Post Production – What Was Pebble Mill?

Roger Casstles reminisces about BBC Pebble Mill

Specially shot video of Roger Casstles talking about why BBC Pebble Mill was a special place. The video is recorded on Pebble Mill Road, overlooking the site where Pebble Mill stood, and is now a dental hospital. Roger mentions some of the productions that came from Pebble Mill, like Pebble Mill at One, Midlands Today, The Archers, as well as the Midland Radio Orchestra, and being a centre for drama, but tells us that the really important thing was how people worked together, for instance post production working across all productions and the way that Graphics and Set Design departments collaborated with production. Roger Casstles was the creator and producer of The Clothes Show, the fashion magazine series which ran from the 1986-2000.

(The video was shot by BCU Media graduate, Ash Connaughton, with me, (Vanessa Jackson) asking the questions).

Roger Casstles at the site of Pebble Mill

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

Andy Frizzell: ‘Had some great shoots with Roger in many countries around the world. As always talking a lot of sense. We were all saddened by the closing of ‘The Mill’.‘

Claire Chambers: ‘As Roger would say “ why answer a question with one word when thousands will do” ! Very well said’

Linda Hearn-Clapham: ‘Very happy memories of recording Hartbeat and The Movie Game at Pebble Mill in the 90’s!’

D3 and Beta SP machines

Photo by Ian Collins, no reproduction without permission.

The photo shows a Panasonic D3 machine, and an Ampex Betcam SP machine.

D3 was a 1/2 inch videotape format which lost very little information between generations, and was hailed as a great revolution. It was brought in, in the early 1990s. I remember how excited everyone in post production got about D3, because you didn’t lose picture quality in going down a generation – although some thought that it would make production staff even more lax in their editing, because it didn’t matter if you had to go round again! Ironically, the tapes did not stand the test of time well, meaning that much of the BBC archive had to be digitised. D3 tended to be an editing and delivery format, rather than a shooting format.

Beta SP was also a 1/2 inch videotape format, and was the standard tape used in the late 1980s, and early 1990s for recording portable single camera location pieces.

These machines were in post production – probably in the machine room between VTC and VTE.

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

Paul Vanezis: ‘We had three D3’s in VTE but 2 machines everywhere else. We did totally mad pre-read edits on Top Gear and The Clothes Show. But the maddest was a Motor Show Special. It was 10 minutes before TX on a Sunday afternoon in 1992. Steve Neilson was editing and dropped out of record in the middle of a pre-read edit. The look of horror on his face was something to behold. I got him to redo the edit as audio only and pick the vision up later! We did make it on air and there were plenty of examples of that going on.’

Alan Miller: ‘I believe the D3 saga has an interesting ending in that the BBC has thousands of tapes to archive but there are not enough D3 head assemblies in the world to copy them to another format!’

Adam Trotman: ‘And you had to line them up properly or you would get a hop in the picture. …’

Russell Parker: ‘They retired there, but I think this photo is either VTE or Edit 17’s machine room.’

Jacks’ lead storage

Photo by Paul Vanezis, no reproduction without permission.

This photo shows how spools from old VT tapes were reused as jacks’ lead storage in post production at Pebble Mill. You can see the spools screwed on to the end of this bay outside Dub 1 in post production

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

Keith Brook (Scouse): ‘I think they were the 30 minute size of 2″ spools. They took both sides off the centre, screwed it to the wall, then put one side back on.’

Andy Marriott: ‘I would’ve assume timed video leads would make that an MFA area somewhere in post production. Any increase/decrease in cable lengths would’ve played havoc with timings between VT/studios, unless you can compensate for it. This is obviously in the days before you could just stick cheap frame synchronisers on each OS. ISTR that even by the end of Studio B’s life, only a handful of the OS’ had synchronisers on. The others relied on the sources being synchronous and ‘timed in’, like local VT machines etc.

I think the reason they’re ‘timed’ leads, is that basically they’re all the same length, so if you need to patch a component feed between two VT’s (three patch cables required), you’d need the cables to be all the same length to avoid messing up your picture if (for example) the colour difference signals arrive before your luminance signal.

If you were short of spools you can also chop them at 120 degree intervals have three cable hangers instead. You can label as 50Hz, 0-20kHz and >3MHz.’

Raymond Lee: ‘It may have been a JCB [John Burkill] idea, he was quite involved with the refurb.’

Post Production Christmas Party

Mark Heslop, Ingrid Wagner, Stan Treasurer, Greg Miller

Jonathan Birkett, Victoria Trow, Roger Mulliner, Ian Bellion

Ian Bellion, Peter Gower, Charles White, John Rosser, Mike Duxbury

Photos by Shirley O’Mara, no reproduction without permission.

Each year the Pebble Mill Post Production department held its own Christmas party. These photos date from the late 1980s, when the department descended on the Forbidden City Chinese Restaurant for its festive treat!

Please add a comment if you can identify any of the missing names.

Panasonic D3 VCR

Photo by Ian Collins, no reproduction without permission.

This is a Panasonic D3, D350 VCR. D3 was introduced as a new 1/2″ tape format in 1991. The format was not used on location as far as I remember, but was used extensively in VT editing suites, because the beauty of it was that it did not degrade if you went down a generation. It was also used for master copies of programmes for transmission.

Unfortunately D3 does not seem to have withstood the tests of time very effectively, and many D3 tapes in the BBC archives have deteriorated badly.

Mike Skipper added the following information on the Pebble Mill Facebook group, ‘one of the disadvantages of D3 is that the recorded signal is digitised composite PAL. The format rapidly went out of favour when productions started to shoot and archive material in 16:9 widescreen format. Digital Betacam, being a component recording standard, rapidly took over from D3. Digital Betacam machines require an option board to be fitted to allow them to play back analogue Betacam SP tapes.’

Ray Lee added the following information on the Facebook group: ‘from a maintenance point of view the D3’s needed a lot of expensive equipment for rotary head replacement, so all machines were dealt with in London, whereas the Digital Betacam were much more straightforward, didn’t need so much equipment and we replaced the heads locally at Pebble Mill. One reason digital Betacam was shunned initially is that the system employed a kind of signal compression. Although few real signals would ever trigger the compression, it was felt better to use a non compressed format. However as standard betacam gained widespread use in News, and the component editing was already gaining acceptance, Digital Betacam was a natural extension, and the machines could even play the analogue tapes. In fact it was a simple matter to substitute Digital Betacam machines into an analogue edit suite, as most of the existing wiring could serve for both.’