Outside Broadcast: reflecting on the re-enactment

After the darts contest comes to an end, and when the final credits have rolled, the crew have an opportunity to reflect on what they have achieved.

Producer Geoff Wilson expresses his amazement at the restoration of North 3. “This truck used to have rats nests in it and birds nests in it, and was found in a field. To see this now, it takes you all the way back.”

Camera operator Dave Taylor describes the “evocative” experience of lining up the cameras using calibration charts. “We spent hours, in our youth, looking at the black and white chart. To see that in the viewfinder yesterday was… bloody hell!”

Camera operator Rex Palmer added: “I never imagined I’d ever be standing here, trying to make a pretend programme 40 years later with the gear – and it sort of worked, which is a testament to the gear and the people who lovingly restored it.”

Sound engineer Doug Whittaker added: “I think the memory I’ll take away from this is the fact that we were given a deadline, for effectively what was going to be a live transmission. And as the clock ticked round, and Jane counted us in at the start of that programme, I felt the years roll back.

“We were all suddenly working as a team, the adrenaline was flowing, and for 20 minutes we were all focused on making it work. And then there was this wonderful relief afterwards – this euphoria, that in the past would have taken us straight down the pub for a good old chinwag.”

Here is also the full record of the team’s comments on their experience of revisiting a familiar environment and working with equipment that they know so well for the purposes of the ADAPT project:

At the end of ADAPT’s outside broadcast re-enactment, the entire crew came together one more time to reflect upon the culture of outside broadcast television production. Click here to open an interactive story featuring highlights of their reminiscences.