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View Full Version : BBC Robin Hood Ransom Demand

henry
29-08-2006, 02:44 PM
can you believe this? - http://tinyurl.com/jdek9
rachelw
08-09-2006, 10:57 AM
woah! I wonder what happened.... must sniff around for more news...
Daz
09-09-2006, 09:10 PM
Tapes have been returned, you'll be pleased to learn. Word has it they they were only copies of rushes...but then again, who copies all their HiDef rushes?
rachelw
09-09-2006, 09:18 PM
yes that would be quite tedious and perhaps even moronic....

still quite an amusing tale...

how u been, Daz, haven't seen as much of you online as usual.....
Daz
10-09-2006, 12:15 AM
Very well thanks mate. Been on summer hols to Wales (not New South) where it rained constantly. Should have realised that something was amiss when we arrived and everything was green - England is in the grip of drought/heatwave/globalwarming/alloftheabove.

Now started on a 6 x 1hr series for BBC: "The Truth About Food" - a subject which is very close to my own heart! Scientific experiments, celebrity contributors, state-of-the-art graphics...what could possibly go wrong?

I have a feeling that this may be one of the last big Landmark series we see on Digibeta. We're getting a lot more Hi Def now, mostly shot on Varicam. All the bread & butter Reality (sic) seems to have devolved to DVCAM. But you couldn't complain about the longevity of Digibeta, could you? That format must have lasted at least 16 years - in the work I've done anyway. What other tape format ever had such a long life?
rachelw
10-09-2006, 09:05 AM
um, sometimes I still get ads in pizzaboxes, so perhaps we could argue that the 1" refuses to die

sorry to hear you had such an irrigated holiday. It's been like that in Sydney the last few days - just torrential rain. Strange considering we have such a water crisis here.

Series sounds like a good one, look forward to it reaching the big island eventually...

And interesting how HiDef is coming in....wondered when it would start becoming the norm - is that the case now??
JWRL
10-09-2006, 10:45 AM
Originally posted by Daz
What other tape format ever had such a long life?

Umm, let me guess... I think it was called 2" quadruplex. It started in the 50s and was still in use as an interchange format up to the 80s.

But the Beta family generally? Not a bad lifetime for a failed commercial concept, eh?
rachelw
10-09-2006, 03:33 PM
actually I do know someone who still has a functioning betacam deck...and camera, and insists on using it...boy that stuff was built to last!

Methinks I was too young to experience quadruplex...I would have been in primary school at the time

how goes things in Melly? I might be happening down that way in the near future
Daz
10-09-2006, 06:47 PM
Too right about Quad - we were still cutting drama on it at the ABC in Sydney during the mid 80s. Amazing how the format adapted and evolved: colour, HiBand. We used to roll those big heavy reels down the VT corridor to see who could achieve the longest roll...until one went all the way and crashed thru the VT library door! File that!

I haven't seen a 1" tape for a decade, but I still have a BVH2000 at the back of my cutting room: just in case!
JWRL
10-09-2006, 11:59 PM
Originally posted by Daz
We used to roll those big heavy reels down the VT corridor to see who could achieve the longest roll...until one went all the way and crashed thru the VT library door!

Don't get me started on quad stories. For example, there was the episode of "Bobby Limb's Sound of Music" that arrived in VT half an hour before air time. The tape box was full of videotape and water. So the program went to air with one operator holding a cloth against the tape as it came off the reel, and muggins here holding his thumb against the rotating video heads to prevent oxide build up for the entire hour-long program.

I still have the callusses. And that's only one story.
Daz
11-09-2006, 05:09 AM
Then there was the time I came in on New Years Day, hungover (surprise) and put the first on-air onto the Recortec (tape cleaning device). Well, I thought it was the Recortec, but unfortunately it was placed just above the Bulk Eraser. An episode of Sesame Street was lost...forever.

Then I had to scrabble around at breakneck speed to find the next days episode, lace it and line it up in 1 minute flat. Spent the rest of the morning with my head down the toilet. Oh, to be young again...