Trick or Treat?

Separated at birth or what?

Relief Pitcher

Separated at birth or what?

The Peerless Peel

John Peel died today.

I blame him (more precisely his late night BBC Radio One show) for my poor performance at ‘A’ – Level! I used to use the excuse that I’m off to do some revision to disappear upto my bedroom and switch the radio on in order to hear (amongst many others), the Undertones, the Fall, U2, the Jam, the Sugercubes, the Smiths and indeed my pre-Kylie pop love object, Claire Grogan .

These were in the days before MP3s, Napster and infact even before compact discs (yes I’m that old!). So I still remember forgoing the undoubtable pleasures of the Mike Yarwood Xmas Show in order to record religiously, onto cassette tapes (remember them!?), Peel’s countdown of each year’s top 100 tracks (as determined by the votes of the fans of his show). Which was just as well; as sometimes the quality music on those tapes was my only consolation as I subsequently embarked upon underachieving spectacularly at an 80′s Polytechnic somewhere in South East London.

But I wouldn’t swap a single second-rate second of it if that meant I’d have had to forget the music. So, from an old indie fan — thanks Peelie.

The Camera Ass.

Okay it’s been a while since I actually wrote anything but I’m having so much fun just lobbing up images that I just couldn’t be bothered. That and because I was a bit busy with work of various kinds.

For instance, yesterday, I found myself in Worcestershire with a days camera assistant work (filling in for a friend who had double-booked himself) for a First Light funded short film set in the Malvern Hills. This is where some serendipity comes in because I was in more or less the same part of the world just a few weeks ago doing a bit of walking. Which is just as well because if there’s one thing that doesn’t go down well with professional film-makers is people not being in the right place at the right time – so having unintentionally reconnoitred the place last month I got there on time and without my usual stress-filled in-car map-reading misadventures.

The job of a camera assistant is, unsurprisingly, to assist the cameraman. This usually means setting up the camera and tripod and attaching monitor cables between said cameras and monitors. Also, making lenses, filters, tapes. etc., availiable to the cameraman as and when required (I suspect that this is the reason why bulging cargo pants are much in evidence on most film sets). And if you’re keen and the cameraman trusts you, you may be allowed to take a few shots, (cutaways, background stuff, etc). I’m not that keen so I didn’t but there is a well worn path from camera assitant to cameraman.

The Malvern Hills are a beautiful range of small gently sloping hills in Worcestershire but they felt like a mountain range to me yesterday. Why?– Ahhh! I forgot to mention that the camera assistant also carries the tripods, monitors and lens boxes to location. The location was quite close to the top of ‘Black hill’ and there’s just a footpath from the car park to the top… you see where I’m going with this don’t you. I consoled myself, at the end of the day, as I carried what felt like a television studio back down to the car park, that all that fresh air must have done me a world of good as I sucked it into my smouldering lungs.

Actually, I’m whinging melodramatically here, truth be told the director, cameraman, other crew and even one of the actors helped considerably with the lugging about of equipment. However, that still doesn’t diminish my overiding impression that a good camera assistant should be a cross between an ambitious mule and a filing cabinet.

Sleeping Beckham