Steve Neilsen – What Was Pebble Mill?

VTB Channel Record 1988

VTB ‘Channel Record’ 1988 from pebblemill on Vimeo.

The video is a bit of moving history, although it was shot mute for a music sequence. It shows VTB in 1988 doing a drama “channel record” from Studio A on a pair of 1” VPR2 machines. The programme is “Final Run” VTB1 is on the left, manned by series editor Steve Neilson, VTB2 is on the right manned by yours truly. Video drama on location was very much pioneered by Pebble Mill (“Blackstuff”) and it was practice that the recording engineer or editor would record both the studio and the location. The bottle of Bush Mills Whiskey suggests the studio was after our location shoot in Northern Ireland . The “main” recording would be on VTB1 and the “backing” on VTB2. This was a throw back to the days when VT recording was not that reliable and all studio recordings had a back-up in case of problems. The blank tapes were assemble edited from the studio allowing time code to be “time of tape” rather than “time of day “as was used in London. In the case of a drama series we used “multi-episodic” tapes which meant that we would change tapes to that of whichever episode was being recorded. So for a four episode series we would have four master and backing tapes being used at any one time. This saved a lot of time at the edit not having to change tapes, and relieved some of the inevitable boredom of awaiting rehearsals to turn into “takes”. The tape trolley had a four channel audio mixer in it for editing purposes, and if you wanted to add music at all during the edit, you had to order you vinyl disc from the library and have it transferred to ¼” tape in the transfer suite.

Colin Fearnley

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.’

Portable 1″ Videotape Recorder (VPR 20)

Photos by Video Editor, Ian Collins; no reproduction without permission.

Ian took these photos before the sale of equipment when Pebble Mill was cleared prior to being demolished in 2005.

The portable 1″ videotape recorder (probably a VPR-20) was a useful piece of technology, meaning that shots could be recorded on location without a full outside broadcast, and before the advent of portable single cameras.

The VT editors shown in the photo are (left to right) Ian Collins, Steve Neilsen, Brian Watkiss, Ivor Williams, Mike Bloore, John Burkill, John Doidge, Steve May.

Peter Poole added the following information on the Pebble Mill Facebook page: ‘I remember a Clothes Show recording using the Ampex/Nagra VPR5. It was an audition for models in Studio 1. The queues stretched down Pebble Mill road.’

Please add a comment if you remember which programmes used portable 1″ recorders.

VT boys and VPR20 Video Recorder – photos by Ian Collins

Photos by Ian Collins, no reproduction without permission.

Here are the boys from VT proudly showing off their Ampex VPR20 Video Recorder!

The photos shows left to right: Ian Collins, Steve Neilsen, Brian Watkiss, Ivor Williams, Mike Bloore, John Burkhill, John Doidge, Steve May.

Boys from VT

World Rally – Steve Neilsen’s photo

Steve Neilsen, Paul Hutchins

Photo from editor Steve Nielsen.

The photo is of the World Rally Championship, probably from 1998, New Zealand. The helicopter is a Squirrel. It features editor Steve Neilsen (left) and cameraman Paul Hutchins from Magpie, the Birmingham based film production company.

Please add a comment if you can add more information, or know who the other people in the photo are.