Photos by Ben Peissell and Tim Savage, no reproduction without permission.
The lower photo shows VT Editor, Leigh Sinclair in CM2.
CM2 was an outside broadcast truck based at BBC Pebble Mill. It normally had two cameras controlled from it, and was used to record programmes like ‘Gardeners’ World’, before portable single cameras became the norm in the mid 1980s.
Mike Bloore was a VT editor who worked on CM2:
‘There was no edit controller on CM2’s VTR’s. There was only a button to start both machines at the same time and trust to luck! On ‘Gardeners World’ we often did “roll back and mix” which involved playing back the last shot of the previously recorded sequence through the vision mixer allowing the vision mixer(the person) to mix through to the live camera of the next sequence to be shot while recording the whole event on the other VTR. This enabled mixes on location to be possible with only 2 VTR’s. Then someone invented pre-read but thats another story!’
Mike Bloore