Life in the Wild: Getting behind a film camera

Kilmory Isle of Rum. Photo: Courtesy.

I was offered a job with another small freelance company who held a news contract with the BBC. It was called the Highland Film Unit, located in an office block on Union Street, Aberdeen. It was owned by Doug Coopey - a larger than life Maigret double who also smoked a pipe. Originally from Gloucestershire he was a bomber pilot during the war. It seemed natural for me to move from news stills to news film, and once I got to grips with the equipment, I found filming easier. There was only one dark cloud on the horizon.

Doug had a friend who was a granite gravestone merchant. He would create new designs, make the stones and Doug would photograph them. That was the easy bit. The merchant then ordered thousands of prints to hand out. Each one had to be exposed onto paper through an enlarger, developed in a dish then fixed to stop the print going darker. They would then have to be washed and placed on a stainless steel rotating drum to dry. It took the best part of four days to do a thousand. I did get some sympathy but Doug felt duty bound. Perhaps being on my own in a dark room for hour after hour, running on automatic as I went through the numbers, prepared me in some way for spending long periods of time in dark hides on my own.

I had absolutely no interest in sound recording and Doug insisted on using me on a farming programme with a discussion covering seven people outside a barn full of noisy sparrows, it was a nightmare and excruciating to watch when the rushes were viewed later. The crew consisted of a BBC staff grips for the tracking dolly, Ian Anderson a retired news photographer as acting cameraman, Doug and I. 

The skinflint had booked the three of us into a single room B&B. That night coming back from the pub in the grips van, Doug was sitting astride the dolly in the back and after possibly one or two beers had been consumed, there was some merriment. 

The grips froze as he looked into the mirror. He could see Doug disappearing upwards. Doug had inadvertently pressed a valve that raised the dolly seat and was inches from the roof when he somehow managed to stop it. It would have gone straight through had he not. The high jinks continued at the B&B. When I came back to the bedroom from the bathroom, I got into bed.

"What was that?" asked Doug.

"What?" I said disinterestedly.

"Something moved in your bed," said Ian.

I pulled back the cover to see a snake and leapt out of bed. There was much hilarity at my expense as it was made of rubber of course but very convincing. They never explained where they got it from and I was too annoyed to ask.      

I spent seven years with Doug and in that time, as the years passed, more and more news editors and producers were asking for me. Then, like my employment with Geddes, I knew it was right to move on only this time to go freelance.

In the nineteen sixties and seventies the BBC's Broadcasting House at Beechgrove Terrace Aberdeen was a huge former mansion in its own grounds. It had a connecting hallway leading to an extension housing the control room and the television studio. There was an air of superiority about the place that was hard to define. 

As I got to know the staff they were not in any way stuffy or snobby, some even spoke an anglified form of Doric. They were always pleasant and welcoming but with some there was definitely a them and us when it came to staff and freelance. 

It was said that there were only two reasons someone could get fired from the BBC, having sex on the premises, not true because I know a couple who were caught doing it, and not having a TV licence. Its staffing structure is based on the civil service and any issues between members of staff were quietly sorted out behind closed doors. It never spilled out to the wider public.

At that time sound cameras were few and far between. The smaller, cheaper Bolex was too noisy for recording sound so Doug bought an Auricon, a triple lens turret camera that was very quiet. The only problem was, being an American mains powered studio camera, the only way to operate it on location required a massive car battery with an inch thick two foot cable attached to an inverter. 

The speed of the camera was governed by the inverter, changing DC current to AC. Vibrating gold reeds had to be set at exactly fifty-one cycles which would drop to fifty when the camera was running. What a palaver. 

The camera was also extremely heavy for hand holding and required a complicated camera support with dangerous looking sprung bungees. Doug had quite a large stomach which helped. One ludicrous pantomime occurred when we filmed a ceilidh in Aviemore. Doug set off snaking through the dancers followed by me holding both battery and inverter and behind me someone holding a light that was still attached to the mains. It was lucky we didn't wander into an eight-some reel by accident, it would have been a blood bath. 

We worked for Reporting Scotland - BBC Scotland's news programme for at least three days a week filming mostly four or five minute feature items to slot further down the bulletin and they were fun to do. BBC News Editor Arthur Binnie looked up and smiled as we arrived at the office one day. 

"Right guys I've got a job for you. Go to Sutherland in the highlands, there's an explosives expert who is helping out some potholers."

Doug's elderly Land Rover wasn't exactly the speediest camera car to travel in, so the long journey was strewn with war reminiscence and quirky little stories he had already told me, still it passed the time. When we arrived, the organiser took one look at Doug and shook his head.

"You cannot go down pal, you'll get stuck, it'll have to be your mate."

Doug took the pipe out of his mouth and turned to me smiling. I had never done anything like that before and I hadn't even given claustrophobia a thought so I donned a coverall and watched as my equipment disappeared inside the hole being pulled in on the end of a rope. Getting in was alright just a bit of a wriggle needed. It was fascinating inside but quite cramped.

"Tell me what you're going to do," I said, taking control.

"This corner here makes it really hard to pass so I'm going to put some explosives on it and put in the detonator, there'll be a line to the outside and that's all there is to it."

"Ok if it's all the same to you I'm not happy about sticking a detonator into explosives while I'm down here."

"I just happen to have a dummy on me, I'll use that."

I filmed it all and satisfied, watched the gear being pulled out. To get out was a bit like negotiating a twisted u-bend under the sink. I lay on my back and wriggled down and started to go up. I had to turn my face sideways because my nose was touching the roof. I stopped for a moment and was hit with a serious bout of claustrophobia. 

I struggled to contain the panic probably triggered by realising that this was the only way out and what made it worse were the echoing calls from above asking if I was alright. They seemed a long way away. I lay still until the fear subsided then wriggled my way through eventually emerging, extremely glad and relieved to feel the fresh air on my face again. The only other time I went caving was in Madagascar, but that's another story.

Over time I got to know most of the presenters and journalists and I was always surprised at people's reactions to them. To me they were just like any other journalists. The BBC poached a lot of them from Grampian TV and Donny McLeod always said they left the best one behind, the late Ron Thomson who was based in Dundee, a Godfather to my daughter Fiona. 

I worked with Ron Neal who would go on to become head of BBC news in London, Doug Kynoch, Jack Regan, David Bytheway who answered the phone as David By-the-way… 'yes it is an unusual name.' John Nicolson who became a successful politician. Renton Laidlaw who tells the story of how he was interviewing an old lady when her budgie landed on his bald head. He instinctively brushed it off straight into the coal fire. There was Bill Hamilton, John Milne and many others. 

I was told to meet up with BBC's sports reporter Archie MacPherson who I had never met before, at Dunblane Hydro. The Scotland football team was about to set off for the world cup in Germany. I approached him in the lobby of the hotel to introduce myself but before I could explain who I was he turned and walked off looking at his watch. So I sat on a bench with my arms crossed looking at him until he came up realising I wasn't a fan. We went outside and I set up the camera. He insisted on it being on a particular spot so I obliged. 

I pressed the button and told him I was running. His expression changed from the frown to a smile in an instant completely catching me off guard. I did something I had never and would never do again, I started laughing. Silently of course, but uncontrollably, my shoulders heaved with laughter and what made it even worse was the expression of puzzlement that spread over his face while he spoke. Fortunately I recovered before he had finished and afterwards he made no comment about it and neither did I. 

Freelance news cameramen, there were no women, were a colourful collection of people from all walks of life.  A former chauffeur to the Duke of Sutherland who had to give evidence in a messy divorce, the secretary of Nairn golf club,  a retired chemist from Grangemouth working out of Inverness, characters they certainly were. We were referred to as stringers by some BBC staff, maybe it made them feel good.    

For those interested in the technical side of things, film development moved on apace. I started with 16mm monochrome MKV, a very fast film for low light and FP4, a higher quality but slower film. And then there was KODAK EKTACHROME 7242 colour reversal film and it was a revelation. With very little exposure latitude it was an unforgiving film but if you got it right the results were startling. 

I spent seven years with Doug and in that time, as the years passed, more and more news editors and producers were asking for me. Then, like my employment with Geddes, I knew it was right to move on only this time to go freelance. In a sense it had been eleven years of training aimed for this day. Filming news imposes strict criteria, It requires quality judgements assessing the value of what you are seeing and its news worthiness, how much film to shoot, how much time to spend and most of all, knowing when to stop. 

Any aspiring camera person would be well served with the trainee-ship that I went through. I will always be grateful to the late Geddes Wood and Doug Coopey. They helped immensely in shaping and propelling a shy, blank canvas of a boy towards that of an award winning director cameraman. 

As I started freelancing, I read with a certain amount of pleasure that the cruise ship the Reina del Mar that I had disliked working on all these years before, was in the process of being dismantled for scrap.