These photos are of telecine notes from Howards’ Way from 1989. The location scenes of Howards’ Way were shot on film in and around Southampton, and then played in to the studio shoots via telecine. The notes show the ins and outs of the different takes, as well as the film roll numbers. The notes have been kept safe and beautifully wrapped by Jim Gregory for the past twenty five years.
Photo by Jim Gregory, no reproduction without permission.
The photo includes: Milton Hainsworth, Graham Winter and Mike Brown. It was taken by Jim Gregory in June 1973.
“Milton Hainsworth was a News film editor, Graham was TK supervisor, although technically the post had been re-titled Senior Recording Engineer. Mike was the original film projectionist for Film Unit and the Dubbing Suite, he defected to Central and is now a Video Editor at BBC Nottingham.
In the background is a Westrex Sepmag machine. The photograph was taken by Jim from the Telecine Quality Check Room, which only lasted for a few more years as fairly big alterations were made to that end of the Telecine VT area later.”
Jim Gregory
The following comments were left on the Pebble Mill Facebook page:
Ray Lee: ‘I remember all 3 as I joined Telecine in 1974, Graham soon moved to Wood Norton, but Milton was still around when News editing had gone to Betacam tapes. Don’t remember where Mike moved to, but our paths didn’t cross often.’
Christopher Hall: ‘I remember Graham Winter from Wood Norton. Sadly he died a couple of years ago.’
Peter Woolley: ‘I remember Milton! I think he refused to go to his own leaving party!’
Lynn Cullimore: ‘Well I certainly remember Milton. Yes, I think he did not go to his leaving party bless him.’
Mike Dhonau: ‘I spent 7 weeks with Graham running training in Oman – in 1993. Great times. He was a little plumper then…’
Max Mulgrew: ‘Peter Woolley is correct. Milton was not at his leaving do, on floor two at Pebble Mill, and later refused to accept his leaving present. I think Sue Beardsmore was among those at the gathering.’
Peter Greenhalgh: ‘Mike Brown is still around. Just showed him the pic as he’s not on FB. He does all the tech op jobs here, and was a freelance camera op before joining us.’
Jim Gregory talks about telecine from pebblemill on Vimeo.
Specially recorded video of Jim Gregory describing the operation of telecine, both in terms of studio dramas, and the broadcasting of film in the 1960s-80s.
This film was recorded as part of Royal Holloway’s ADAPT project, led by John Ellis. The project is staging various ‘reconstructions’ of former television production stages and equipment. In this element, Pebble Mill’s Jim Gregory was introduced to his Television Centre counterpart, Tim Emblem-English, at BBC Post Production’s Ruislip centre, which still houses an operational Rank Cintel Mark 3 telecine. Jim is seen grading a piece of 1965 black and white footage of Birmingham, on the control desk.
Dave Schoolden & Jim Gregory 1976 in TK
Copyright resides with the original holder, no reproduction without permission.
Here is the BBC Farming signature tune, from the early 1980s. Farming was the predecessor of the current Countryfile series.
Also included here are some Radio Birmingham jingles, which probably date from the 1970s.
Thanks to Peter Poole for sharing these.
The following comments were left on the Pebble Mill Facebook group:
Stuart Gandy: ‘Flippin, ek! that recalls memories from a long time ago, from 1980 when I was doing racks in Studio B. The racks job for Farming was usually very simple. Apart from the opening introduction to camera and the goodbyes, almost all of the rest of the programme was on film. It was the telecine operator who had the much more to do, from the ops perspective.’
Lynn Cullimore: ‘Music always evokes memories…the Top Gear sig tune does it for me having worked there…it gives me goose bumps.’
Pete Simpkin: ‘Actually Lynn the Radio sig. tune version of the Farming programme always does that for me, I can still hear David Stevens announcing and then the strains of ‘I wish I were plough-boy’ took us into Tony Parkin’s introduction.’
Peter Poole: ‘I used to work on Farming with Peter Mellors. After a few weeks he asked if I would like to mix the programme . In my excitement I almost forgot to mic up the presenter. This was probably my first live TV programme. Great days.’
Photo by Tim Savage, no reproduction without permission
VT Expansion
Around 1975/6 VTC was created. A pair of AmpexVR1200 were installed into the new area, but because there were only sufficient lines on the Comms router at that time for one more VT they shared a single source and destination route, and one control line. When working with a studio or outside destination, they only saw whichever machine was switched to line, which meant that for programmes like Midlands Today, one machine could be cuing the next item, while one was playing, but normally it would need a brief return to another source so that the machine to line could be switched prior to playing the next item. I had a fairly extended period working in VT after VTC was created, and even did some training of others including Tim Savage. At that time Angela Ripon was the main presenter on “Top Gear” which was frequently edited in VTC.
Soon after that the IVC 9000 Slant track machine was installed in the former Telecine viewing room. More and more programmes were using VT and so any viewing of film material took place either in the viewing theatre run by Stan Treasurer, or in the Telecine cubicles themselves. The IVC 9000 used 2inch wide tape like the Quad machines, but recorded the tracks diagonally across the tape. The tape also ran at half the speed that the Quad machines used, so could accommodate longer continuous recordings.
It was slightly less noisy than the Quad machines and had a much quicker start up mode. (I believe it could be synchronous in 3 seconds instead of 10). This machine was used extensively by Pebble Mill at One, but because there was only ever one machine, it still required a Quad machine to do edits, and also any material that was on slant track format tapes, could only be played on that machine, which rather limited its usefulness. The idea of obtaining a second machine for an edit pair never materialised, as by this stage the Ampex VPR2 machines were starting to be installed in London, and subsequently at Pebble Mill, and these had the advantage of seeing pictures in still frame and shuttle mode, which enormously improved the location of edit points.
Ray Lee
Ray added this additional information on the Pebble Mill Facebook page: ‘VTC was equiped with VR1200s which Paul (Vanezis) is quite correct were older machines (than the VR2000s). Pebble Mill had them 2nd Hand I think ex London when they were just starting to install VPR2’s at TVC as far as I recall.’