Camera Crane
Built by Richard Marsden in September 2022 for the BBC Centenary Secretary’s Challenge
When I joined the BBC in September 1969, a group of us used to go up to Television Centre on a Saturday evening for some drinks in the BBC Staff Club bar. I wasn’t based at TvC, but at the Research Department in North Surrey, so it was somewhere different to go. Before going into the bar, though, we’d go round the studio observation galleries to see what programmes were being made. If it was a “special”, the Cilla Black Show or something like that, they’d have one camera on a huge crane to get the shots they wanted. The colour cameras of the day were big and heavy, and somewhat fragile, so to see one up in the air like this was quite something. It took four people to operate it, the camera operator up in the air, a guy raising and lowering the camera and the operator and swinging them around, another one to drive the trolley it was all mounted on, and someone else to stop the thick umbilical cable from tangling and tripping everyone up. I managed to find a short film of the thing in action, and it seemed a good subject for a model, so here it is!