STLD visit: Teddington Studios

The entrance at Teddington Studios

Not Going Out uses a monople rig.

Martin Kempton and Ian Hillson

Members enjoyed a barbecue at The Anglers.

Teddington lock

Backstage showing Kino Flos and Night FX

There were many experts in Martin’s audience!

The downstage floor has been painted white as a source of soft light.

STLD’s farewell to Teddington Studios

Words: Andrew Dixon Photographs: John O’Brien & Thames TV

The sun was warm, the river flowed past and we were enjoying a balmy evening in Teddington ’ s The Anglers pub. But first we had a farewell to make at Teddington Studios.

The STLD’ s Martin Kempton entertained 50 members and guests of the society in a most interesting and instructive evening on the set of Not Going Out in Studio One.

Martin became a Lighting Director at the BBC in 1990, having started in TV as a cameraman. He had spent his spare time lighting theatre shows, mainly around Maidenhead, and had helped to design the theatre in the Norden Farm Arts Centre. His CV reads like a dream to anyone contemplating entering the profession, listing over 70 show titles covering comedy, music, entertainment, drama and OBs. He has also contributed to the history of TV with a website at www.tvstudiohistory. co.uk. His talk to us covered two subjects: the history of the studios and his approach to lighting the set of Not Going Out. Teddington Studios

At the end of the 19th century, a wealthy stockbroker, Henry Chinnery, invited a rain-soaked film crew into his capacious greenhouse to complete their shoot (pictured right, top). That brought filming to the site. Later, in 1916, Master Films built a 60ft by 40ft stage on the present site of Studio Two, only to endure it burning down several times.

Talkies came along in 1929, and in 1931, Teddington Film Studios were leased to Warner Brothers. Errol Flynn, Margaret Lockwood and Rex Harrison were frequent visitors.

After a brief interlude in production at the beginning of the war, the studios reopened, only to be demolished in a spectacular way by a V1 bomb on 5 July 1944, which killed three people (pictured right, bottom)

Teddington was rebuilt, eventually providing three studios, and by 1948, there were even grander plans to fill an empty space with a forth studio, which, if it had been built, would have competed with the present large Fountain Studios. However, it was not to be: due to the post-war crisis in the film industry, Warner Brothers moved to Elstree and the Hawker Aircraft Co used the studios as storage space.

After the formation of the ITV system, ABC television, broadcasting in the Midlands and the North at weekends, realised it needed a London base. (Here, Martin couldn ’t resist a reference to the BBC’ s recent decision to base its TV production in Salford!) ABC bought Teddington in 1958.

After a year of broadcasting live editions of Armchair Theatre, the purchase of the first RCA tape recorder allowed ABC to prerecord whole (as live) programmes.

It opened the technical block, including Studio One, in 1963, probably recording The Avengers as its first show. Hughie Green would have followed soon after with Opportunity Knocks.

In 1968, with the big franchise reshuffle, ABC was forced to combine with Rediffusion and formed Thames Television, based at Teddington. Shows including many well-known dramas, light entertainment and sitcoms poured out of the studios, including The Morecambe & Wise Show, This is Your Life, Edward & Mrs. Simpson, Rock Follies and George & Mildred.

In 1993 the franchises were reallocated and the London weekday programming was given over to Carlton. Thames stayed at Teddington as an independent production company but was later bought by Pearson. Little technical investment was made by several other owners, but still headline shows were made: Man Behaving Badly; Birds of a Feather; Bremner, Bird and Fortune; and Not Going Out that we see here today.

The lease is presently owned by Pinewood, which will cease making productions in the studios in December 2014 when the lease terminates. The present owners, Haymarket, intend to redevelop the site for housing. Not Going Out

Martin first attended to the old BBC/ITV studio debate over lighting bars fitted with dual-source lamps versus lamps on monopoles running on railways. He ’ s lived with both and

STLD visit Teddington Studios

Martin shows his audience different lighting positions and, right, demonstrates bouncing 2K on to the white strip on the downstage floor.

Martin shows his audience different lighting positions and, right, demonstrates bouncing 2K on to the white strip on the downstage floor.

concludes that the panto system in Studio One is the most convenient he has worked with yet. He considers that the close spacing of the runners in this particular studio provides the best system for placing a lamp just where he wants it.

Martin reminded us that in the great days of fast-turnaround TV production, sitcoms were lit in a way that was quick to set and provided high-key pictures, often overfilled and certainly using hard upstage keys. He commended Duncan Brown – who lit Hi-de-Hi!, Are You Being Served? and ’Allo ’Allo! – as the LD who did most to bring in soft keylighting to sitcoms and dramas.

Martin said the use of soft light came first on films and later to TV. Howard King pioneered the use of soft light in dramas, whereas John Green (I, Claudius), John Treays and Denis Channon (Shakespeare series) excelled at using hard light. The move away from multi-camera dramas to a singlecamera technique made the use of soft keys far easier.

The original intention for Not Going Out (now in its seventh series) was to give the whole show an American sitcom look, and Martin ’ s contribution is key (sorry!) to that end. The set and costumes use muted colours. He was to avoid the continuous high-key Friends look, where day and night look much the same, and decided to take a more dramatic approach.

Martin lights his sitcoms by firstly lighting the environment, so that it looks like it would in reality, and then he adds lights for the actors if necessary. That can involve a lot of lights. He loves to use Kino Flos through windows and uses as much colour variation as he can to enhance the atmosphere of his shows. He really appreciates the Hobbit egg crates on the once open-fronted Berkey Northlights. These having been copied by Clive Gulliver –‘Hobbit’ – from the Berkey softlights in BBC TV Centre.

Martin uses all sorts of lamps and reflectors, which he may well have discovered in his theatre lighting, but maybe they were just lying about in the studio lighting store?! He even gets the downstage floor painted white as a source of softlight that will not reflect in the three large upstage windows. As we know, this is always a challenge when using large sources downstage. He has to work around large ceilinged areas on two sets. One has slots available for the odd sneaky lamp to get through if needed and the other –the bar – is all lit with pracs, with the action taking place downstage away from the ceiling.

We were then treated to some examples of recordings from the show and to some different lighting conditions on the set before us – a useful but brave thing to do with so many experts in your audience! We then made our way back to The Anglers from whence we came. Our thanks go to Martin and to all from Thames who helped him in the studio: Richard Waiting (Technical Supervisor), Tony Keene & Will (Cameras), Vlad the Impaler (don ’t ask – Sound), Howard Denyer (VT) and Julia Smith (Console), and also to John O’Brien and Ian Hillson, who between them arranged the whole evening on behalf of the Society. No doubt John has his own stories of life at Thames TV at Teddington, too!