The end of the toffee factory
Monday 21st October 2013 – make a note, it’s a sad day for the UK television industry. For those of us who have spent our working lives making television the Outside Broadcast way, it really marks the end of an era. It’s the day that SiS Live announced they would be shutting up shop, in March 2014. They’ve only been known by that name since 2008, before, they were BBC Outside Broadcasts, the place where Television Outside Broadcasting was first born then and carefully nurtured for over seven decades.
In fact it’s where much of the good stuff of television was invented. Techniques we take for granted today were pioneered by OBs. Where to place cameras? Surprisingly perhaps, clustering cameras close together seemed to work best. Which lenses to use? Even when you were lucky to have only a choice of tight or wide! How to feel closer to the action? Fix miniature cameras in implausible places such as cricket stumps.
In contrast there’s the wonderful fuzzy logic of sound. Which microphone is best to use for trumpets and which for audience applause? How to hear the horses’ hooves while watching a slow motion replay? What to do with the stereo image when the director cuts to a reverse angle? It’s always seemed to me the answers to questions about sound are far less cut and dried, maybe that’s why I’m a director!
And before any camera can be rigged or microphone slung, there’s the detail of the planning and the routing of the rigging and then there’s lighting and power and design. And VT and Slomo replays. Communications and talkbacks, circuits and lines.
And as for the subject matter, there’s Sport and Music and Wildlife and Events. There’s Politics, Religion, Drama and Reality. Content for Cinema, TV and Internet…
This fabulous melting pot, this creative cauldron has produced such succulent televisual delights largely because it encouraged the whole team to help it with the cooking. As a nervous, new director, about to do my first OB, I was given some straightforward advice by the Sound Supervisor. “Don’t worry,” he said, “just keep the team with you, they won’t let you down.” He was proved right both then and time and time again. The best days of my working life have been spent surrounded by a skilled, experienced, dedicated Outside Broadcast crew.
The wonderful collaborative manner in which an OB works was summed up by a Camera Supervisor. “If you ask for a new shot and the camera doesn’t move by all means ask again. It’s possible you might not have been heard. If you ask a third time, you’ll probably see why there was no movement, the shot may become blocked or you might end up shooting-off the set. Whatever it is, there’ll be a good reason for not giving you what you’d asked for!” I learned that it’s usually best to trust the crew’s judgment, to rely on them to frame, focus and also to avoid such a faux pas. Do what I want, not what I say.
My adoration for these teams of supportive experts has lasted a long time. Back in the days when all the OB trucks were painted the same BBC grey, they all had the same lock on the doors. The OB staff each had a key so they could open up any truck for the day’s work. As a member of the production team, I often had to ask to borrow this special TX98 key when I needed something from a locked van. Eventually, on one such occasion, an Engineering Manager, looked me in the eye, paused, then said, “I think it’s about time you had your own TX98.” I’ll never forget it, I felt as if I’d been awarded the highest of honours, as if I’d proved myself a worthy member of the OB club. The TX98 may no longer open many doors but I still have it, it’s one of my most treasured possessions.
Perhaps the key to this august institution of Television Outside Broadcasts was that through its years of considerable collective experience, it really knew what it was doing and moreover, it knew if you did too. On a live BBC One programme, I made a mistake when directing a second scanner, which resulted in the first few frames of a crash zoom starting just before the main truck had finished mixing away from our pictures. I was horrified; I’d made such a schoolboy error. No one said anything for a while, until the Engineering Manager chose a quiet moment to say, “You were lucky there.” I answered, “Do you mean the crash zoom?” And he swiftly concluded the conversation by saying, “Very few people would have noticed.” He just wanted to make sure I knew, and I had got off lightly. In today’s world of keeping the client happy, I might have left the OB ignorant of my error and therefore liable to repeat it.
I hope you forgive my nostalgia. For me this sadly unsurprising announcement marks the end of the best television academy there has ever been. I’m lucky I benefitted from its gentle lessons. I’m sure the skill and experience of my SiS Live colleagues will continue to be employed in making great TV, after all, there are increasing numbers of OB folk who have successfully left their corporate employment far behind them. The future’s certainly not all bleak but, for a while at least, it’ll be tough for the dedicated people at SiS Live. I wish them well in their quest to continue to find a career in our twenty-first century circus and I trust we’ll continue to work together long after SiS Live has gone.
In the meantime, I’ll cherish the few remaining shows I have left that will be made with what I still think of as Kendal Avenue, the former Acton toffee factory that was for so long home to the fabulous BBC Outside Broadcasts.