For my further education after school, I did a course called "HND Communication Studies" at Kirkcaldy College of Technology. I didn't really have the faintest idea what I wanted to do with my life at the age of 17 when I had to make some key decisions about my future. But this course appealed to me, as it was about a subject I was interested in; the media, journalism, television and marketing. Going for an HND course instead of going to University also meant an easier life in my 6th year at high school as I got most of the grades required to make this course in my 5th year at school.
One of the more exciting things we got to do at college was to practice a potential career in television, both behind and in front of the cameras. I can recall this practice was in two parts. The first was just reading a piece to camera to see how you came over. I think I read a piece about Star Trek - arrgh, I was only 17 I suppose! I remember the lecturer said I may have a problem getting a career as a TV presenter as I had the kind of face that was "naturally vague". This comment caused enduring hilarity among my fellow potential TV stars.
The second exercise was much more ambitions, we were supposed to make our own TV programme. This course requirement caused us much angst in advance as I remember. The class split up into about 4 different teams and the team of people I did this with were just the people I chose to sit around on day one of the course.
Our team was - Lorraine Rennie (main presenter), me and Mark Deas (first interview), Ewan Croal and Susan Neilson (second interview), Barbara Penman and Dave Radford (third interview).
I remember doing endless preparation for this exercise. We split our little team into sub groups who would interview each other for the programme. Mark would become a good mate in the coming months, but I don't remember him being at college much around this time and he dropped out in year 2. I think this video was made towards the latter half of year one and Mark's enthusiasm for the course was really fading.
Our group had a few sessions to get the programme ready, but I don't remember Mark being there much. So our section is pretty scripted, you can see the piece of paper pretty obviously on my lap. It was so scripted, that I think I wrote the questions and the answers for our piece. Mark's one great contribution was the title - "Retirement at 16", we all loved that.
Mark was a big socialist at the time, I first met him at a meeting of the Militant Tendency (of all places), so the parts of the piece where he is talking about the final end of capitalism is the only bit I didn't script. I think he is improvising here.
Owing to Mark and I being a little under prepared, our piece ran short by mistake, so we asked Ewan and Susie to pad their piece out a bit. This didn't seem an issue for them. Ewan was the guy I sat next to in the whole of my second year of college and he was a real nice guy, never short of a word or two.
There are some great little period touches in this piece. Ewan's references to "Bentleys" and a "Nick Kershaw haircut" are priceless. I remember Susie came from a particularly rough part of Fife that I didn't know well and some of her experiences may have helped her talk so knowledgeably about heroin abuse and alcoholism. Most of us, except Mark and I, tried to make an effort to look smart for this show. Susie used to call this her "social worker look". I think Mark and I's look make us look more like genuine socialists though.
Ewan looks a bit uncomfortable in his tie too. With 22 years hindsight, one of the things that shocks me about this video are the number of technical mistakes. The programme was made by a guy called Don who was the college's resident technician, but I don't think he could have been taking this too seriously. There's obviously a problem with Susie's mic that didn't get corrected and the crackles are left in. You can actually hear Don coughing behind the camera. I remember all the equipment looked ancient to me, even in 1985. The video system was a huge clunky Umatic system. I remember the Umatic tapes seemed enormous.
Barbara the body builder is wonderful here. She was always so softly spoken that I struggled with the thought of her being a body builder. Dave was the oldest of our little group, he was an ancient 23 or 24 at the time and that seemed a large age gap. As he was the oldest, he tended to take control of our little group. He looks nervous as hell in this piece too.
All of Dave's "taking charge" meant that we got voted the best programme by our classmates in other groups. We sat through all the programmes in class one day, and I got the impression that other groups didn't manage to take the exercise as seriously as we did. The only major errors on ours were technical, other teams seemed to be taking the piss a bit. The lecturer felt I transcended my "vague look" from the earlier video and Lorraine got special praise as our anchor woman.
What really amazes me now is the sheer earnestness of the programme. I suppose these were grim time in Fife, the miners strike was still on and unemployment was around 3 million. But I have such wonderful memories of my life around this time, the earnestness of the programme seems to conflict with this memory. I think the truth is we were all a bit nervous and Dave was being pretty bossy throughout the preparation and making of this.
The letteraset titles took bloody ages to do and it still looks crap. We got this final one the wrong shape too and Don the technician / cameraman had to pan around it to make it work. Our backdrops don't really work either, they are too small in relation to the rest of the "set". Mark and I's is particularly poor.
The beginning music was my idea, it's a Song called "Leisure" from XTC's "English Settlement" album. It seemed to fit Mark's "Retirement at 16" title perfectly. "My Generation" at the end was Dave's idea. I played the music from my sister's portable cassette player into the studio mic while Don filmed the leteraset.
I happened to know a guy who had just started at the college as a junior technician, working for Don. He was in the year below me at High School and was a really nice guy called John Wishart. I persuaded him to strike a copy of our programme. I think he took this straight from Umatic to Betamax, which was the format of the video recorder we had at home. Betamax was a much better format than VHS at the time, shame it didn't catch on, the picture quality was a lot better.
I rented a VHS machine when I moved just behind the college tho 2 Sang Place Kirkcaldy a few months later. I remember this cost 11 pounds a month and this seemed an incredible expense as my whole income was only 70 pounds a month. I quickly transfered some of my favorite Beta tapes to VHS in the Summer of 1985 and this was one of them.
This survived on the same VHS tape from 1985 to 2005, when it was transfered to DVD. The faint white lines that scroll up and down the screen are a result of decay on the original VHS tape, it seems I was able to digitise this at just the right time before the VHS became unplayable. The Beta tape still exists, but I'm not sure if I will ever get my hands on a beta machine to play it.
As far as I know, this is the only one of the programmes from our year of HND Communication Studies that got copied. Certainly, I'd be very surprised if any other programmes survived this long, copied or not. It's really funny think that, thanks to 21st century technology, this little student programme may now be seen by more people than anyone ever intended.
Due to the 10 minute per video restriction on Youtube, this is split into two parts.
We did go on to make some more impressive videos in our second year.
This time we had a more professional set up in the college assembly rooms. The college had asked for volunteers from our course to make some educational videos for the council. Our part was the technical side - production, direction, sound, camera, floor manager, etc. I was the sound engineer, you can see me poised over the 4 track porta studio that doubled as a mixer. The Drama Studies course provided the people in front of camera this time.
Next to me is Kim Marr who was the vision mixer and nearest the camera is Madeline Fyfe who was the producer (she was always a bossy sort!). Don didn't get too involved this time, although I'm pretty sure I remember him taking this picture.
Looking back on it, this was just a way for the council to get educational videos for free, although we had good fun doing this and the college was very grateful. Left to right above is Donna Hodgkinson and Lynn Williamson on camera, Andy Gyle the floor manager and Neil Renton also on camera. There are two drama students who's names I have long forgotten in front of camera. I love the way the cameras have "KCT TV Colour" written on them.
I didn't get a copy of these videos, I think my enthusiasm was less this time as we were not in front of camera. Also our final exams were looming, so I guess I had other things on my mind.
Shame, as the drama students had someone that year who went on to become a genuine star. Sharon Small, who is now one of the two stars of The "Inspector Linley Mysteries" (a favorite here on US Public TV) was the anchor woman for all the videos. I remember her being professional, but of course no one realised she'd go on to have a genuine career in film and TV. One of the highlights of my whole college experience was getting to pin a contact mic on her blouse. Well I was the sound engineer after all.
Having watched "Retirement at 16", if there are any NBC, CBS, BBC executives out there watching Blogger or Youtube for potential television stars, just let me know. You'd only be 22 years late.
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