Here’s the false gable end from “The Franchise Affair” (1988). Christopher Glover was working on VT on this outside broadcast. The flames from gas burners when shot from the right angle made it look like the building being on fire.
Les Podraza is the chap up the ladder (note the lack of health and safety). He spent two days building this the flaming structure. The night shoot was apparently fantastic.
Photos by Christopher Glover, no reproduction without permission.
Siouxsie and the Banshees being recorded in Studio A for Look! Hear! Produced by Roger Casstles. Look! Hear! was a regional music and culture show. The photos date from the mid-1980s.
The following comments were added on the Pebble Mill Facebook page:
Phil Dolling: This brings back memories I was a very junior sound assistant on the floor, I recall the drummer ‘Budgie’ had his fold-back set to terrifying levels with all the high frequencies wound up. It was like razor blades coming out of the speakers. A brilliant series, it caught a great moment in Midland’s music.
Annette Martin: I mixed it she was v good. Just spotted the lovely Ron Sowton Floor Manager in 2nd pic.
Richard Stevenson: It is pre-1987 when I joined as the new cameras were in by then. Probably the Heron crane – one man to drive it and the camera op had a pedal for up and down plus a second pedal to rotate the seat. If you got them mixed up it got very messy!
Photo by Christopher Glover, no reproduction without permission.
The photo shows Jon Parker in VTA at Pebble Mill in the late 1980s. It’s rather dark and not a brilliant quality photo – but then it was rather dark working in a VT suite.
Jon left the BBC to study Horology, and now lectures in clock making at Birmingham City University.
Thanks to Christopher Glover for sharing the photo.