Before joining COI Jenny had been on the information staff of the British Consulate in Chicago which gave her a useful insight into the USA and the Foreign Office.
Jenny writes: In 1967 I joined the COI to work on the London Line series produced for North America. I was initially employed to help organise the weekly transatlantic conference link between BIS New York (Alan Waple and colleagues), and COI London (with John Hall, Head of Overseas Television Production and London Line Producer Adam Leys).
In 1970, I began to work as a free-lance researcher on the science series Living Tomorrow and as a writer and broadcaster for COI Radio, the BBC World Service (Science & Industry Unit) and London Line (Africa) In 1972 I started working for This Week in Britain (TWIB). These are some memories of researching and writing for this weekly five minute series screened on television in Australia, New Zealand, North America, the Middle East, Africa and Latin America. In Australia and New Zealand it had a historically important 6.55 pm slot just before the evening news.
1972: TWIB 728: RED DEER: Producer: Tony Thomson, Director Nick Hague.
I was invited to put up stories for the TWIB unit just across the third floor corridor from the London Line (Africa) offices. Red Deer was an early assignment with the TWIB unit and one that might well have wrecked my fragile career in films.
Starting out in films is a perilous undertaking especially with no greater preparation than an English degree and 3 years as a junior Press Officer in a British consular post (Chicago). To survive in a highly competitive environment story ideas have to be good, and they must be filmable within normal budget constraints. I was still learning on the job and shaky on avoiding the pitfalls that a more experienced researcher would have spotted from the start. This story was about agricultural research at the Rowett Research Institute in Aberdeen where our contact Professor “B” had pioneered the controlled farming of red deer, previously only hunted in the wild, with a view to the commercial marketing of farmed venison. It was important research and it was British!
Initial film research normally involves face to face meetings and location recces well ahead of filming but in this case both Professor and location were an expensive journey away. So my research was confined to the telephone and letters flying back and forth (no faxes then) between me and an increasingly tetchy and media loathing professor who was, however, very keen that his important work, and he himself, be given maximum exposure. This rarely extended to returning phone calls. When he was prevailed upon to answer questions, it appeared to be through clenched teeth.
In this kind of situation it is hard to balance how far to push a tricky contact to get the story right or risk losing the whole project. Even a few days before filming, a query about the local weather forecast for our exterior shooting was met with a barked diatribe about the southerners’ ignorance of all things Scottish.
Every stage of research and scripting was discussed with the producer. Tony was aware of my fears but was passionate for the story. However, after one lively phone call of his own to Aberdeen Tony appreciated that our Professor fell into a category of uniquely difficult. For this reason he decided to accompany the director, Nick Hague and I to Aberdeen one day ahead of the Scottish based film crew who would join us for the one day shoot. He judged this would lend backbone to our on the spot recces and filming, every aspect of which had been cleared (theoretically) with the Professor over several weeks of long distance negotiation.
There was an unexpected prelude to our Scottish adventure. For reasons I no longer remember, although we three were to return by plane to London, Tony decided we would travel up to Aberdeen by overnight sleeper. The train left at about midnight, so we had several hours to kill after our last production meetings at the COI were over.
The following day we arrived at the Institute in Aberdeen, and after a considerable wait, the Professor met us to talk through the story and his interview. He then took us to see some of the deer stabled in the grounds of the institute and a newly born calf (our star). Next on our recce agenda was to see the domesticated herd that I had understood, was on the Rowett Institute’s land. The deer were indeed on the institute’s land but to our, and especially my own horror the Professor said this was over sixty miles distant, a fact he had not shared with us until then. The travel time there and back along rural roads was going to threaten our single and tightly scheduled filming day with limited light for exterior shooting and might also run us into additional crew overtime. It was at this point that the Professor had to attend to matters more serious than filming and passed us to the institute’s Press Officer – another of his closely guarded secrets - who took courteous care of us for the rest of our stay although obviously in constant awe of the Great Man.
Somehow or other the filming worked to schedule, the Professor delivered a good interview, with his beautiful deer and calf close by and the threatening grey day (every cameraman’s dread) held fine for the hillside shoot, but only just. We wrapped the film gear and raced the long miles to Aberdeen as high winds turned to gale force. At the airport which, in the early seventies before the oil boom, consisted of a tiny building called a Terminal and a few simple outbuildings, we were told that the plane on the tarmac with its wings flexing like waving corn would be the last flight out of Aberdeen that evening. The plane took off. The journey felt something like trampolining in a lift shaft. Everyone on the flight was very quiet and fairly green, except for Nick Hague who was sitting next to me and completely unaffected by turbulence. I shall never forget, or cease to be grateful for the calm voice that soothed me through the worst of the lurching until the plane reached calmer air near London.
I believe we had to supplement our shooting of the red deer with library footage, but the story was well received and I believe the Professor was so pleased with the finished film that he requested a copy for the Institute.
In the early nineteen seventies it was not uncommon for the scientific community to be wary of journalists and less than happy to communicate their work to the public.
The professor was of this persuasion and I was too inexperienced to uncover the existence of a press officer who should have been our interface throughout, or request precise location details. I was lucky that both producer and director understood the situation and I continued to work for the programme for many years. More important than any of this is the fact that This Week in Britain had given international exposure to seriously important British research and farmed venison is indeed on supermarket shelves in many parts of the world.
1973: TWIB 751 : BARBARA HEPWORTH AT 70 : Producer: Tony Hinton Director: Eric Halliday
I cannot remember who put up the idea of a 70th birthday profile of this great British artist but I know I was very excited at the prospect of researching and writing it. Eric Halliday and I travelled by train to Cornwall and St Ives to meet her and plan the filming. The taxi deposited us on the steep slope of the street where her studio was part of her home. It is still there today as part of Tate St Ives. The large airy space was full of work in progress. It opened onto stone paving and the even higher slope of her garden which had been landscaped into an outdoor gallery of larger works. Seventy years of age seems quite ancient to people in their thirties, but even so I can remember appreciating that Barbara Hepworth was still an attractive and rather sexy lady. Still photographs unkindly emphasize an unusually steep forehead. But in life bright eyes and vivacity were everything. She wore a kimono and had coiled a silk scarf around her hair. Even the languid way she traced the air with her cigarette was fascinating. She had a distinctive way of speaking; soft but dry textured, like a wave dragging across wet sand. She allowed space between her words and sentences. In my memory it was a calm delivery and free from superfluous sub-text. And the form of her work all around us echoed this purity of style.
She was very welcoming and, although her continuing workload and celebrity status must have made great demands on her time she made us feel perfectly at home and with all the time in her world at our service. I said she was welcoming, to both of us, and always friendly and courteous but I noticed one surprising thing. Although, as researcher, I asked most of the questions her answers were only ever directed to Eric sitting and observing nearby. When we returned for filming, bringing with us our handsome young Mexican presenter, Silverio, even prior to filming she gave her answers only to him. I believe this was an unconscious thing. I never felt excluded. I believe she simply needed the response of the opposite sex.
1974:TWIB 813:MEETING WITHOUT BARS (Wakefield Prison Family Centre) Producer: Tony Thomson Director: Eric Halliday
A friend did voluntary work at a nearby prison. I discovered that this was specifically to help prisoners’ families in the purpose built family visitor centre so that on monthly visiting days the prisoners can meet their families over a cup of tea or coffee in pleasant, comfortable surroundings and the children enjoy the play and book reading area.
Until that time families, who might have had to travel hundreds of miles for their precious visit, (usually by train or bus) were forced to wait, even with babies and toddlers outside the prison entrance whatever the weather, until visiting time began. It seemed an unjust punishment for blameless relatives. We approached the Home Office about filming the new centre stressing that since This Week in Britain was for overseas distribution only it would never be screened in the UK. On that understanding we were allowed to film and even interview prisoners and their families. I was told later this was the first time such access had been granted by the Home Office. We filmed husbands and wives together in the coffee table area and close by the children had plenty of toys and games to keep them busy and even an exotic aquarium to investigate. The interviews were powerful but the pictures said everything about the civilised difference this initiative meant to all those involved.
1975 :TWIB 835 :THE BEST HOTEL IN THE WORLD (The Savoy Hotel) Producer: Tony Hinton Director: Eric Halliday
In the early nineteen seventies encouraging tourism was high on the UK’s agenda and as the Savoy Hotel had recently had a lot of publicity as one of the best managed hotels in the world the story was suggested as a mix of glamour and successful business practice and likely to have a strong appeal for Middle Eastern and North American visitors to the UK.
I warmed to the Savoy’s people skills when I turned up for the first recce with a painful sore throat. We were to work through lunch but I felt instantly better when the Savoy’s famous chef, Trompetto presented me with a delicate creation of sole in a silky lobster sauce – his medicine for a sick researcher, and it worked! Through all our research and filming the Savoy’s Head of Public Relations, Susie Orde gave us enthusiastic support as did all her colleagues.
This was not always the case in filming. The more usual pattern is of huge enthusiasm at initial meetings, but when the reality of the painstaking detail and the sheer slog required to make a broadcast quality film becomes clear, enthusiasm can soon melt away. This was never so at The Savoy, probably because the whole training was focused on problem solving and pleasing even the most difficult customers. If we came into this category they certainly never stopped smiling or producing tea and coffee of high quality for an eternally parched film crew who could not leave the set. The essential task of keeping the crew happy and refreshed was usually shared between the Production Assistant (when not chained to the shot list) and the researcher.
A great bonus for us was a star interviewee who was a special fan of the Savoy. The American film and Broadway actress Elaine Stritch and her husband had made their permanent home in a suite at the Savoy. Eric Halliday decided to interview her in the American Bar, and true to her professional discipline, after a short briefing she gave a sparkling performance describing the special pleasure of swapping the responsibilities of being home owners for the luxury of life at the Savoy. She managed to make her views on a mere hotel extend to her wider feelings about life in Britain. Her sincerely held personal views were worth a thousand lines of script.
One special memory of the Savoy film was the recce a week or so before filming. Eric was keen to film the chef Trompetto in the roar and bustle of his restaurant kitchen. We asked to meet him there at noon for Eric to study the set-up. What we had not expected was an invitation to lunch in Trompetto’s office. Our hearts sank. However tempting, this would lose us crucial recce time. What we had not known was that Trompetto’s “office” was a glass walled space in the very heart of the kitchen so that he was never remote from the action. A small round table was laid with crisp white linen, silver and crystal and I remember that he chose as the main dish, sea bass with fennel (uncommon on English menus in the seventies).
It was a working lunch for all three of us. Every few minutes one or other of his team would stop in the open doorway to ask advice on the texture of a sauce, or quality of an ingredient or show off a batch of exquisite Mille-feuilles or check paperwork for Covent Garden Market sourcing the next morning. Halfway through lunch Trompetto stood to greet a very beautiful mink-coated French woman who had crossed the sacred ground dividing cooks from clients to thank him for the meal she had just enjoyed. This was Madame Suzy Volterra, a famous and respected race-horse owner in the nineteen fifties and sixties and a long standing client of the Savoy.
Keeping a film crew fed and watered was not always as easy as at the Savoy. In the nineteen seventies the minimum film crew as ordained by the film union, the ACTT consisted of Cameraman, Assistant Cameraman, Sound Recordist, Assistant Sound Recordist, Electrician (the Spark) plus Film Director, Production Assistant and Researcher/Writer. In those days where to house and feed members of the crew posed a special kind of problem when on location at certain military establishments. The Director and possibly the researcher and PA were regarded by their hosts as “Officer” class but, as explained quietly to me by our courteous liaison officer as we wrapped for lunch, the jeans and t-shirted members of the film crew would surely be happier eating with the “other ranks” in a separate Mess. Our Director explained that to maintain operational morale it was custom and practice in the film business to eat together as a team. We excused ourselves to eat at a nearby pub to great relief all round.
1977 : TWIB 978 : SPITHEAD – The Queen’s Silver Jubilee Review of the Fleet ; Producer Patrick (Pat) Brawn, Director Bill Metcalfe
The original idea for our film of the Queen’s Jubilee Review of the Fleet was to film our presenters at Portsmouth Harbour with the vast array of ships from all over the world in the background using Library footage for the rest of the story, including archive material which I would research at the Imperial War Museum and with whom the COI had good, long-standing relations but I felt it was a shame not to get out amongst the action and Pat Brawn supported an approach to the Australian High Commission which is how we came to shoot the story from on board the Australian aircraft carrier Melbourne, with immense and cheerful cooperation from the Captain and crew.
On the shoot day we travelled by a small tender out to the ship. It was a short but bumpy ride! The director Bill Metcalfe was standing with the crew below deck and after ten minutes or so his face seemed exceptionally off-white. But all was well and the sun even came out for our Australian presenter’s sign off to camera. Bill had chosen to film this on the main deck with the ship’s company in the background performing their “Manning Ship” drill; edging the deck in a continuous line, each man facing out to sea, standing rigidly to attention with their backs to camera.
Our presenter, Diana Maclean, was in the foreground facing camera. She had a short piece along the lines: “This has been a momentous and historic day for so many of the world’s navies. This is Diana Maclean, for This Week in Britain, from the deck of Her Majesty’s Australian Ship, Melbourne, anchored at Spithead, England” After she had signed off the camera was to widen the shot to see every man, (listening like mad for the cue), raise his cap to three rousing cheers, simulating their action as the monarch sails past to inspect her fleet Diana was an experienced and totally dependable presenter and much appreciated by her fellow Australians during our long shooting day on their ship. Some of these sailors and their families might well have seen our delightful Diana presenting news from Britain in the weekly TWIB slot close to the evening news. She was their lovely ambassadress for the very best of Australian womanhood. And here she was signing off from their ship.
The sailors doffed caps and cheered right on cue but the camera position wasn’t quite right. We had to go again, Diana then asked me to check her hair. Take two and “Action”, she spoke and she sparkled but she fluffed one word. The sailors held to attention as Diana went again…and again. Four takes, four doffing of caps and more cheering. The director was utterly supportive and gave Diana a few moments to collect herself. The sailors never moved a muscle. Action and take 5 was under way and “…This is Diana Maclean for This Week In Britain from the deck of…..(fluff)…Oh…SHIT!!!! Oh dear! What she could not see but we, behind the camera could, was that the whole line of sailors facing out to sea, still rigidly to attention shivered like a Mexican Wave along the long length of the deck with the impact of hearing this unexpected turn of phrase from their sweet and lovely girl!
We got there in the end and it was a lovely TWIB. But not one of us seems to have a copy (VHS copies rare in 1977) and it seems extraordinary that this historic item was not preserved for the COI archive.
1978: TWIB 1034 : Henry Moore At Eighty: Producer: Annabel Olivier-Wright, Director: Peter Greenaway
When I read about the many national events planned to celebrate Henry Moore’s forthcoming birthday I asked Annabel if we could make a TWIB profile as we had done for Barbara Hepworth five years earlier. I also asked if there was any chance of Peter Greenaway directing. Some time earlier I had researched the first film Peter directed for COI, a TWIB about supportive initiatives for the care of the elderly in one part of London (possibly TWIB 729) produced by Mike Ruggins and Adam Leys.
This was before Peter had his official ACTT Director’s ticket. He had been a film editor for several years but had not held a director’s ticket until this came through a couple of years later.
Before taking on the Henry Moore film Peter made it clear that he was not a great admirer of Moore’s current work. Before Peter began his career as a COI film editor he had studied at art school. He recognized the significance of Moor’s early work and its influence on contemporary British art but I think he felt that Moore had little significantly new to say. He wanted us not to fear to reflect some of this in the script and to try to tease something out of the man during the interview. Annabel supported his ideas.
The recce and first day of filming were at Moore’s Hertfordshire home which included a huge garden gallery space. Moore had strong feelings about large pieces being seen from all angles and in the changing light of the open air and wanted people to be free to touch and explore the texture of his work. Our discussions were mainly in his garden studio where tables powdered with fine plaster dust were strewn with small maquettes and shells or stones found on walks, especially those scoured by the elements into what looked to me like miniature “Henry Moores”. Mr Moore was a neatly dressed, courteous, man, nothing like the popular concept of “the artist”. If I had met him as a stranger on a train and been asked to guess the occupation of this reserved, tweed jacketed fellow traveller my guess might have been a retired bank manager. This only illustrates how little we can ever truly know, even after several encounters, of the character or inner life of those we attempt to describe on film.
On the first shoot day the weather was slightly overcast but after a brief recce Peter asked if we might film part of the interviewin the garden in front of his sculpture of a reclining woman, placing the artist somewhere between thigh and knee. The shot was being lined up when Moore suddenly noticed a small graze on the sculpture’s surface which he was aware the camera might pick up. He thought it might have been frost damage. Peter was reluctant to change the interview position , which framed Moore and his reclining figure to best effect with other sculptures in the background. But Henry Moore was equally reluctant to reveal a blemish on his work. There was no time to do a proper repair and as it was clouding up we were in danger of losing filmable light. I remembered the make-up kit in my handbag and scrabbled around for my mascara. He smeared in a blob mixed with pale foundation that faded down to an acceptable beige-brown match. Moore was happy again, and so were we all.
There was a second day of shooting by the Serpentine Gallery in Kensington Gardens where Moore’s work was being shown in the park outside. In this grand setting we were filming an interview with Alan Wilkinson, curator of the Henry Moore Gallery in the Art Gallery in Ontario, Canada to which Moore had donated many works. TWIB was screened on Canadian television. We were also shooting the links by the various presenters. The English language presenter that day was an attractive screen presence but without any autocue we put considerable demands on our performers. In this case I had written a short to-camera piece, some 4-5 lines but one line was a problem and it took several takes to get it right. In addition to the English language presenter, there were also presenters for the Latin-American ( Spanish and Portuguese) and Arabic versions.
There was no hard and fast rule about who conducted an interview. Some directors liked to pose the questions but others preferred to be free to concentrate on directing the shoot. For most programmes I worked on, I was seated up tight to the camera to ask the questions and give the interviewee the correct eye-line. I f we had three or four presenters in tow ( for English, African, Latin-American Spanish, and Arabic language versions) time could usually permit multiple interviews. In this case our presenters would take turns to film establishing 2-shots with the interviewee and then film their questions to camera.
The exhibition at the Serpentine Gallery had opened ahead of Moore’s birthday on the 30th July. Before going off with the film crew to shoot individual sculptures in the park Peter asked me to look after Michael, a musician friend who was visiting the exhibition that day. In glorious sunshine we sat amongst the daisies while he told me about various projects he and Peter were working on. I am sure that Peter would have liked to have commissioned his friend Michael Nyman’s work for the Henry Moore film but TWIB budgets could not stretch to that. One of their first major collaborations was still in the future – for Peter’s film The Draughtsman’s Contract.
1978: TWIB 988: WOMEN AT WORK – FROM CRADLE TO FORKLIFT TWIB 989: A SPORTING CHANCE :TWIB 990 JOBS FOR THE GIRLS Producer: Annabel Olivier-Wright & Adam Leys: Director: Bill Metcalfe
Adam Leys had the idea of three TWIBs on a common theme that could be seen, as either individual five minute “stand alone” reports or edited together as a fifteen minute programme. The overall theme was how women’s working lives were changing in what was still predominantly a man’s world. I haven’t been able to view the films but I feel that what seemed ground breaking thirty years ago will probably seem commonplace now and that sign of progress can only be celebrated.
In 1978 it was unusual for women to work as stevedores (my dictionary definition is “manemployed in loading and unloading ships”). There had been initial opposition to their job appointment, but at the time of filming our two lady stevedores worked in harmony with their male colleagues at Chatham Docks, and they managed perfectly the piercing whistles necessary for shore to ship signalling. Our career women included one of the first women to pilot a civil airliner, a Grand National rider and a champion golfer employed as a professional coach at a well-known Surrey Golf Club. When researching the story Bill and I became of aware of a certain tension amongst club members some of whom resented a woman instructing them, however distinguished her sporting credentials.
I believe we may also have included a story of a young mother and businesswoman who, with the help of her personal computer could work from home but stay in touch with her office base. We saw her in an airy garden room, computer on desk and toddler playing nearby. This was a period when “job sharing” was much written about and my own working life mirrored some of the stories we filmed.
This was the last TWIB that I researched and scripted before moving to the science series, Living Tomorrow, (produced by Richard Reisz) and I was sorry not to be present on the actual filming day. I did however have several meetings with Erin Pizzey and she is one of the TWIB subjects who made a powerful impression. At this time of writing her name is rarely mentioned, yet she made a profound difference to the lives of vulnerable women and their families when she set up her first safe houses for battered wives. This happened almost be chance when a woman in Erin’s own community needed support and a place of safety.
Her campaigning story is remarkable but it is the impact of Erin Pizzey’s powerful personality that, over thirty years later, still stays in my mind. Over a century earlier those who met Florence Nightingale described how her iron will combined with winning charm (when needed) contributed to the revolutionary changes she forced on the 19th century medical and military establishments. When I first met Erin Pizzey I recognised similar qualities of the persuasive power required to move mountains of bureaucracy and public indifference. First, she had to convince those in denial that victims of domestic violence really did exist, and on a much larger scale than imagined. Secondly, that society had a responsibility to create safe havens for battered wives and their children too.
A film about battered wives was an unusual choice for TWIB and might have been difficult to sell to the Foreign Office since it depended on the admission that Britain had a real social problem. The selling point, (reinforced by positive producer support) was that we could say with certainty that this was a problem shared by every society in the world but that a woman in Britain had found ways to help protect such victims in the context of a society with a strong social conscience.
Janice Willett reminded me that Erin Pizzey was often forced to confront dangerously violent husbands or partners trying to get unlawful access to women sheltered in her refuges. But it was part of her philosophy that women should be helped to regain their trust in men even when that trust had been so brutally damaged and she co-opted strong and sensitive men as team members. Thanks to the impact her work made worldwide her campaigning led to similar refuges in many other parts of the world.
In 1978 I joined the science magazine program, Living Tomorrow, produced at that time by Richard Reisz. One of my first stories was a single subject programme about advances in the treatment and care of extremely premature babies.
LIVING TOMORROW-PREMATURE BABIES. Producer: Richard Resiz,
We filmed at University College Hospital, London and our story focused on a nine year old girl (Antoinette Carey) who was one of the first low-weight premature babies whose survival was determined by a new technique of measuring and delivering oxygen to a tiny baby’s immature lungs. This technique, devised by Professor Osmond Reynolds, dramatically raised the survival rate from about 10% in the early sixties to over 70% at the time of filming’ and with a greatly reduced risk of brain damage. We filmed babies in the neonatal unit and Antoinette being regularly monitored by the UCH medical team and celebrating her ninth birthday at home.
That Living Tomorrow film was reborn about ten years later after I had left the COI to work for Bill Metcalfe’s independent company, Quasar. We were asked to make a half hour film about the latest advances in premature baby science for the COI Perspective series. We returned to University College Hospital where advances in oxygen delivery had enabled them to successfully treat even tinier babies. Our young star of Living Tomorrow continued to be monitored by UCH and I asked Mrs Carey if we could film Antoinette again. She came with us to the neonatal unit and saw, for the first time, very low-weight babies in their incubators. We captured her reactions intercut with the Living Tomorrow footage of her shot a decade earlier. She appreciated the extraordinary science that had secured her life, and we could show viewers a delightful young woman just beginning her studies at college and looking with true wonder at the tiniest of babies clinging to life and surviving, just as she had, thanks to extraordinary science and human care.
The fast developing technology of the computer naturally played a large and important part in our programs. Towards the end of the seventies and early eighties if the subject matter was in the least scientific our interviewee was invariably positioned by us next to or in front of his (it was usually “his”) computer. As it achieved iconic status, the computer might be also there for no other purpose than to lend high-tech design status to the story. In the early days this resulted in an unfortunate visual side-effect. If the camera rate of 25 frames a second did not precisely match the refresh rate of the computer imaging the computer screen would appear to go berserk. It took ages to position interviewee and flashing screen in such a way as to minimise the flashing, jiggling distraction. So it was a happy day, some time in the 80s when our cameraman David Chilton brought along a “gismo” that stabilised the situation and the poor demented screen was cured of its madness.
Looking at a Living Tomorrow story filmed at the end of the seventies (directed by Eddie Newstead) about the difference the computer had made to the rigorous tests all airliners had to undergo to keep them safely in the air. At British Aerospace we filmed part of the regular “D-Check” in which over 100,000 rivets embedded in the plane’s wing were checked for signs of metal fatigue. This used to be done by manually removing and checking individual rivets and then putting them all back again. New technology made it possible to use an ultrasound probe to “see” below the surface of the wing. The rivet was imaged on an adjacent screen where even the slightest fault could be clearly shown without a single rivet having to be removed from the wing. This was stunning science but what is also interesting with the passage of years is to be reminded of how huge these early computers were. The technician is seen kneeling on the wing using a small hand-held probe. Then the camera pans from the wing to the large, washing machine sized computer and screen resting on a nearby gantry. Now, thirty years later, the electronics are miniaturised within the hand probe or even a robot scanner.
1978/9 : LIVING TOMORROW : INK-JET PRINTING Producer: Richard Reisz, Director Peter Greenaway
We were all fascinated by this new electronic technique of printing and some of the pioneering science was happening at Cambridge Computers, an applied research company attached to Cambridge University. It was the first major development in printing since Caxton’s printing press. Thin jets of ink were vibrated into tiny droplets which could be programmed to any configuration required, from alphabet letters to purely decorative shapes These were hurled onto a surface material of almost any texture or shape at the rate of fifteen hundred characters a second, and without the need for any kind of contact pressure; an end to hot metal pressed hard onto flat paper. This is now standard in our computer printers and for the retail packaging and printing industries. In the late seventies it was an astounding concept and one that Cambridge Computers was just about to launch on the world.
Richard Reisz sent Peter Greenaway and I to recce their prototype ink-jet printer in action. I remember the train journey from London to Cambridge and the scope of Peter’s imagination as we explored ideas about how to convey visually to our viewers the significance of this invention. We drew up a list from corrugated cardboard or soft tissue paper to silk scarves and flower petals. I added fried egg yolks (I lived to regret this). And then we arrived in Cambridge.
The research scientists listened patiently to our ideas although they were probably a little underwhelmed by the film makers’ fantastical plans for the story of their research.. We needed their total cooperation and some preparation on their part to see if silk scarves and knife handles and corrugated cardboard and egg yolks could be successfully printed on. They showed us ink-jet printing on paper and cardboard and on some kind of dress fabric and promised to experiment with other materials before we returned for filming. We realised when we saw the experimental unit that we would have to find a way of visually explaining how thousands of droplets a second were programmed to form words; what an ordinary camera could not capture on film.
Richard Reisz, who always knew as much, or more about our film subject than we did ourselves, spent some hours with us and a graphic designer to plan a short animated sequence which worked very well.
The shoot day was very busy. Peter had also wanted to see if we could print onto a live butterfly wing. This proved impossible, but the egg yolks were promising. I had brought a frying pan and about 18 eggs with me that morning (more than plenty I thought) and using a hotplate in the lab’s coffee room I kept a regular production line on the go. But it wasn’t easy to land the ink-jetted word “egg” dead centre of the yolk. Even with computer adjustments the word would persist in sliding to one side, and the eggs were running out! Round about the 16th egg we achieved a satisfactory take, and then one more for luck. It was fascinating but complex science to explain. Neither Peter nor I had a scientific background. After one specially difficult session trying to make sense of a particular computer instruction in relation to the ink droplet formation Peter announced with a despairing sigh that he had come to believe this level of impenetrable science must simply be accepted as an act of God.
I have mentioned Peter Greenaway in several pieces. This is probably because, years from now, he may be known to film historians as one of the great film-makers of this age, but film historians may not know much about this very early stage of his career. Apart from all that he was a strikingly unusual character. In my first year or so at the COI I would sometimes glance out of our open office door around lunch-time and see across the landing two figures talking and walking circuits at some speed, like Elizabethan courtiers exercising in a Long Gallery. One was tall and thin and seemed to do most of the talking, his listening companion was much shorter. I later found out the tall young man was Peter, an editor, with his assistant (name unknown). When he came to work with us he was quite unlike anyone I had ever known. He had piercing eyes and the look of a puritan or a self-denying hermit. In the summer the austere look, was occasionally relieved by a wide-brimmed straw hat worn with some flair.
Some people, (usually those who had never worked with him) talked of him as arrogant, as “full of himself”. I suppose he was, but not as they meant. He was simply full of a truthful certainty of what he had to do, and would do. And he was never shy to air his intelligence, a trait traditionally disliked by the English for whom “too clever by half” is a comon philistine put down. To work with he was courteous and appreciative unless aroused by stupidity or bad behaviour when his steely authority would be unleashed .
He never wasted a minute with small talk or, it seemed to me, with any thing not directly material to the work in hand.
Before other people in COI recognised his directing skills he was greatly encouraged by Adam Leys. His editor John Wilson (also ex-COI who edited many of Peter’s great films) told me once how Peter made a brave decision to give up his secure editing job to concentrate on writing and directing his own films full-time. He and his young family lived in frugal circumstances for several years, probably until the critical and commercial success of his first major feature film – The Draughtsman’s Contract
I remember from COI days, so many other directors, of outstanding ability, (producers, editors too). I am still in awe of directors. Good directors (and only good directors go on working),have to combine technical and artistic skills with discipline and inspirational leadership. They have to know how to interpret a script (many write their own). Shooting a film is a bit like a military operation.
The producer is in charge of overall strategy but the director is out there in the heat of battle rallying the troops. At the end of an exhausting shoot day, which almost always includes some kind of unforeseen crisis or maybe several, when most of the production team are dreaming of home, the director still has to draw on reserves of energy to battle on, making critical decisions and keeping calm to the very moment of the wrap. And then they face the long and demanding edit stage. Directors I was fortunate to work with over a period of 30 years included: Bob Bentley, Nick Hague, Peter Greenaway, Eric Halliday, Andy Humphries, Mark Lawson, John Lyndon, Bill Metcalfe, Eddie Newstead. Ted Poulter, Mike Radford, Audrey Starrett, Janice Willett (Kay), Pat (Patrick) Ward If I have left names off my list it must be put down to imperfect memory.