Television didn’t figure particularly strongly in my career at British Leyland but there were various occasions later when it provided some entertainment.
I had a friend who organised big screen television coverage of classical concerts at a well-know venue close to my home. In reality it wasn’t a big deal. Jim (not his real name) would hire in all the gear he needed for a four camera set-up with vision mixing in a small room sending a feed to a video projector so the audience could all see the musicians. He didn’t have to bother about sound because somebody else was relaying that over the speakers. On one occasion he was stressed because he hadn’t got enough camera operators. In desperation he asked me to look after one of them.
It wasn’t particularly difficult because somebody else set the kit up – all I had to do was to stand behind it and point it in the right direction. After a while I got more used to it and started to use the zoom control and focus. After that he asked me to help him out on a number of occasions.
Jim was extremely thorough in his preparations. He always got hold of a full orchestral score for whatever music was being performed and would spend hours working out his camera script. Unfortunately the whole thing seemed to go out of the window within the first ten minutes so he would be winging it for most of the concert.
So far as those of us on the cameras were concerned it didn’t matter because we weren’t party to his carefully-laid plans. We didn’t even get to have a run-through in the rehearsal because the cameras and associated cabling were still being set up while the orchestra was getting familiar with the programme.
One night though, things seemed to go more haywire than usual because I heard Jim’s voice over my headset while one of the musicians was playing a particularly prominent role: ‘Some bugger’s playing something’ said Jim. ‘Will somebody show me who it is?’.
I did several of those concerts with Jim and they were always eventful. But having operated a camera for him, people seemed to get the idea that I knew what I was doing with them. That was the case one night when I was going to a Gordon Giltrap gig at our local arts centre. I knew the arts centre manager well and when I arrived, I saw him and asked how the evening was looking.
He told me that he’d agreed to video tape the gig but, like Jim, he was stressing because he too was short of a camera operator. I suggested locking off one camera with a wide shot of the stage so that he could cut to that while the other cameras were changing whatever shot they were on.
He agreed that could work but then said ‘You know your way around a camera don’t you? Can you look after one of them for me?’. I assumed that he meant just stand behind the locked-off camera in case something needed to be done to it but he meant controlling the thing. So that was how I ended up as a camera operator on a Gordon Giltrap video.
At around that time it looked as though my son who would probably have been about ten years old, had inherited whatever it was that made people think I knew something about television cameras. We had been invited as a family to the horse of the year show, again at the NEC. The show was being recorded for later transmission on a broadcast TV channel. The rest of the us were in the hospitality area in the interval when I was told that Simon had talked his way into a cameraman’s seat behind a television camera at the side of the arena. I managed to get him out before they began recording again.
Perhaps the worst experience with television occurred in the 1980s. I was visiting the NEC and ran into Barry Cleverdon who was showing Nicky Slater around. Nicky, with his partner Karen Barber had been leading figure skaters but he was moving on to other things. He and Barry were planning the Sport Aid Skating Spectacular and we began discussing what they intended to do. By the end of lunch I’d volunteered to sort out the sound and lighting for the show.
I was extremely fortunate to get the support of many people in the meetings industry and they installed a superb sound and lighting rig as well as providing the people to operate everything. They did a brilliant job but at the interval I was asked to go to the television scanner truck outside the hall. I hadn’t known until I got on site that the show was being recorded for syndication across America.
The problem was that the lighting looked superb in the hall but there wasn’t enough light for the television cameras. I was shown an oscilloscope trace to demonstrate the problem and as that was happening I was told that Bob Geldof was on the phone and wanted to talk to the person responsible for the lighting. I looked around but there was nobody else there.
Getting yelled at by Geldof, even over the phone, tends to have an effect. I had to go back into the hall and tell the lighting guys that, in spite of all the effort they had put in to producing some superb lighting effects for the skaters, we had no alternative but to flood the ice with as much light as possible so that there would be a good enough television image to be able to sell in the USA. I still feel bad about that one.
On a different occasion at the NEC a television camera proved enormously useful. I was visiting some pals who were using a camera in a conference they were staging. We were heading out to get a drink and one of them asked if I’d mind helping out by carrying the camera. This was when a hand-held camera was about two feet long and was fairly heavy. They weren’t actually hand-held to the extent and had a curve on the bottom of the camera body that made it easier to hold on your shoulder. There was also a handle on the top and I used that to carry the beast.
We set off from the room where they were setting up their conference and they said we’d walk through one of the smaller halls to get to their car. That hall had an exhibition in place and security were checking badges as people went in. As we walked towards the barrier my pal told me to put the camera on my shoulder. I wasn’t sure why he wanted me to do that but he was very insistent.
So the security guys saw four people approaching, one carrying a television camera and deep in conversation with somebody carrying a clipboard while the other two followed close behind.
They seem to have decided that we were a bona fide television crew and let us through without any hesitation. It was a demonstration that it’s not the power of television that gets you in. It’s the power of a television camera.
Ken Clayton is a director of Reference Technology Ltd., the technology company providing online and onsite registration and badging for conferences and exhibitions.
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