The Mausoleum Club Forum

And of course, there is always the old "Is it pronounced Volks-wagon or Volks-vargon", I am sure I have even heard adverts for the manufacturer pronounce it both ways.. I always thought the V should be taken towards but not entirely to an F sound (explosive V??) and the w to a v kinda like "Folksva...

Peter is absolutely right, the mistake made with an awful lot of automated announcements, whether it's Sat-nav or Railway Station announcements, is that the bank of words are recorded with stock sentences and the "add ons" like numbers etc. done in isolation and then strung together. Rattling off a ...

What did you say then? Ren-ault sounding every letter of the "ault"? That was a very unusual thing to hear in my experience, like sit-r'n instead of Citroën. Brawn instead of Braun etc. etc. Place names are a different kettle of fish. Of course you don't say "Paree" just as they don't generally say ...

JezR wrote:Although Noilly Prat was an upward struggle.

Don't knock it, it's good stuff. I love a Gin and French. Yum

♫ Ness-Lay's Milky Bar ♫ just doesn't scan right, though, does it? Is it right that the Rowntrees Fruit Pastilles ad is actually from well into the Eighties, and just made to look Seventies, so it was actually post modernly dated in its day? But the later versions of that ad did indeed trill "Nestl...

It always used to annoy me too. We learned French right from the off at primary school and knew all about acute accents and correct pronunciation. In our family it was always Ness-lay and Noo-garr rather than "nessle" and "nugget". The marketing men in those days must have thought that us Britlander...

Phew that was close! Just slipped a literally last minute order in. My wallet is a couple of hundred lighter but I'm looking forward to some good stuff.

What a fascinating link. Very interesting - now hurriedly removing my anorak - the feature on the new OUPC is interesting too. Whatever became of it? Looking on Google earth it's difficult to tell if it's there but if it is, what's it used for now?

Monochrome compliance was also an issue back in those days. Primary yellow on primary blue works as distinct shades of grey when viewed in B/W. when you get into green/magenta territory you start to have the potential for monochrome viewers seeing shades of grey with insufficient distinction if you'...

Obviously before probably around 1975 it was very hard to do location work on video. I always measure things by Dr Who, "Robot" (1974) uses full size outside broadcast cameras to enable electronic effects whereas "The Talons of Weng Chiang" uses smaller portable cameras for the first time (someone ...

The phrase "distressingly popular" comes to mind. Except nowadays it really is a justifiable comment.

I agree with the criticisms of "C.A.T.S. Eyes". It was pretty dreadful, although I did like the later sig tune quite a lot when I was a child. I still quite like it now having just listened to it on the YouTube. As a series it is actually quite a bitter disappointment. They kind of trailed/teed up t...

Couldn't agree more Simon. It's been interesting at work since the programme aired. Quite a number of people in the business and ex-Granada have absolutely slated it for being shallow, dumbed down and not even scratching the surface of the mine of gold that could have been featured. I had high hopes...

Whoever it was they were better than the current lady who sounds like she'd rather be anywhere but in the voice-over booth. The balloon is nicely in the air with the headlines and titles, then mix wideshot, go anno, the whole thing hits the deck again with the droning Scotswoman's v/o. It's not anyt...

Whoever did it probably had to have an equity card. For some reason Simon Bates name is popping into my head but having just watched a couple of ITN "News at One" openings on YouTube it's not him on the ones I saw. What was the name of the guy who wrote the "News at One" sig tune? He's a famous synt...

If it's the thing that was shown on ITV3 a while back then it's multi-cam VTR with filmed inserts. It's also rather stagey and camp. Very, very theatrical. Not my cup of tea at all. The ones I saw made Crossroads look like Shakespeare.

Your reference to ITV3 perplexed me too. "ITV" or maybe "Channel 3" - even that's peculiar - but to say ITV3 when you mean ITV is bizarre.

Was the 1979 ITV Xmas promotion jingle that splendidly cheesy "Christmas means ITV" song? Or was that earlier in the 70s?

Yes, it was shot on the backlot at MGM British Studios, for some of the scenes the ground was such a muddy quagmire it looked ridiculous. I would assume that someone has found the real buildings which the production designer used as his inspiration for the settings.

It's the same with the main networks' news (BBC1 & ITV) as well. The gratuitous pieces to camera, which are just waffle, the live cross to the reporter at the scene, which actually tells us nothing if you forensically analyse what's said. It's all about getting their mugs on screen and nothing to do...

There's another piece on "The Guardian" interweb site today, quoting a lecture by Tom Archer, which adds a number of salient points about the commissioning culture that spews all this numb-skulled stuff onto the networks.

The people of whom he speaks do rather ask for it. They beg parody and/or withering condemnation. I read the piece the other day and I generally agreed with his thrust. I don't think Brian Sewell is "odious" at all. He's merely indulging in comedic mirth. To a certain extent he is - and is not alone...

The slightly odd looking flesh tones used to be quite obvious on ITV News too, when they had the yellow and grey "set". It's down to the vast quantities of green spill from the brightly lit C.S.O. green backing. There is a tendency to somewhat over light these backings too. Why have a dull glow to a...

They've just referred to "episodes" of "World in Action" They also mentioned "filming" something, which was shot on tape. It's the modern way... unfortunately. Filming can be forgiven as it's such a longstanding term. It may be incorrect in the digital age but it is at least quaint. "Episode" on th...

Fair enough.......

They've just referred to "episodes" of "World in Action".




FFS!!!!!!!

Overall it's been quite good though. Very sad for those of us who worked there.

Hmmmm......they've just trotted out the rainfall story as fact. I'm quite sure that story is apocryphal and that the reason for going after a Northern ITA contract was to avoid direct internal competition for their cinemas which were predominantly in London and the South East.

They were mostly referred to as "commercials" or "ads" in my experience. The teases into the break of ITN's original "News at Ten" were called "pre-comms" as in pre-commercial break. Advertisement is a rather stuffy, proper term that you'd seldom hear uttered within a TV station. The reason for the ...

I'm not sure the audience was confined to the urban areas of TVSland. Us rural dwellers watched it too. I entirely agree that it wasn't the least bit representative. Only a fool, or visiting tourist from the U.S. would have taken it for a representation of the Southern counties at that moment. It wa...

Yeah I forgot to update the other thread with the TX slot when I found out. I'll be interested to see if any of my shots from the last Uni Challenge at GTV made it into the programme.

The archive is held by Countrywide Films Ltd., set up by Anthony Howard who took over production from TVS under the auspices of his own company when the programme was spun off as an indie offering in the late '80s. The programmes are all available to buy on DVD. I'd imagine that the older ones, now ...