LOOKING BACK

I've never really thought of vision mixing as something to look back on. It's such a perpetually present sort of job, like dancing, or singing. One moment you're there, doing it - and the next, your gone, leaving no trace.

Nevertheless, vision mixing is now an old enough business to have a history; and it has left races, in fact more than traces, since it became possible to record television. Of course, it's an awful shame that this was not always possible. I mean, in the early days when you did it on Sunday, and then all over again on Thursday, (and the devil take you if you'd lost your script or notes or, if it comes to it, mislaid a prop or a gramophone record)! Well, the programmes were so much better, weren't they? Stands to reason, they must have been - with all that spontaneity and on-the-spotness.

As my friend, Rachael, said in the last issue of Digit, our first vision mixer units could only mix; and later - oh, proud day! The designing powers found a way of making cuts as well. But I leave you to imagine the hilarious possibilities or error using this procedure, from inadvertently fading or switching out the channel on air, and equally inadvertently, switching or fading in one or more channels on top of the one on air, down to botched cuts due to failing to time the change properly on operating the two switches simultaneously. Don't forget, most operations had to be done fast, in the old days as now.

And, as if the elaborate cutting system was not enough, you had only two monitors to work to. One of your monitors carried the transmission picture, the other your only preview, to which the picture has to be switched by the R.A.C.K.S. operators downstairs; and you did feel alone and helpless in the teeth of frightful odds when, as sometimes happened, you had to wait, screaming - "3 to preview, please R.A.C.K.S., Telecine next - 3 up please, R.A.C.K.S.! R..A..C..K..S!!!

Imagine the to-do of marking up your script. Mine, apart from the usual hieroglyphics, were littered with instructions from me to me, like; Preview3, prep 3 to cut, uncut 4, prep 2 to cut, cut 1 to 3, preview 4, uncut 1….. see what I mean? One Director looked at my script one day, and said "What is all this rubbish? It's television we're doing not an algebra thesis". Still, I don't suppose many Directors understand Vision Mixer's shorthand any better even now.

We did all sorts of programmes at Alexandra Palace, from 1946 on. The week's high spot, I suppose, was 'the play', which got all day Sunday (and that was all!) for rehearsal. It went out on Sunday night, and was repeated, with a run through only, on Thursday night. The other days we did magazine, music, sports, and children's programmes, (notably Muffin The Mule), also variety programmes of unbelievably ambitious kinds, plus wild life programmes.

I'll never forget a charming zoo man, who brought in a very tame Vulture, to talk about. He'd hardly been there ten minutes, when the whole crew had to be involved in a perfectly fruitless effort to bully or cajole the Vulture back down from the highest point of the lighting system. We struggled on to line up our shots without the bird, then as our red light came on, the unspeakable bird flapped its way down to land, like a well trained falcon, on the zoo man's wrist. He must have had a terrible time trying to get through his script, fixed by the Vulture's beady eye. Of course, as you might expect, the Vulture stole the show.

Then - a music programme. The Director was more given to sports than to music programmes and, though he was far from ignorant about music, he'd got in a bit of a muddle with the camera script - so that I found myself hanging on desperately to a long shot when the flautist began an obviously important solo section. "Why aren't you on 2 on the flute?" Yelled the Director, at me. "Why haven't you released 2 to take the shot?" I yelled back, "Cc. camera 2 - get on that flute!" He yelled - but 2 was now lined up on his next shot. Having become more or less delirious, the Director screamed "Cc. camera 4 …….. cam. cam. camera 3 ….s.s. somebody get on that flute!" We were then treated to the extraordinary sight of four cameras bearing down on the flautist, including my long-shot man, who wobbled on his way with the other cameras and their attendant machinery and cables pottering in and out of his short. "Oh Lord!" said the Director. "Get back on the long-shot and stay there, no matter what drivel I come out with. Everyone else may as well go home", he moaned. "Especially me." It did teach me to take more interest in the direction end of the business. I didn't want to get caught out that way again if I could help it.

Another Director consistently made such a shambles of his rehearsals that we always went on the air with his shows in a state of near panic - but he had quite a weird genius for putting it all right 'on the night'. One day, as we neared the end of one of his shows, (live of course), he stood up and said "Oh, well done, chaps! Well done! It couldn't have gone any better even if I'd rehearsed it!" I could have strangled him. I could see the camera on air at that moment juddering with anger. "Anyway," continued the Director, "I've always thought there's just one good thing about my shows. When they are over …. the Club's open! Come and have one on me!" And another dreadful day got drowned in the Club's best bitter.

Of course, we did have deliberately comic moments as well. One of my favourite memories is of a 'Juke Box Jury'. The Director clicked his thumb at me, and I cut to 2 - on a nice close-up of Spike Milligan. "You're on the wrong camera", howled the Director. "What do you think you're doing?" I was staring in horror at the transmission screen on which camera 2 was now holding a shot of an empty desk. I looked frantically up and down the line of monitors, and was just about to cut away to a 'reaction' shot when Spike Milligan's head began to appear slowly from behind the desk until he looked like 'Mr Chad', with just the end of his nose showing, and he said, in his inimitable country bumkin voice, "Oi loiked thart record. It went reaowned and reaowned!" [This incident was at Lime Grove and not Alexandra Palace}.

It must be said, or course, that I didn't spend my entire career making terrible mistakes or working with the ill-tempered and the inept. I've worked with great, and charming, Directors and even geniuses as well - from the very early days of Dennis Johnstone and the unforgettable George More O'Ferrall, and Fred O'Donovan, who came from Dublin's Abbey Theatre and did the most marvellous television versions of great Irish poetry and drama, Fred's all on one camera, (poor old Vision Mixer waiting on tenterhooks to muck up the interval and the end captions)!

Chris Simpson who did some wonderful imaginative music programmes, (and played no mean jazz piano himself), and died, alas, long before he would have reached his television prime; and that deceptively humble man, George Inns, who knew all the secrets of putting on a fast television spectacular without killing the artists or the operators with a false show of speed.

The Black & White Minstrels started as a live programme in 1957 - except that, from the beginning, ironically the artists worked to pre-recorded sound - even though it did eventually enter the ranks of recorded programmes, it never lost its sparkle or its spontaneity, in George's hands. He really did bring a kind of magic to everything he did, and a warm humanity which took into account and never forgot everyone who worked for him, from the highest to the lowest. His enthusiasm, and the ingenuity of everything he did, infected everyone concerned with his shows and - just in case anyone wants to know - I think that's how prize winning programmes are made.

I am much aware of having talked a lot more about my disasters than my triumphs, (if indeed, there were any), but somehow, when 'looking back', that's life. There is something much funnier and actually more memorable, about slipping on a banana skin than there is about …. well, for instance, winning the hundred years, isn't there?

Gladys Davies