The Cine Technician (1953-1956)

February 1955 CINE TECHNICIAN 21 Gn T was founded in 1933 • JJ»-I-« and had just moved to Cleveland Hall Studios in Cleveland Street when I joined them in February 1935. By this time, Bruce Woolfe had already gathered around him quite an assortment of talent, among whom were Dallas Bower, Frank Bundy, Donald Carter, Derek Chambers, Joe Durden, Mary Field, Jack Holmes, George Pocknall and Paul Rotha. Even as early as this, R. A. Watson-Watt had become a consultative boffin, acting as technical adviser on The Story of a Disturbance, a film on the weather. Rotha was making Shipyard and Face of Britain; Mary Field was on This Was England; and Bruce Woolfe's Secrets of Nature Series (begun when he was with British Instructional) were now carried on under the new title of Secrets of Life. It was this sphere that the late great Percy Smith made so peculiarly his own. His time-lapse studies of plant and insect growth put Britain to the forefront in this field. UFA tried for a while but had to admit defeat. Later on, this Nat. Film Finance Director to Address ACT Annual Meeting A.C.T.'s Annual General Meeting is to be held on March 5th and 6th at Beaver Hall, Garlick Hill, near Mansion House, London. Sessions begin each day at 10 a.m. All members can attend. Admission is by membership card. Subjects slated for discussion include TV Recognition, rates and conditions, the Shorts Agreement, Pensions, Rents, Fares, German rearmament, and A.C.T.'s affiliation to the Labour Research Dept. Guest speaker is David Kingsley, A.C.A. He is Managing Director of the National Film Finance Corporation since last year, was born in Hampstead in March 1917; educated at Eton college, he became a Captain in the Royal Artillery during the last war. He now lives at Wimbledon. Secretary of the N.F.F.C. from 1949-50, he then joined Pest Control Ltd., as their Finance Director, until his present appointment as Managing Director of the N.F.F.C. Since the beginning of this year he has combined this with the allied job of Director of British Lion Films Ltd., and associated companies. Life and Death of G.B.L by Darrel Catling Series was to be fused into very real life with the celebrated commentaries by the witty E. V. H. Emmett, borrowed from GB News. Bill Hodgson and Jack Beaver did most of the music and Jack has done most of it ever since. Frank Bush was studio manager and Bill Elliott was chief recordist, assisted by John Douglas (and later, Ronnie Abbott). Alan Izod and Andrew Miller-Jones were assistant directors and Margaret Thompson joined us in some capacity or other. George Pocknall, a combination of lighting cameraman and camera engineer, was then training camera assistants Harry Rignold and Peter Herbert. All three were to lose their lives in the war — he in Civil Defence, Harry in the Army, and Peter in the Air Force. Ray Getteman, another trainee assistant, was later to survive a terrible burning and win the D.F.C. Ian Struthers was a rising luminary of the camera department along with the already shining Frank Bundy and Jack Rose. " Wardy," that old war-horse in charge of the neg room at 12 D'Arblay Street, put fear and trembling into all of us. Bob Higgins, assisted by Bob Chandler, edited the recordings of Carroll Gibbons and Fanny Day put out weekly by Radio Luxembourg; and Bruce Woolfe, backed by the Ostrer Brothers, courageously pursued his programme of educational films alongside the production of whatever sponsored pictures came our way. But with the market for educationals necessarily limited by the number of schools equipped with projectors (and at that time this was infinitesimal) it was quite a pioneer venture. Actually, however, things had begun the other way round : British Acoustic Films, makers of the 16mm. Gebescope, found they couldn't sell that projector to schools, as they had hoped to, because there were no films in existence suitable for educational purposes. So G.B.I, came into existence to create, as it were, a market for the projectors, but at best it would be a long term game as not many schools could afford projectors. Just prior to the outbreak of war, Donald Carter made his prophetic air raid film, The Gap. Earlier, Donald had made a film to try and help settle a law suit in which the principles of sound recording were involved; this was How Talkies Talk. It was a little classic of its time, and another little gem was Jack Holmes' The Cathode Ray Oscillograph. It was, I think, in 1939 that the G.P.O. needed the site on which the studios were built for extensions which they were planning, so G.B.I, were turned out of Cleveland Hall — once the West London Mission Home for Fallen Women — and migrated to the G.B. Studios at Shepherds Bush, tenanted then only by G.B. News and a skeleton unit of Gaumont British under Victor Peers. Not long after, Gainsborough absorbed the Gaumont unit — and then began their long line of successes and G.B.I.'s enormous footage of wartime instructionals and documentaries for the Services, the M.O.I, and the British Council. Among these was a film on the 4.4 and the 5.5 Field Guns, which, alone, ran to 22 reels! As the various technicians were called up, or joined up, a Studio News Sheet, edited by Charlie Hillyer, kept all the boys and girls in the Forces in touch with those at Lime Grove. The nightly fire watchers — chivvied from time to time by goateebearded orchid-wearing Godfree Lewis, who also slept on the premises and was known irreverently as Godforsaken Lewis — will remember the night when a pile of incendiaries rained upon them, and the studio's own fire brigade went into action and got things under control. Leon Schauder, a South African, joined us to make a film on Shipbuilding. He later died in an air accident. Jack Cardiff was borrowed to light my own Technicolor opus on pottery, Colour in Clay, for the British Council. Brave little Jimmy Wright worked for a time on this picture — before he too crashed in flames and suffered the loss of his sight. While the war was still on, J. Arthur Rank, with commendable foresight, inaugurated his Children's Film Department, under Bruce Woolfe, to make features and entertainment shorts specially for children, and it fell to my lot to direct the first of these, Tom's Ride. (Any one of these early