by Pamela Brown
Just then the bell rang for the end of the period, and picking up his parcels Mr Manyweather departed in his usual flurry, before Maddy could inquire what was in the knobbly one.
Everybody crowded round Eric and Maddy and told them how lucky they were.
‘You will behave nicely, won’t you?’ urged Rosalind, who was the eldest in the class, and therefore thought it her duty to say big-sisterly things on every occasion. ‘The honour of the Academy will be at stake.’
‘Of course I shall,’ said Maddy. ‘What do you expect me to do? Turn cartwheels in front of the cameras?’
‘Oh, you mustn’t,’ cried Buster. ‘They’d be furious!’
‘Don’t worry,’ said Eric. ‘I’ll see she doesn’t let the side down.’
‘And wear something decent,’ urged Rosalind, eyeing Maddy’s scarlet slacks with disfavour.
The next week went very slowly indeed, and Maddy kept on saying to Zillah, ‘I wonder when it will be. Do you think it will be soon?’ until Zillah nearly screamed.
When the time came for the next lesson Maddy was hopping up and down in the doorway, waiting to greet Mr Manyweather.
‘When is it?’ she cried, as soon as he appeared.
‘When is what?’ he asked vaguely, blinking behind his thick spectacles.
‘When are you taking us to the studio? Oh, you haven’t changed your mind,’ wailed Maddy.
‘Oh, that. Yes, of course, I haven’t told you. It’s tomorrow.’
‘Tomorrow!’ cried Maddy. ‘I’ll never be ready in time.’
Mr Manyweather laughed. ‘Why, what have you got to do?’
‘Well, clean my shoes for one thing…’
‘I shouldn’t bother,’ said Mr Manyweather. ‘After all, you won’t be going in front of the cameras.’
Maddy looked at his shoes. They were badly in need of polish.
Before they started the lesson he played the piano for a little while, and they all danced like dervishes.
‘That’s fine,’ he said when they were all exhausted. ‘Now we’ll be able to concentrate better. Today I’ve brought a plan of a television studio so that you can all look at it, and Gretchen and Little-by-little won’t feel quite so lost tomorrow. Here, I’ll pin it on the blackboard, and you can all come and study it.’
The plan was divided up into quarter-inch squares, with a number of strange shapes and patterns drawn on it that conveyed absolutely nothing to the students. Mr Manyweather pointed out which lines represented settings, and which shapes were cameras and microphones.
‘Now you’ll see that it’s not a bit like the theatre, where one scene is set after the other on the same stage. For television there are acting areas all round the studio, and the poor actor has to do a steeplechase from one to the other, very often changing his clothes en route, and trying not to look puffed when he gets there. Then he’s also got to take the cue from the floor manager to start the next scene, without showing that he’s taking it. By that I mean the floor manager waves at him to start, but he mustn’t wave back, because by that time the camera’s on him.’
Buster and Snooks laughed delightedly, because they knew what he was talking about.
‘Why do they have the floor manager to give the cue, instead of using a green light as they do in sound broadcasting?’ asked Eric, who had done some radio work with his choir.
‘Because a human being can get into some very odd corners and contrive to give cues where you couldn’t possibly rig up a green cue light. And also the floor manager is in direct communication with the producer, who sits up in the control room, and talks from there to the floor manager, who hears him through headphones. The producer watches all that is happening on a lot of little television sets, called monitors, that are ranged in front of him. There is one monitor for every camera and the producer tells the vision mixer which camera’s picture to transmit. He also speaks to the cameramen, who can hear him on their headphones, telling them what sort of shots he wants. Do you follow?’
He saw from their blank faces that they did not.
‘Oh well, there’s nothing else for it. You’ll all have to come round the studios, a few at a time. But only as a reward for good work.’
Everyone cheered loudly. Mr Manyweather spent the remainder of the lesson trying to explain the studio plan, and pointing out the drawbacks and the advantages of acting for television, as compared to the theatre. At the end of the class he turned to Eric and Maddy.
‘Meet me at a quarter to two outside Marble Arch Tube Station tomorrow afternoon. It doesn’t matter what you wear—no one will be looking at you, but I should wear soft shoes in preference to clean ones, Maddy.’
‘But I must wear a decent dress,’ said Maddy, when he had gone. ‘Why, I might be discovered.’
That evening there was great activity at 37 Fitzherbert Street. Maddy washed her hair, and dried it in front of the fire in Mrs Bosham’s basement. Then she had a good scrub in the battered old bath where flakes of enamel came off and stuck to her. And then she sat up in bed cleaning shoes and doing her voice production exercises.
‘Moo—mah—may,’ she intoned.
‘You sound like a sick cow,’ Zillah laughed.
‘You are insulting,’ said Maddy hotly, until she remembered that Zillah was probably more familiar with sick cows than voice production exercises. ‘Will you be all right by yourself tomorrow?’ asked Maddy anxiously, for it would be the first time Zillah had been alone since she left the hostel. ‘What will you do?’
‘Go for a walk, I expect,’ said Zillah vaguely.
‘I don’t know what time I shall be back,’ said Maddy. ‘Mr Manyweather didn’t say.’
She took all the morning to get ready, because buttons kept coming off and she couldn’t sew the clean collar on to her dress without getting it crooked. ‘Oh, Mummy—why aren’t you here?’ she said aloud in desperation, and Zillah said, ‘Here—I’ll do it. You hold your needle like a pitchfork.’
Maddy was very pleased to hear Zillah speak like this. It meant that she was beginning to make the same sort of derogatory remarks that other people made to her, and that was a very good sign.
They had lunch early, and Zillah offered to walk down to the Tube with Maddy.
‘You can tell ’em I’m thinking of buying one,’ laughed Mrs Bosham from the doorstep.
‘What on earth—oh, I see, a “telly”,’ said Maddy, as they set off down Fitzherbert Street.
‘Don’t get run over,’ Maddy warned Zillah as she left her at the entrance to Tottenham Court Road Tube Station, for Zillah had an unnerving habit of plunging straight into the traffic without looking to left or right, and just hoping it would stop for her.
In the Tube train Maddy felt so excited and happy that she kept bursting out into grins, and then feeling foolish because people looked at her.
Eric was waiting for her outside the Tube station at Marble Arch, looking extremely clean and neat, with his hair plastered down very close to his head.
‘You look like a seal today,’ Maddy told him. ‘All shiny.’
‘And you don’t look a bit like yourself,’ he told her.
‘Thanks,’ said Maddy, accepting this as the compliment it was meant to be.
They stood looking down the Tube steps, expecting Mr Manyweather to come up, but he did not appear.
‘Supposing he’s forgotten!’ Maddy suggested in an agonised voice. ‘I think he’s a little eccentric, don’t you? He might easily have forgotten.’
Suddenly a series of explosions made them look round into Oxford Street, and there stood the most extraordinary-looking vehicle they had ever seen. It was large, with a Rolls-Royce bonnet, but the open body was built of wood and had a home-made look—and inside were long wooden benches facing each other, giving a boat-like effect. The whole thing was built very high, and perched up at the wheel was Mr Manyweather waving violently to them, while clouds of blue smoke issued from the exhaust.
‘No!’ cried Eric. ‘It can’t b
e…’
‘It is!’ shouted Maddy. ‘I didn’t know he’d got a car…’
‘And what a car!’ said Eric, hurrying to inspect it from all angles before he got in.
‘Hullo,’ cried Mr Manyweather. ‘Sorry I’m late—lost a wheel in the middle of Oxford Street.’
He roared with laughter, as though this were the most delicious joke.
‘Jump in.’
Maddy had to climb over the front seat on to the rear portion, where she clung to the side for dear life, as Mr Manyweather started off in a determined manner to plunge into the traffic going round the circus at Marble Arch.
‘What a magnificent job this is,’ said Eric, bouncing about on the seat beside Mr Manyweather.
‘I made her myself,’ beamed Mr Manyweather. ‘Hardly cost anything. Mind you, she eats up the petrol. But then, she holds a lot of people.’
‘Masses of people, I imagine. How many is the most you have ever got into it?’
‘Oh, about twenty, I should think. Mind you, it’s not good for her springs…’
Maddy only just prevented herself from saying, ‘Are there any springs?’ for she was bouncing about like a jack-in-the-box.
‘I call her Agatha—I think it suits her personality.’
The journey to the B.B.C. studios at Shepherd’s Bush was hair-raising. Mr Manyweather was a remarkably casual driver, and would take his hands off the wheel to gesticulate, or in order to point out some object of interest they were passing.
At Shepherd’s Bush Green they got tangled up so badly in the traffic that they had to round the Green twice before they could get out of it.
‘Mustn’t grumble,’ said Mr Manyweather, ‘it gives us a chance to drink in the beauty of the scene. Now, the next problem is—somewhere to park.’
They drove up and down a grey little street where there was no sign of a studio, but where cars and motorbikes and motor scooters were parked nose to tail as far as one could see in either direction.
‘Oh well, this’ll do,’ said Mr Manyweather, backing rather suddenly into a gateway bearing a large white sign, ‘No Parking’.
‘Can you really leave it here?’ asked Eric anxiously.
‘Yes,’ said Mr Manyweather, climbing over the side of the car, as his door had stuck. He blinked short-sightedly at the notice.
‘I can’t read what that notice says; can you?’ And without waiting for a reply he hustled them away down the street.
It seemed a very long walk to the studios.
‘But where are they?’ Maddy kept demanding.
At last they rounded a corner and a large white building seemed to spring up out of nowhere. ‘How funny,’ said Maddy. ‘It didn’t appear to be there a moment ago.’
The commissionaire at the door smartly saluted Mr Manyweather, who said, ‘Hullo, Jo. How does it go?’ and then led the way through the doors into the foyer.
‘Good afternoon, Mr Manyweather,’ fluted the receptionist, who looked as elegant as a fashion model. ‘Do you require dressing-rooms?’ she asked Maddy and Eric.
‘No,’ answered Mr Manyweather. ‘They’re just visiting. Can we have our passes, please. They’re in my name.’
The receptionist flipped through a lot of cards and then handed him two.
‘Many thanks,’ said Mr Manyweather. ‘Now, Gretchen, where shall we go first?’
‘Where they actually do it,’ said Maddy.
‘O.K., where they do it.’
He led the way to a very small lift into which a number of people were trying to cram themselves, and said to the lift man, ‘Hullo, Bert, we want to go to where they actually do it. Which studio is the busiest at the moment?’
‘They’re all madhouses today,’ said Bert miserably, as a large lady wearing a shepherdess’s dress struggled into the lift.
Mr Manyweather led the way through a heavy padded door marked ‘No Smoking. No Admittance. No Visitors’ into an enormous, high-roofed studio that was in such a state of confusion that at first Eric and Maddy just stood and blinked. Under very strong bright lights myriads of people were milling about among a jumble of huge cameras and microphones hung on the ends of ‘fishing rods’, attached to enormous trolleys, each worked by several men. But the strangest thing was the almost complete silence. The only sound in the whole vast studio was of a soprano singing in a small voice, with a piano accompanying her, right over at the far end of the studio. Because it was so quiet Maddy immediately wanted to giggle. She was glad that she was wearing rubber-soled shoes, as Mr Manyweather had suggested.
‘Hold it!’ somebody shouted suddenly, and the singing stopped, and pandemonium broke out. People shouted, people hammered, people rushed about. A make-up girl in a blue overall hurried over to powder the soprano’s face, and Maddy turned to Mr Manyweather with shining eyes.
‘Isn’t it all exciting? Do tell us what is happening.’
‘Well, this is just a rehearsal,’ he explained. ‘It’s not being transmitted until this evening. That’s why there’s all this stopping and starting. It’s to get the positions of the cameras and the booms correct. The booms are the things with the mikes on the end. You see, as I showed you on the plan, that the settings are arranged round the studio—and the cameras and the artistes move round to each in turn.’
Maddy and Eric had a good look.
‘And the man standing in the middle of the floor wearing headphones is the floor manager. I told you about him, remember.’
‘He’s listening through his headphones to what the producer says, isn’t he?’ demanded Maddy.
‘That’s right.’
‘And so are the cameramen, aren’t they?’ asked Eric.
‘Yes, that’s it.’
There were four enormous cameras, each with a cameraman sitting on a high seat looking at the scene through a lens. Some of the cameras were on wheels, and glided silently backwards and forwards, and there was one small camera on a tripod, that did not move.
‘But where is the producer?’ Maddy wanted to know.
‘Up there in that little glass box on the wall.’
They looked up. Behind a glass window a number of people seemed to be sitting, looking at a lot of little television monitors.
‘May we go up there?’ asked Maddy.
‘I’ll try and take you up,’ said Mr Manyweather, ‘but it gets awfully crowded there. If the producer comes down on to the floor we’ll take the opportunity to slip up.’
‘What’s that big screen over there?’ asked Eric, pointing to something that looked like a magic-lantern screen.
‘Oh, that’s something I haven’t told you about. It’s a back-projection screen. A slide, say a picture of some scenery, is projected on to the screen from behind; then the actors play the scene in front of the screen, and when the camera looks at it, it appears just as if the actors really are by the seaside, or in a forest—in fact, against whatever scenery the slide shows. The great advantage is that you can change the scene over and over again, yet only take up the one space in the studio, if you see what I mean. You can also use moving back-projection for moving scenery—out of a train window, or waterfalls, or waves breaking—anything like that, but in that case moving film, not a slide, is thrown on to the screen.’
‘Well, I never,’ said Maddy. ‘What will they think of next? I’d love to see it working.’
As though in answer a slide suddenly flashed on to the screen, showing hills on the horizon and an expanse of sky.
‘There, isn’t that wonderful!’ said Maddy delightedly.
At this moment someone came up and started to chat to Mr Manyweather, and Maddy wandered off behind the screen to see how it worked. There didn’t appear to be anything behind the screen except a huge mirror. She made a face at herself in the mirror and did a few ballet steps, then turned to look for the magic-lantern device. Suddenly there seemed to be an extra lot of shouting in the studio, and Mr Manyweather, red-faced, appeared behind the screen.
‘Maddy,’ he called.
‘Come here, they’re complaining in the control room about your shadow.’
‘My shadow?’ repeated Maddy, then when she turned round she understood. Enormous on the screen, right across the sky, was a plumpish silhouette with plaits sticking out at each side.
‘Ow, help,’ she squeaked, and ran out from behind the screen.
Everyone in the studio was laughing and looking at her. Maddy’s face went pink.
‘Don’t go behind there again,’ said the floor manager, although he too was laughing.
‘I’ll look after her,’ promised Mr Manyweather.
Eric also was pink with confusion. ‘Don’t you dare go away from us again!’ he cried. ‘You’ll get us turned out of the studio if you’re not careful.’
‘But how did it happen?’ whispered Maddy. ‘There wasn’t a magic-lantern. I went to look. There was only a mirror.’
‘Oh dear, oh dear, I didn’t explain that because I thought it was too complicated,’ said Mr Manyweather. ‘The lantern is at the side and throws its beam into the mirror, which reflects it on to the screen. The mirror halves the length of the throw, saving studio space. See?’
Maddy didn’t really; all she knew was she’d made a fool of herself.
‘I’m awfully sorry,’ she said in a small voice.
‘It doesn’t matter,’ said Mr Manyweather. ‘It’s only a rehearsal. If you’d done it during transmission it would have been a very different matter.’
‘Of course, you can’t go back and do it again like you can in films,’ reflected Maddy.
‘No, the performance is being transmitted while it’s actually happening.
‘That’s why so much rehearsal is necessary. Now they’re rehearsing a sketch over there; that’ll be more interesting for you. Go over and stand by the side of the set. But don’t get too close, Maddy.’
Just as Mr Manyweather had told them, the actors in the sketch only spoke in a normal conversational voice, for the mike was suspended over their heads. As they watched, one of the actors dried, and a girl standing near by holding a script prompted him quite loudly.
‘Suppose that happened in the programme?’ whispered Maddy to Mr Manyweather.