Thanks for the Memories

In an era when university media courses are overflowing with aspiring journalists and cameraman it seems all the more remarkable that my entry into the industry in 1967 resulted from directly contacting Channel 3 long before I had even sat the HSC (NSW Higher School Certificate). Within a fortnight of completing my exams I was working in the industry my HSC results an irrelevancy. Indeed I was considered overqualified by virtue of having an HSC.

Television news is an intensely influential medium with reportedly more journalists these days employed outside the industry in an endeavour to counter its influence. But at the gentle age of 18 such influence meant nothing to me. I was happy to just be pursuing a dream with a camera in my hand. 

This collection of anecdotes captures some of my exploits in that pursuit. They were halcyon days.

Doubtless some of the things we did in the course of gathering the news back then would probably be grounds for dismissal in to-day's highly regulated work environment. But we were young, enthusiastic and with few rules or rulers it was a case of shoot first and ask questions later.

I feel fortunate to have been able to have had so much fun working and sharing those experiences with a select group of people who made them all the richer.

In terms of news, television brought the world with all of its faults and imperfections into our lounge rooms and further. Cinema newsreels were rapidly made redundant by this voracious new medium with its insatiable demand for content and immediacy to meet the nightly deadline. The traditional media duopoly of radio and newspapers was irrevocably changed by the arrival of this brash intruder.

Although television broadcasting technology was new, a great deal of its original content drew on the older technology of the cinema. But the traditional cinema newsreel cameras were bulky 35mm contraptions and largely unsuited to meeting the demands of a nightly news bulletin. By comparison 16mm cameras were considered amateurish yet their relative economy and portability saw them unashamedly adopted as the primary news recording medium reigning supreme until well into the 1970's when lightweight video recording technology started to assert itself in the news domain.

By claiming that "The World is Only 16mm Big" I am simply suggesting (somewhat tongue in cheek) that people's view of the world as it was initially presented on television came from the frames of 16mm film and therefore the world was consequently only 16mm big.