AUTUMN BURSTING WITH COLOUR

Summer time has again been a washout from a weather point of view, however the team have been beavering away with various aspects of the production, which continues to gain contributions from people who were involved with the ATV Centre throughout its life.

As the leaves on the trees change colour, we have been crossing the country again in search of more stories. Last month Jim Bowen, fresh from a gig on a cruise ship, spoke to the team at his home in north Lancashire. As you may expect some hillarious anecdotes came about, including the fascinating history of Bullseye, from it's inception at ATV to it's demise at Central in Nottingham 15 years later. We learned of how the Bendy Bully came about as well as the contribution to the show of the programmes first director Peter Harris. Jim was incredibly generous (as all the interviewees have been) and he contacted Peter Harris for us and passed over the phone! As a result our next interview was arranged.

Peter Harris was a big player in the history of ATV and Central working on some iconic shows from the start of his career as a floor manager and then later as a programme director including, Tingha & Tucker, Tiswas, Bullseye, The Muppet Show... It was a pleasure to meet him last week along with his former P.A. Barbara Bradbury, in the Midlands. They both recalled many great aspects of working at the ATV Centre over the years on the afore mentioned programmes and others, it was clear that they (along with all our other interviewees so far) enjoyed their time there.

Following on from those contributions we have arranged an interview with Spitting Image stalwart Steve Nallon former ATV / Central news and current affairs presenter Reg Harcourt, to be completed in the coming weeks. So as things move on, this programme is going to be bulging with stories from the people who worked at the ATV Centre for the viewers enjoyment.....

As always the team are overwhelmed by the generosity of the people we have met, and are very grateful to them for their contributions to this labour of love.

Further work has been going on in the editing department with substantial sections being put together in anticipation of interviews being completed. Where there are gaps we are working to fill them. What has become fairly obvious to us, is that we have amassed so much material for certain areas that we could do some special separate programmes offering fuller length clips of the interviews we have done, so look out for that......

Mid-Summer Movements!

The Headlines:

• ATVLAND.Productions recently caught up with... Chris Tarrant at the studios of Who Wants To Be A Millionnaire for an in depth chat about Tiswas, ATV Today, Stop Look Listen and his very happy memories about the ATV Centre (thanks to Tony Clegg for organising this). See previous blog entry for more on this.
  
• Gary Terzza gave us plenty of behind the scenes gossip about life as a Continuity Announcer for Central in the 80s... (thanks to Matthew Gulliver for organising this).
• Wendy Nelson told us about life on ATV Today and Central News and what it was like to switch between the two companies with such differing outlooks... (thanks to Roddy Buxton for organising this).

All to be seen in the forthcoming documentary "FROM ATV LAND IN COLOUR".

We've reached a stage where we've got many core shots for the documentary. Roddy Buxton (Writer) and Pete Raven (Script Editor & Director) have come up with the second part of the script. Peter Thomas (Co-Exec Prod & Co-VT Editor, alongside Stephen Thwaites) has been placed in charge of the Tiswas bits, as you might expect, and he's rather happy about this! He'll also be working on various other parts of the documentary including the opening titles and music.

We've produced a couple of 'internal' edits of various segments, both to see how well the footage we've gathered so far works in context, such as Pete T's Tiswas segments, and as a showreel to send to professional interested parties, produced by Pete R. All of this material has so far been well received, indeed it's already been mooted that some of this material could make up additional stand-alone programmes, such as a stand-alone Tiswas programme to begin with. However, that's something to look at for the future, just to whet your appetite.

Looking back how far we've come, this time last year we were celebrating having conducted our first interview specifically for this programme, with former Miss ATV and CITV presenter Debbie Shore. This was the start of what has become a fascinating journey into the stories of the people who worked at the ATV Centre. Travelling around the country speaking to the people who spent part of their life in that concrete box on Bridge Street has become a big part of the teams spare time activity.

We have also had valuable contributions from other people aside from interviews and have a whole host of new and originally generated material to work with. What has been frustrating is finding the time to get everything together and that is why we keep the 'deadline' for the end of production fairly open ended. Much work is still to be done, and of course this depends on the individual team members being able to work in their spare time. Not that this will compromise quality, with professional advisors guiding aspects of the production, we are confident the result will be worth waiting for.

As mentioned, the writing is fairly well advanced, but because the writer is spending more time at work in his day job (in professional TV Production) this has slowed for a while. Other aspects have however been going on behind the scenes, many technical improvements have come about which will make the team's work easier, enabling instant access to the footage we have amassed by each member of the team.

Some of the team have recently had the pleasure of viewing the Timeslip documentary DVD which was released recently having been 4 years in the making. As you may know, we've been in contact with the Timeslip team for quite a while and we're happy to report that the results are very impressive. We hope to be able to produce something equalling that quality, with the same passion.

So, we'll be carrying out further interviews in August and beyond. We're discovering plenty of interesting information about the Broad Street building all the time. We'd love this documentary to be cherished by British TV historians. We've put a lot of love into chasing this dream, and the outstanding generosity of former ATV/Central staff continues to fuel that passion.

This is what they want!

We've just spent some time with a major ITV name who owes his career to ATV. Arguably the biggest modern-day presenter to have come from the Broad Street studios, Chris Tarrant gave us revelations, anecdotes and frank opinions.

We couldn't have asked for more, but we got more any way! Yesterday's interview went so smoothly with the former Tiswas host, that we all went over the allotted time!

Naturally, Chris gave us plenty of stories about Tiswas to talk about, but we also obtained backstage stories about Crossroads, Stop Look & Listen, OTT and more. Plenty of fond memories about various ATV personnel, such as Shaw Taylor, Noele Gordon, Sally James, Paul Henry, etc.

We've had this interview planned for ages now, thanks to Tony Clegg who did the necessary contact work to make it possible. We didn't envisage being given space at Elstree Studios to carry it out! We also found being given guest spots to that afternoon's recording of 'Who Wants To Be A Millionaire' to be the cherry on the cake! A massive thanks to my colleague Tony, who not only put us up for the night, he drove us down to Borehamwood and back. We couldn't publicly announce this interview in advance. Security is naturally a very big issue at Elstree.

We also managed to find time to have a look at the outside of BBC Elstree Centre. This is just a few minutes walk away, and although we had no planned visit, we had an interesting walk around the outside of the place, observing an ATV marking on the building that gave an indication to its former history as ATV's London-based studios.

For me, this little trip was an extension to the work I was doing on Monday, where I trudged around a very humid London, getting some shots of ATV-related buildings.

Wednesday was an incredibly productive day out for us, and we're very grateful for Chris Tarrant being so welcoming and enthusiastic about our project. We've got more planned interviews as you'd expect. It's getting busier for us, and we're having an ATVLand meet up pretty soon! Stay tuned to the ATVLand forums for details!

ATVLAND.productions has a new website!

Well I thought it was a good time to let you all know the new ATVLAND.productions website is online.

Although it is still in its infancy (lots of stuff to be added), we have set up a page which comes complete with the latest video trailer and links to both the blog and Facebook group.

The website will be the central hub for all news and information about the team, press releases, and updates about our first production 'FROM ATVLAND IN COLOUR'.

Please bookmark www.atvlandproductions.com and keep watching for further news.

IT'S NOT ALL ABOUT PRESENTATION....

This last couple of weeks have been fairly busy, with another 2 interviews and a location shoot in Nottingham...

On April 1st we had the pleasure of heading into deepest Cheshire to meet with a former ATV continuity announcer, Diana Mather. What a pleasure this was, as Diana is the perfect hostess. This is not really surprising, because nowadays she runs finishing schools and etiquette classes, and calls herself an "etiquette guru". Diana fondly remembered her time there and was able to recount many stories from her time at ATV which will be featured in the programme.

Thanks to Diana we were able to meet up with another former announcer the following week, this time former Central presenter Jo Wheeler. Jo was also very talkative about her time at Central as presenter of The Magic Micro Mission and later as continuity announcer. These days Jo can be seen on the Sky News channel at the weekends where she presents the weather.

It was a pleasure to meet both of them and their stories will be enjoyed by viewers of 'From ATVLAND In Colour' I am sure....

In addition to all of that, some further filming took place last week at the former Central studios at Lenton Lane,Nottingham - home of Blockbusters, Price is Right and many other big productions in the 1980's and 90's. Of course the story we are telling is about Broad Street, so you may wonder what we were doing filming at a different site. Well the answer is simple, we will mention these studios as a part of the story of Broad Street, but much of the footage we have shot will probably be used in a future project, so watch this space....

Now that all that is completed, we are looking forward to more interviews coming up in the next few weeks, including Gary Terzza whom Matthew has been in contact with.... But as the title of this blog says - it isn't all about presentation - oh no - we will be having people from all areas of programming and production from Broad Street featured in our programme.

Sticking the pieces together

The sun's out, the clocks have changed and we're out of 'hibernation'! As a cameraman, one of the frustating things about winter is the short amount of daylight you get. One of my plans for the documentary was to spend a day in London filming relevant places to illustrate key points in the history of ATV/Central.

Obviously, we're still focusing on the Broad Street studios in Birmingham, but it does help to have a few shots here and there of external influences. So, ATV's old HQ in Great Cumberland Place and the transmission centre in Foley Street are just two places I'll be filming.

Then we have some offbeat locations. Shopping channel QVC's current home - Marcopolo House in Chelsea - may not seem like an obvious priority, but a few seconds of that will be needed, as it was the former home of BSB - a broadcaster that commissioned sci-fi opera Jupiter Moon from Central, itself made at Broad Street.

Let's not forget that Marcopolo House was also home to the ill-fated ON Digital. Thankfully that's a footnote in broadcasting history, something we'll give the briefest of mentions to when it comes to wrapping up the post-active years of Broad Street's studios. We do aim to give a concise look at how television has changed since the last pictures were TX'ed out of the place. Maybe it'll come off as a little pessimistic, what with the modern-day ITV system looking very much different, even when compared to Broad Street's final active year, 1997.

It's quite easy to take a dim view of the way the media world is now, where there's 57 channels and nothing on. Not that we're bidding to be the new Grumpy Old Men. There's still quality around if you look for it.

I've spent the winter break collecting up pieces of footage. With an incredibly massive hard drive, an Apple iMac and several evenings to spare, I dumped down various stuff I've shot over the past four years. Admittedly, a lot was filmed for usage on the TiswasOnline website, but the vast majority of it has still never seen the light of day, and is truly relevant to the Broad Street documentary.

My other colleagues - Stephen Thwaites and Pete Raven - have been just as busy. We collated all our footage at the recent ATVLand meeting in Birmingham, so I can say I've had the privilege of viewing their interviews in full. Plenty of astonishing revelations about how ATV/Central/Carlton worked, from the 1950s, up to the point of Carlton-era Crossroads crashing and burning at Lenton Lane in the early Noughties. There's some jaw-dropping stuff in there, ranging from the warm friendly atmosphere of Sir Lew Grade's operation, to the catastrophic 'bean-counter' days of Carlton. I learnt that Crossroads basically kept Central going as a major player in the 1980s, and whatever you think of the soap, you only have to look at Central's output post-1988 to see how its force had diminished.

As a mark of respect to Crossroads, it's featuring a fair bit throughout our tribute to the Broad Street studios. It's a show that began before a single slab of concrete formed B1 2JP, and resurfaced in a zombie-like fashion years after the shutters came down on Broad Street.

Those of you who never enjoyed the goings on at King's Oak, fear not, as our documentary delves into plenty of other shows. We're not just talking of Tiswas, as we have a plethora of other shows that are already covered by the interviews we've accumulated!

The recent meet was also good, as ATVLand.productions members saw the final draft of the 'early years' script. This was put together by Roddy Buxton and Pete Raven, and it's been intensively researched. Every paragraph is laden with facts and there's clearly passion driving this mission-to-explain. I'm glad we're seeing the script at last, as this gives us direction.

As I read the script for the first time, I could already 'see' the documentary in my mind's eye. My Mac was switched off, but I was already doing an edit in my head! I instinctively felt which bits of my interviews could fit where. There's also the need to shoot new scenes. The jigsaw is coming together.

While the story of the early era from Roddy and Pete easily satisfies the 'anoraks', we'll also weave in some entertaining views of ATV and Central. Stuff like soap opera stars ad-libbing with a bunch of wigs, Hue & Cry causing an upset on live children's television and Lew Grade deliberately not copyrighting an ATV production so other regions could copy it in the name of public service.

Well, I began this blog post by opining how the sunny days are more than welcome, and I hope April is free from downpours as I'm off to London to do a few shoots, and there's also some other places down south where we're doing some interviews. We can't mention any names yet, but they're really impressive!

Production at a Crossroads?

Now that Christmas (and all the fun and games that entails) is over, the team have been getting on with things, firstly with an improved script being written mainly by Roddy Buxton, who has a vast knowledge of the ATV Centre and of broadcasting in general. Roddy is a lighting man by trade, and has worked on plenty of programmes including Ashes to Ashes and the forthcoming drama Red Riding. Roddy's knowledge of the ATV centre has already led to some feature articles on the Transdifusion website www.transdiffusion.org and so he has taken over where I left off with writing the story of this great television complex, enhancing the original draft with plenty of details.

The team as a whole have a new sense of direction, and as time and discussions have gone on, the focus has been more on how we can make this programme as interesting and informative to the viewer as possible and remind them of the fabulous contribution to British television made by the people who worked at the ATV Centre.

To that end we have been arranging more interviews with people you will recognise from over the years, the latest generous interviewee being a star from a particular Motel soap opera - I am not going to say too much as yet, but I can promise you that it was a fabulous and informative interview. In addition we have recently made arrangements to speak to one or two other famous faces from the presentation department of ATV and Central about their time there. More will hopefully be following and we will be busying ourself right through the spring and summer getting as many contributions 'in the can' as possible.

So lots to do still, but we are making great progress. Next week some of us are off again, filming in the midlands, it is certainly keeping us busy!!