Fools on the Hill

[Brianc]

I would hesitate to call Lambert an engineer. He's a dolly tracker, working under instructions from Mr Bliss, the cameraman.

The M-EMI telecine was mediocre.

He would be classed as a technical assistant, allocated to "tracking"! When I first started in the BBC, that was exactly what I was doing - pushing  a Vinten Pathfinder with a Marconi MKlll camera aboard around the studio in Birmingham. We did hour-long plays, variety shows and had the MLO (Midland Light Orchestra) in several times a month, all live. Working in a studio with a full-blown orchestra and all the other paraphernalia was, to say the least, very exciting for a callow 19 year old!

As to the telelcine, even DR Eric White, a member of the EMI team agreed that the M-EMI telecine was not as good as the Baird except for flicker and resolution. As a matter of interest, 2 of the 6 cameras at AP were originally tied to modified projectors which pulled the film down at frame rate, not field, because the pull-down was too slow. Later, Mechaus were used and these had continuous motion transports so there was no problem with pull-down and, incidentally, film could be scanned at any frame rate. There was an ex-AP Mechau telecine at Lime Grove studios in London to allow films (eg classical music films or archive 16fps films), to be scanned at the correct frame rate. The big difference was that, at Lime Grove, there was an electron multiplier in place or the Emitron camera and a scanning tube in place of the light source!