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       [This was originally sent early Monday morning, UK Time, but fell
foul of the Majordomo, as being (in HTML) over 9KB.  This is a Plain
Text version.]
       Hope our UK members managed to catch BBC4 last night — a nice
little programme BEARING IN MIND THAT IT WAS FOR A GENERAL AUDIENCE, and
not for L-R enthusiasts.
       With my professional hat on, rather amused at the editing of it.
For a start, the first 3 shots (and anything with a Series 2 with a
strange grey and red colour scheme) weren’t from ‘First Overland’ at
all, but from a film that BB made on a later expedition with Tim to
Burma!  And apart from where the pictures had to support the narrative,
they were chosen purely because they looked nice, with no reference to
chronological or geographical accuracy at all — we were constantly
rushing from one end of Asia to the other.
       I was also quietly smug about the fact that they’d made no
attempt to hide the obvious ‘sticky tape’ edits of the original film, or
done anything about the earlier sequences where the hood on one of the
other lenses on the camera turret came into shot in the top right-hand
corner — one of the hazards of filming on a very primitive (by today’s
standards) camera, where you have to wait until the film’s been shipped
back to England for processing before you can get a report back on its
quality… we modern video men, with instant review, don’t know we’re
born!  We can also correct such things electronically nowadays — for the
DVD version I’ve removed 1002 visible edits, and re-positioned the ‘lens
hood’ pics to correct them.
       Well done the Beeb to get the footage onto broadcast TV again —
I’d not twigged that the first time it was on TV back in the 50s it
would have been shown in B&W, and that this was the first colour
broadcast.  I know I was surprised when I first saw the footage last
year to realise that they did the trip in colour — the pics in the book
were all B&W too!
       Excellent performances from Pat and (particularly) Tim & BB —
very sparkly.  Don’t know whether that’s because of, or despite, the
fact that BB tells me the filming of the interviews took 8 hours!  That
gave the producer a lot of alternatives to select from.  I didn’t take
that long, AND we included the two of them commentating on the film as
it went ‘through the projector’.  My version will include Nigel and
Adrian — Henry died in sad circumstances a couple of years ago, I’m
afraid.
       I WAS impressed with the work done to add audio to BB’s mute
footage — all the sounds you heard were added in the edit.  As an
enthusiast, one might be super-critical and say that the engine
recordings were probably not of Solihull’s 1997cc finest, and the horn
wasn’t the standard ‘Queen Mary’ one, but a nice effort nonetheless.
They also had access to music that I don’t have at a financially viable
rate, nor do I have the time and other resources to emulate them in
providing a sound track (other than Tim & BB’s commentary) for the full
80-odd minutes the whole film runs.  But then there’s only one of me,
with limited-depth pockets!
       Sorry to keep plugging my own forthcoming effort, but it’s for us
L-R nutters that I’m doing it.  It’ll still be a few weeks before it’s
finished, but you’ll be the first to know when it’s done.
       BTW, good to see James Taylor in the preceding programme about
Rover, complete with his LRe polo shirt.  Only a very passing reference
to L-R, but making the point that it was an important part of the
company’s post-war survival.

Regards,

GRAEME ALDOUS
South Lane Farm, Moorsholm
SALTBURN, Yorkshire  TS12 3JE,  UK
Phone: +44(0)1287 660515  Fax: +44(0)1287 660255
www.teeafit.co.uk/sxf 
       



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