Keith Brook – Page 7 – What Was Pebble Mill?

Keith Jones obituary

This obituary for Pebble Mill Engineering House Services Manager, Keith Jones, written by Tony Pilgrim, appeared in Prospero, the BBC retirees’ magazine, in August 2013.

Thanks to Peter Poole for sharing it.

The following comments were left on the Pebble Mill Facebook group:

Lynn Cullimore: ‘Yes of course I remember Keith. I worked in Engineering as it was my first job at the BBC. I am sad to hear he has passed away. He was always nice to me, always kind and helpful which as a young lass then i appreciated. He was known as HSE – House Services Engineer.’

Keith Brook: ‘Keith was a lovely man and did a great job, not only with the building but as chairman of the club.’

John Jeavons lighting the Foyer or Studio B

Photo from Keith Brook, no reproduction without permission

Photo from Peter Poole, no reproduction without permission

The photo is of John Jeavons lighting either Studio B or the foyer.

Jeavons was relegated to working those two places because of an incident at a meeting Sidey had called.

Every department was there to discuss the viability of a simple little TV programme to be made in the foyer. As Sidey went through each section he was greeted with ‘Crazy, but we’ll give it a go’. Finally it got to Tech Ops, who said it was impossible to light, ceiling too low, not enough manpower, far too difficult, yada, yada, yada.

Good old Jeavons stood up and said if we remove the ceiling tiles we’ll have enough room and he’ll only need two sparks who can also do Midlands Today and stay within hours.

That slightly upset Head of Tech Ops, and not being the vindictive type at all, made sure that Jeavons only did those two shows.

Incidentally, he’s using a Weston Master V, the best exposure meter ever made. Which makes him a great lighter!! There’s a load of complicated stuff for still photography but in the TV world, these meters were used to maintain a consistency of light level. To that end, we only used the top window with the needle and tried to keep everything the same.

Keith Brook (Aka Scouse)

Link 125 cameras

Link 125 camera on Pebble Mill at One

Copyright resides with the original holder, no reproduction without permission. Thanks to floor manager, Eurwyn Jones, foreground in this photo, for sharing it.

The photo shows the Link 125 cameras during a rehearsal with cook Michael Smith, on Pebble Mill at One, circa 1981.

The Link 125 cameras replaced the EMI 2001 cameras, which were extremely popular with cameramen. The Links did not enjoy the same popularity.

The following comments were left on the Pebble Mill Facebook group about the camera:

Keith Brook: ‘Luckily for me I left before the Links came in. My ex-colleagues told me how bad they were and how difficult it was to focus. If you wound up the peaking, the camera noise became a white fog over the whole viewfinder. If you turned it down, the focus was likely to be soft, but you couldn’t tell. Engineers chose cameras and cameramen had to make do with what they were given. Despite far, far better cameras being available from Japanese manufacturers, the BBC had decided to ‘do the patriotic thing’ and use a British company. Fortunately, the Links didn’t last long.’

Matthew Skill: ‘The patriotic thing being to use a camera company that hadn’t been around that long compared to the real camera-makers…? And then to eventually indirectly/inadvertently drive same late-comer company to the wall as it tried to satisfy BBC requirements for a ‘modern’ studio camera (130) to replace the 110s and 125s. A curious tale all round….’

Stuart Gandy: ‘That’s certainly true what Keith says about the Links. After the crispness of the 2001’s, they never seemed sharp. There was also an odd condition that could happen that resulted in a strange slight loss of focus in the middle of the screen, which became known as the ‘teardrop’, because of its shape. The cause was never fully explained, but I think adjusting the registration controls fixed it – for a while. Even now, I remember the words of the late Mike Lee, when he would come across the line up area and say quietly, ‘we’ve got a teardrop’.’

Developments at Pebble Mill 1984

Thanks to Peter Poole for sharing these pages about technical developments, including a new dubbing and sypher suite, and Studio B control room refurbishment, at Pebble Mill in the internal BBC Engineering Newsletter from 1984/5.

The following information was added on the Pebble Mill Facebook group:

Keith Brook: ‘The original 1/4″ location sound was transferred onto special 16mm separate magnetic, sep-mag, film. Now, the film and the sound were the same ‘size’ and could be edited together by the film editor. If it was drama, for example, you’d end up with a complete film and dialogue track but minus the music, sound effects, wild-track and so on. You would them make a second, or third, sep-mag track that had the music, effects and so on, all in the right places but with extra lead-in and lead-out.

Dubbing was where you took that 16mm film, its matching 16mm dialogue track, the other tracks and put them on a huge machine that kept everything in sync. You would then run the whole lot through a sound mixer onto a final track, fading the effects in and out according to a dubbing script that matched the frame counter.

SYPHER was a video system and is a BBC acronym for ‘SYnchronous Post-production using Helical-scan video and Eight-track Recorder’. Essentially, it worked like film-dubbing, but the 8-track sound machine was kept in sync with the video player by time code rather than mechanically as in film. Again, once you had the dialogue track and all the other bits in the right places, you would have a final ‘dub’ where you put it all together onto the audio track of the video recorder. The clever bit with SYPHER was the motorised faders on the sound desk which, again using timecode, would remember their settings at each moment during the final dub.’

Stuart Gandy: ‘Good memories of those times. This was during a period of 3 – 4 years of major refurbishment of the studio and VT areas. From the vision viewpoint in the studios , it was the change from the stalwart EMI 2001 cameras to the Link 125.’

Pebble Mill at One Office

Photos by Ken Williams, no reproduction without permission.

These photos date from the 1970s. They show the Pebble Mill at One production office.

Thanks to Keith Brook (aka Scouse) for sharing the photos.

Photo 1 has Heather Turner, hands on hips, who was in charge of fashion items, Sue Ashcroft in the middle and Roger Laughton on the right. Roger was deputy editor who went on to be Managing Director of Meridian.

Photo 2 has Yvonne Ackrill on the right and I don’t know who on the left.

Photo 3 has the same lady again and Terry Dobson, the infamous editor, trying to be dominating.Photo 4 is Sue Ashcroft again in a typical, shy and quiet pose!

The following comment was posted on the Pebble Mill Facebook group:

Keith Brook: ‘The camera (in the 2nd photo) is an EMI 201 that was used as a makeshift prompter. Slung underneath the studio cameras were small TV monitors showing the script, which meant the presenters were always looking down slightly.’

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