00:00The main thing we did have was a proper rehearsal, you know, we'd rehearse these things for two weeks, ten
00:05days, two weeks, so the cast could deliver a continuous performance.
00:10You'd have a dress rehearsal, you'd have a producer's run, where sometimes you would be like that because somebody would
00:15be coming in, the producer would come in and a couple of times it happened that they would say, I
00:20don't think that's working with so-and-so, and the next day the actor or actress wasn't there.
00:25Out of the Unknown adhered to the contemporary method of recording BBC programmes.
00:30Film sequences, on location or at Ealing Film Studios, were normally shot in tandem with the rehearsal period.
00:36One of the key people on any film shoot, of course, is the film cameraman, people like Peter Sargent and
00:43a number of other people who I worked with, and they were just, it was wonderful when a film cameraman
00:51would come to you and say, well, what do you want, Mike?
00:53And I'd try and describe it, and they would take this idea, this thought, this feeling, and turn it somehow
01:00into a piece of film.
01:01All of the studio work had to be done within the conventions of the time. You rehearsed for a day
01:09and a half, and then in the evening of the second day, then you recorded the whole thing through from
01:13beginning to end.
01:14You had a time limit, you had to get the job done in the time, and therefore everybody worked like
01:20to get it done in the time.
01:21You'd got 7 o'clock till 10 o'clock, that's three hours, to shoot a 50-minute piece.
01:27You probably had to achieve it, otherwise you were into overtime costs and everything, and that didn't go down well
01:33with your producers at all.
01:35It'd only just come out of the live period, but everything was live, transmitted live.
01:39It's a theatrical set-up, you are watching a theatre production.
01:43You know, a series got an allocated budget per episode, and that's what you had, and it could all take
01:49place in one room, or some vast set, but it didn't make any difference.
01:53Crews used to specialise, you might have, some did only light entertainment shows, others did drama, Crew 2 did drama,
02:03and it has to be said, out of the unknown was something a little bit special, it was sort of
02:07more modern.
02:08For me, the challenges were to make it look interesting, and to try and make what the director wanted to
02:15do, and the actors wanted to do, and the writer wanted, all come together into some sort of homogenous whole.
02:20The cameras were very big and very heavy, you couldn't take them outside.
02:24The cameras all had turret lenses on, which were fixed lenses, which could go around, and then zoom lenses came
02:29in later, which made that very much easier, and of course colour came in.
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