All of Pebble Mill Broadcasting Centre, Birmingham has now been raized to the ground - SHAME ON YOU BBC!
The first shot we see is actually the office block - the radio and TV studios were actually much lower and to the front to the left and right. TV Studio A and B can be seen in the helicopter tracking shot to the right, then the quadrangle to the left and the radio studios further to the left, including a large snooker room, much used by yours truly. The gardening items were done at the back of the building. The BBC Club was a minute or two walk beyond the radio studios, again out the back door. The huge car park was at the back to the right, but was most times virtually full.
The whole of the ground floor of the Broadcasting Centre was very light and airy, having floor to ceiling windows, especially around the quadrangle which it was all centred around. It was a very modern feeling building and especially having live TV every lunchtime during the week in the foyer! Also, Studio A produced cutting edge dramas, and also series - one being The Brothers, the story of Hammond Transport Services, the brothers and their domineering mother. The cast included Gabrielle Drake and Jean Anderson.
The foyer where Pebble Mill at One was broadcast, live, is across the front. Between the foyer and Studio A was a bridge out onto the front lawn where we pushed the cameras out on fine days. We even did captions on caption stands out in the glorious Birmingham sunshine, which seemed to happen more often than not! Great for a new camera assistant who loved anything a bit different to do with TV!
The cameras were EMI 2001 and we either took them from Studio B or preferably Studio A as that was on the ground floor, Studio B being on the first and so we had to get them to the foyer via the normal staff lifts, all of them complete on their peds.
I remember my first day there, straight from BBC Wood Norton Training Centre, Evesham. The way in from the car park was via the props store and walking along there there was a Dalek! I just couldn't believe seeing it. Why would BBC Birmingham want a Dalek? Perhaps for an item into PMaO....
Notice the picture and audio quality on this clip. These were the days of analogue VTs. Also the vision mixing equipment was restricted. Let's go through the process of creating these opening titles.
Firstly the sound track would be laid down onto a videotape with black as the video component. Then the video component could be laid down sync'd up to the audio. This could not be done with one pass as it would have needed too many videotape machines and too much complexity for the the vision mixing equipment of that era. i.e. four way splits. So... several passes had to be made, adding a video element at each pass and this reduced the quality of the first pass each time.
By the look of this clip the four way splits were done first, they're definately soft. So, four passes would be made to get each corner, as the equipment couldn't produce four corners in one go (and at Pebble Mill there weren't four VT machines anyway to supply each corner).
Then, I reckon the box wipe and two way split was added. And finally the single shots. That very last shot is the live shot mixed to out of VT into the foyer, so shows the greatest quality.
But! Because this sequence kept being transferred back and forth between one VT machine to another just listen to the final audio..... It has a certain warbling sound - this is due to video jitter on each machine. And doesn't that sound make it sound very modern?
And the complete opening titles? This was cutting edge then.
Any thoughts or constructive comments please add!