‘Paul Balmer on the ‘Pebble Mill at One’ Set – with cameraman Howard Dartnall and Link 125 camera, taken around 1983′
Note all the joins in the set! The daily design budget was probably a couple of hundred quid! The floor was also full of joins so the Vinten pedestals would jolt as they crossed these giving the familiar ‘Pebble Mill Bump!’ to any tracking shots.
(Paul Balmer http://www.musiconearth.co.uk/ http://www.amazon.com/Paul-Balmer)
In the early 80’s Andy Tylee was Senior Personnel and Admin Officer and my Boss. He was so forward thinking and introduced many innovative ideas. One of these was to give us “office nerds” a feel of the pressures faced by production staff so that we would understand the odd “hissy fit”. We were put into small teams and our task was to use the resources available to us to make a short (about eight minutes) film before the set deadline. It was so exciting and I was designated Vision Mixer and shall never forget executing an “Iris Wipe”. We had background music available to us and we chose Paul Balmer to play his guitar. I still have the video of the sailing ships with spinnakers billowing. Yes, it did help to understand better why production staff always wanted to see someone “NOW”. Anyone else remember this ?
I remember the photo! But had forgotten the context. However i did a few of these gigs and still have a hi band U-matic videotape of some of the results. Can anybody de-cypher such an archeological technology?
Paul