The Ancient Knowlege of Editors and Cameramen

A very long time ago at the BBC when I was thin and Film Department was in its prime there was something of a conundrum about editors and cameramen. You had to be there to notice it and how very extraordinary it was. It was probably my very first elephant in the room.

If best in class of new stereo systems was your intent then the most reliable source of intel was a cameraman. If you wanted to know which sort of camera to buy then you'd best have asked an editor or forever risked oprobrium for your poor work.

On location shoots for any big drama you'd find crew waiting. They'd wait with an almost meditative intensity for something to happen and while they did they read. They consumed with passion magazines with exotic titles such as New Audio, Stereo Today and of course Gramophone Monthly. In those long gone heady days of large production budgets and unbreakable Union Rules these were the people who knew all there was to know about domestic stereo systems.

An unlikely quantum entanglement could be observed at Ealing Studios and other places where BBC editors practised their art or sullen craft. In almost every cutting room from Shepherds Bush to Open University, along with the back copies of such exciting comics as Committed Railway Modeller and Canal Enthusiast Today there were untidy heaps of photographic magazines. And with just the same diligence as their brothers in the field, editorial advice was the vade mecum for anyone aspiring to buy a camera.

This was the environment in which I was planted and then thrived, first as a very junior trainee and then along the eclectic career path which leads inexorably to the bruised and battered blobby thing I am today. And although I never became an oracle on matters canal or railway I cannot look at these things without some affection. An affection that is markedly stronger than that which I feel for my old and now almost blind Nikon.

I suppose that as experiential wave functions aggregated through my life the probabilistic youth I started out as became more editor than cameraman. Something, I think, that is quite obvious to trivial review of my work today. Has this singularity persisted? Perhaps. I work with an editor much younger than me and he's mustard with his Canon EOS and knows all about the various lenses. And this has me thinking. It has been possible to shoot movies on still cameras for a while now but they were never that good. But something has disturbed the fabric of spacetime.

And to see what I mean you need to look at this > *

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