Nick Flowers

I used to work on a series based in Monkey World, a large establishment in Dorset that rescues monkeys and apes from around the world and gives them a pretty good life. The enclosures were too dangerous for the film crew to enter*, so when the keepers went in it had to be radio microphones: no chance of getting a boom in anywhere close. Trouble was, the baby chimps were really affectionate and used to leap up onto the keeper's chest and hug him closely thus covering the lav. My only way round this was to put two mics on the keeper, each high and to the side. They had to be buried not only because of the programme's style but if they had been exposed, the curious chimps would have had them. By putting each mic on a separate track I gave myself a slightly better chance of success.

* On an occasion I wasn't there, one of the adult chimps took a dislike to being filmed. The first stone it hurled, with horrible accuracy, smashed the camera lens. The second stone broke the cameraman's nose.

More deep joy from the Douglas Self site.

http://www.douglas-self.com/MUSEUM/POWER/vibratory/vibrate.htm#eric

I love all this old stuff - here is an example of a mercury arc rectifier.

Well, I found this interesting! Maybe one or two others out there will too.

http://www.douglas-self.com/MUSEUM/POWER/mechrect/mechrect.htm

Back in the early 1970s I was working on BBC programme Nationwide. The assistant cameraman (Chris O'Dell, who went on to be a distinguished DoP) had the habit, whenever he held up the hand lamp to illuminate something, of saying: "This lanthorn doth the horned moon present," a quote from A Midsummer Night's Dream. I was always very impressed by this.

Kenneth Williams on Round the Horne. Not so much double entendre as single entendre.

Very interesting,  VAS. Do they use the same musical scale as we do in modern western music?

They can work wonders in post, you know.

A while ago I shot an anniversary episode of The Sky at Night (a very long running series about astronomy on BBC). One of the guests was the guitarist from Queen (rock group, not monarch), Brian May, who has a Doctorate in Astro Physics.. He was wearing dungarees and nothing else over a naked, hairy chest. I had the Devil's own job finding a quiet hiding place for the lav - the shot was too wide too boom, and I am sorry to say that Mr. May became quite abusive to me, and the producer had to calm him down in the end. I succeeded eventually purely by trial and error, miles of camera tape and cotton, cages and other devices. I am very glad to say that removing the camera tape from his hairy chest after that shoot hurt him far more than it hurt me.

You may want to consider, as an alternative to your tattoo, this line from Virgil's Aeneid (Book VI, line 257) Procul, O procul este, profani.

Away, stand far away, O you profane ones.

1 hour ago, atheisticmystic said:

Sweet !

We say head over heels...nothing more common than a colonial commoner, hey ?

best

 

My dear chap! Your delicacy makes you a credit to your country, and indeed it is the more usual form over here.

It is I, Britannia's Shame, who fully suit being the object for the phrase:

Odi profanum vulgus et arceo.

(Horace Odes III 1)

I loathe the uneducated mass and keep them away from me.

14 minutes ago, JonG said:

The only drawback to any of these mics is their size and weight. Yes you have to have a strong boom op that has some skill. My boom ops know that I regularly use these mics, so they have to be up to the challenge. I hear a lot of mixers say that they can't get their boom ops to swing an 816, which boggles my mind because even though it is a challenge, it's part of the job imho. I'm not afraid to swing one, and regularly do, even as an OMB. 

 

I was one of the boom ops on Four Weddings and a Funeral, and in a wedding scene in a church I was up on a tall step ladder covering the dialogue between the vicar and the bride and groom, with an 816 out at full stretch of the pole. It was about a five minute scene and at the end of each take my muscles were screaming, but just about recovered by the time the next take started. You can imagine my delight when after another take the director said "Keep rolling, we'll go again straight away." I don't know how I didn't dip into shot, my arms were so fatigued!

This is quite a good antidote when you feel that you are thigh

 deep in the Slough of Despond. I find it very uplifting.

3 hours ago, Marc Wielage said:

Call me crazy, but if this had happened to me, I would've walked. I try to be nice and cooperative up to a point, but there is a line that gets crossed. 

Me too.

I heard an anecdote years ago about a feature film shooting in France. A well established French sound mixer worked on the first day of shooting but on the second day a different chap turned up. When questioned, he said that he was the new mixer, as the first one deemed the picture "not worthy of him".

Perhaps in the end it is all down to perceived priorities. There are definite advantages for the UK to remain the EU, but to me all these undoubted pluses are less important than having our laws made by people that we elect. If we don't like what a government has done, in five years we can chuck them out in the next election. This doesn't happen when we are in the EU as their laws and regulations can take precedence over UK law. Some people will say that the advantages of remaining in the EU outweigh the lack of democracy that goes along with membership, but my personal view (which might well be an artefact of my age and memory of the UK being of more consequence than maybe it is now) is that democracy trumps everything else.

An analogous situation could be that people living in the USA would be asked to have their laws subject to supervision from Canada, so long as association with Canada brought wealth and convenience for some. 

Having said all that, I fully expect the referendum to confirm our continued membership of the EU, because I reckon that my point of view is not shared by the majority...so in fact democracy will win! 

There but for the Grace of God went I! I used to work for the BBC programme City Hospital, which quite often meant covering operations - surgeons could be quite skittish when I came to put radio mics on them. I always thought that the Anaesthetists were the Sound Men of the operating theatre, (the unsung and undervalued heroes) and the surgeons were the cameramen (hogging the limelight and disproportionately pleased with themselves). 

I love what seems to be a bit of camera tape holding the pop gag on the mic - has it previously dropped off into the open wound?? Or am I reading too much into a rather grainy image? 

Arse over tit.

HE MADE me say it, Moderator!!!!

More really fascinating stuff, thank you so much for posting.

The permanent magnet for erasing the tape reminds me of a 1/4" tape recorder an American friend of mine had, back in the 1960s. It had a collar that slipped over the capstan so that it would record at the correct speed whether it was receiving a 50Hz or 60Hz mains supply. But its erase head was a small permanent magnet inserted on an arm that swung forward to contact the tape in Record mode.

Well, it is a damn good story, and thanks for sharing it with us.

"Be sure your sins will find you out"! Yes, I was on a couple of other Pete Walker films too; A Man Called Moon, and the interestingly titled The Flesh and Blood Show. The recordist was Peter O'Connor and I was the boom op. Peter Jessop was the Cameraman on one and Norman Langley on the others. They were all low budget films but Pete Walker was an entertaining character and I quite liked him. I remember his outrage when the crew was waiting for something to turn up - a prop or a car or something - and we were outside on a fine day. Pete arrived in a fluster and told us all that he didn't pay us to be 'sunning yourselves' and we should be doing SOMETHING! 

The Flesh and Blood Show had a 3D sequence, shot on a couple of Cameflexes on a girder which made a hell of a racket. We shot most of it on Brighton West Pier and the rest on the pier at Cromer in Norfolk. The principle microphone on the pole in all the films was a Sennheiser 405, and sometimes an 805; and I don't think that we used radio mics at all in any of the films. On Moon, I had to share a cupboard with a naked Luan Peters: it was the only place I could hide, and she had to emerge from it during the scene. Most satisfactory.

Interesting that they changed their name to Megger Instruments Ltd. Many a prank was played with a Megger tester, which was hand cranked to create a high voltage to test insulation...and to surprise the unsuspecting!

What a fascinating story, thank you so much for posting it.

The name Evershed brings back memories of advertisements in the ACTT (UK film and TV union) magazine for Evershed power optics, a company that made, if I recall correctly, motors for zoom lenses, motion control and that sort of stuff. If you Google Evershed Power Optics, you will find a few references to them, some of their patents make me think that they may well be the Eversheds mentioned in your article.

Please keep us up to date with your researches, it is all really interesting.

And here is his ancestor, D25 Gag.

Very sad. Nearly thirty years ago I was with a TV news crew that had been shooting an item in East Sussex and we were having lunch in a rural pub. Keith Emerson came over and introduced himself, as he was curious about what we had been shooting. It ended up with him inviting us over to his nearby house where we spent an hour, and I had the great pleasure of playing a duet with him on the piano  - The Girl from Ipanema as it happens. A real gentleman and a friendly soul. RIP.