Another Year (in which not much happened)

This was probably a year of "not doing" things. Not exhibiting at the IOV show, not visiting NAB in Las Vegas or IBC in Amsterdam (not that I would ever do both in one year), and not employing anyone. We did manage a week's holiday in Devon, so that's one up on last year!

Car Repair - the final follow-up

On Christmas Eve of last year I picked up our car following an accident repair to the bodywork only to find the engine un-drivable. (see previous story) After New Year it was returned for a test on which day it performed perfectly, and in subsequent days seemed OK. So much so that I drove to London to visit the Video Forum show at the end of January, only for the fault to return not long after hitting the M1, with power coming and going all the way down to London. At slow speed (<30mph) it was lacklustre but manageable, and if you could get it up to >50mph then it would often pick up and run smoothly. In between was a nasty juddery hole where pressing the accelerator pedal produced little power but horrible vibration.

After a couple of days in London it was time to return home, and setting out at about 4pm there seemed no better route than the motorway. No point being subjected to any more stopping and starting than necessary, and if I was going to have to go slowly then I might as well take the easiest route. Still, driving from London up the M1 and M6 at an average speed of 40mph was an "interesting" experience, and certainly the furthest I have ever driven without overtaking a single other moving vehicle.

At some point around Stafford, after about four hours or more at the wheel, something allowed the speed to build up to the "magic" point where the engine came back to life (amidst whoops of joy and cries of "I don't f***ing believe it!"). It's hard to express the pleasure to be had from something so simple as being able to drive smoothly at 60 or 70mph, on a motorway, until you've limped along for 100miles or more, being flashed by lorries coming up right behind you whilst struggling to coax a meagre performance out of a completely unwilling engine. The joy only lasted until the end of the motorway, after which the engine was back to its lumpy self for the last few miles home.

Next day I used the Ka whilst I phoned RRG and my insurers to give them an update. With no-one wanting to take responsibility, days turned into weeks, weeks into months, until in April we had the idea of taking a week away in the UK. By this time the battery was flat and an annual service almost due, so an ideal opportunity to book it in for a service and see if they could find what was wrong. By this time I'd given up on the insurers or repairers doing anything unless I was prepared to fund an investigation which might uncover any negligence that could have occurred during the repair work, etc, etc, blah, blah. Anyway, by this time I needed the Scenic back in working order as the Ka is a bit small for a touring holiday. So, out with the ancient battery charger (normally used on the Ka), start up and off to Renault Manchester. Much to my surprise, it was fine on the way there, and perhaps less surprisingly, they could find nothing wrong with it.

This is what happened in January before I went to London, but what can you do? We had less than a week before setting of for Devon, but it ran OK every day, so on a sunny Saturday in mid-May we set off down the M6 with more than a little trepidation. Back home a thousand miles later, all had been OK, and still is as I write this in December. Is it fixed, or could it go wrong again? Who knows? Probably the latter, but then so can any car go wrong at any time. So, did I learn anything from this? Not really, except what it's like to drive really slowly up the M1!

Tenants at work

In March we finally got some tenants for the upstairs area of our office unit, and as a result some regular income (when they pay the rent on time). One of the problems with working on your own is that whenever you're out of the building there's no-one to accept deliveries, so I was looking forward to there being other people around. However, more often than it not it's me signing for their deliveries as they start later and finish earlier than I do, and some days aren't there at all.

I built it one piece at a time

Rather like the words of the Johnny Cash song, I've been collecting parts for the last year or more to put together a full-size modular video camcorder, as pictured. One difference is that I haven't been nicking the parts from work, but buying them all on Ebay. It all started early in 2004 when one of my animation customers was buying a new capture/editing system and told me they were also looking for a camera. I suggested I might find a decent high-end used one cheaper than the new but more limited model they were going to get. With the budget available, I ended up buying a complete camera/recorder, but they didn't need the recorder part so I bought a "studio back end" for it and kept the recorder. I also bought a different lens, as the existing one didn't have a Macro facility for close-up work (eg. with models & puppets)

I've not used a "proper" video camera since leaving Granada, but I've always liked camera work, despite (or maybe because of) spending all that time doing sound. In the short time that I had the complete camera I grew rather attached to it, and was very sorry to see it go. But I still had the dockable recorder, and a lens, and a tripod which I'd bought as part of the original camera package. What I didn't have was the bit in the middle, the camera head itself, and a few of the other accessories.

Getting stuff off Ebay isn't always easy. Sure, you can find plenty of bargains, but if you're after something specific and you don't want to pay too much, then you have to be bold, lucky and dedicated in equal measures. In the course of 2004 the first thing I found was the tripod plate on a Buy-It-Now from a French seller who clearly had no idea of the value. It had been listed late at night and I saw it the following morning at 6.30am, only because I was up early to catch a plane to France and before I left wanted to check the status of another item I was bidding on. There was no description except a "not sure what this is for", and a picture of a box but not the item. I was still not that familiar with professional camera parts, so normally I would have written a question to check or ask for another picture, but there was no time, so I just hit "Buy Now" and wrote a quick note to say I'd be away for a few days. I then posted some of the Euros I had left over from the trip and a week and a few email exchanges later a rather scruffy box arrived containing exactly what I was hoping for, looking new and completely unused. Perfect!

Hitting the bull's eye like that doesn't happen very often. First you have keep a close watch on the listings and wait for someone to be selling what you want. Even then you can miss by a mile when the price goes way higher than you want to bid; other times you just miss out by getting marginally outbid right at the very end. Sometimes you miss because you watch an item and then forget to bid, or leave it so late that you're scuppered by the internet "going slow" just at the vital moment. Even when you win, there can be details that you haven't noticed that mean you don't quite get what you were expecting.

Early in 2005 I finally found another camera head (a Sony 637, like the first one) from a seller in Brighton, and we met up at the Video Forum in London. The camera part worked pretty much as expected, but the top carry handle was missing (not pictured on Ebay, but for some reason I didn't notice). Although it doesn't contribute to the video picture, it's surprising how difficult it is to work with the camera without it, and being part of a professional unit originally costing thousands, it costs about £100 as a spare part!

Luckily the animation department who had the first camera were pleased enough with it to want another this year, and whilst I was looking I spotted a better, more recent model with a highish starting price but still within the target price range. Only thing was, it was in Australia. I watched the auction expire with no bids. A week or so later it was back on again for another 10 days. This time I did my usual research of reading the seller's feedback comments, checking if he'd made any other foreign sales and writing to ask a few questions. He responded quickly and had a good variety of positive feedback, so I kept watching. Near the end there were still no bids so I bid the starting price and won it. After both getting some quotes for shipping we settled on an air freight company who were cheaper than a courier like DHL or UPS, I sent a bank transfer and once cleared the camera arrived about five days later. I've waited longer for some UK purchases.

So, having also bought a lens from the USA which used to belong to a major-league football club, that's the story of my truly international video camera. The next part of the project is to put together a location sound kit to go with it! Despite having all sorts of bits of sound equipment which I mainly used for music recording back in the '70s, not much of it is suitable for location recording, and  I didn't buy my own kit when I left Granada because I intended to give up sound recording. I have no intention of going back to it full time, but after 12 years away from it I do have the urge for an occasional dabble. Watch this space...

Back to broadcast

In the summer, one of my customers, Peter Baker, called me to talk about a commission he'd got from ITV to produce six half-hour local programmes for the Granada region, entitled My North West. As his first independent broadcast production since leaving Granada's Men & Motors channel, he was looking at how he might use his own editing facilities (which I'd supplied) which were not originally designed for such use. I suggested a solution in which he would do the initial editing and then pass the programmes over (on computer hard disks) for me to finish off and transfer to the DigiBeta tape format required by Granada. I'm pleased to report that the first two episodes submitted have passed the technical review, albeit with a few warnings, but it's a good start.

Nominally I was listed as "Technical Manager", which sounded fine, but I soon discovered that I wasn't required to "manage" (ie instigate any technical control over what was being shot), but merely take whatever they produced and do the best that could be done with it to get it past the technical review. More like "Disaster Recovery" for some parts of it! So whilst I've enjoyed being involved with some production work again, not having done any for the last ten years, it's not quite the role I would have wished for in as much I feel that much of my knowledge and experience is being ignored, and that the programmes could be both better and more satisfying to work on had I been more involved.