreed with him. Nevertheless, rules is rules, and I took the camera away. In fact I had to do this several times, but luckily, having set one of those buttons up on the zoom, and made copious marks, it was all ok.

When I finally did get a chance at a proper shot, it was Dad's aria. He walked the length of TC1 through the forest, from a long shot to a mid shot on the cottage porch, and I tracked my ped back and then right to see him through the whole move.
One of the hazards of studio opera was the repetiteur. As the orchestra was in TC3, the singers couldn't see the conductor. In TC1 there were monitors all over the place with a shot of him, and there were junior would-be conductors in the singers eyelines relaying the beat (or whatever it is!).
It was, and may still be, part of a repetiteurs mind-set, that they didn't understand the necessity of having cameras so that the audience could watch the show. They would be exactly on eyeline no matter what, and no camera was going to be in their way. This always caused friction, and the odd injury when they tried to argue with a Mole. In my case the problem was when I started to go right, from going backwards. Having hit the repetiteur a couple of times in rehearsal because he wouldn't move, I had had a sharp conversation with him explaining the facts of life.
Sadly, come the recording, it still hadn't dawned on him that we were making television, and as I started to go right, there was a foot stopping me. I hissed "Get Off", or some such, and he moved.
Some weeks later we watched a preview in a viewing room. When it got to that point, you could see a slight shudder, and just hear me. Someone in the room (vision mixer Jim Stephens) said "crosstalk!", thinking it was talkback from leaky cans, but I knew it wasn't.


....This all happened just where Shirley Bassey wore the big boots on the M and W Christmas Show, in the same corner where I first pointed a camera at a naked woman, where Oasis played a major gig and so did Mantovani, where I got covered in Fuller's Earth on Cyrano de Bergerac, where......


Bernie