External Site: Researching the History of Television Production Technology (ADAPT)[info]
This site presents a range of resources relating to a five year project (2013-2018) to research and document the history of British television broadcast technology from 1960 onwards. Led by Professor John Ellis of Royal Holloway, University of London, the European Research Council-funded project explores the ways in which the look and sound of the television programmes of the 1960s, 70s, 80s and 90s was directly affected by the technology used in the making of them.
One of the project’s most original and inspiring ideas is to reunite industry veterans with examples of the technologies they once used and film them working with the old equipment. The resulting reconstructions have been turned into a series of videos which provide contextual material to stand alongside original archive footage and give a valuable insight into the teamwork and adaptability of the men and women working in what Professor Ellis calls ‘the heroic age of television’ . The videos are available on this site as well as the project’s YouTube channel and are available for reuse under a Creative Commons Attribution Licence. Reconstructions include, 16mmm filming preparation, which shows how a typical television film crew went about the task of filming footage, 16mm editing cutting technique, which shows how television film editors organised and assembled raw footage (rushes) using a variety of editing machines and techniques 16mm film processing, in which laboratory staff demonstrate the various skills and methods used to process exposed negative films.