Geoff Hermges

Alan Lawson  00:13
Copyright of this recording is vested in the ACTT History Project. Jeffrey Hermege's lighting cameramen, interviewers Gloria Sachs and Alan Lawson. Side

Gloria Sachs  00:38
one. Okay, right. Once upon a time, starting at the beginning, can you tell me when you were born, where you were born, something about your early life and your family background?

|Geofferey Hermege  00:49
Yes, certainly. Born in London, in Finchley, not very far from here, 1919. Brought up in the country in Bucks Until going to public school, which was in Hampstead again, not very far from here, in a university college school, and having received my education there and done quite a lot of photography, I then started on the first steps towards anything to do with films. In other words, I went to what was then known as Boat Court, the what was then the London College of Photo Engraving and Lithography in Fleet Street, which in those days was one of the only photographic schools in London, other than the Polytechnic. And having I I wouldn't use the word graduated, but finished there. If you don't graduate from a trade school, I started again slightly off track by becoming an apprentice at the then best studio in London for fashion and advertising, which of course stood me in good stead. Which was Studio Sun, again, which was then part of the Sun Engraving Empire, and still not getting really into films, I managed to go out to the studios at Cricklewood Stoll Studios when Lawrence Hunting was directing there. Was a friend of my mother's. My mother at that time was very friendly with a young actor who died during the war, one working on next of kin, a man called Dickie Norris, and in those days, if I remember right, I think even Freddie Young was working somewhere out there at one stage. But they were making quota quickies, and I spent a considerable time in the studio knocking around, certainly unpaid, but getting to know what went on in studios and watching studio lighting and all that sort of thing, and at that time I found that I couldn't get directly in. I went out also to Fox Studios at Wembley when again he was directing out there, again making things like the Arsenal murder mystery. I think was one of them. I don't remember all of them. They were all very bad quota quickies, anyway.

Alan Lawson  02:58
Oh, Arsenal murder mystery wasn't a quota quickie.

|Geofferey Hermege  03:00
Well, anyway, it wasn't much more. That was made

Alan Lawson  03:03
in Devon.

|Geofferey Hermege  03:04
But the director, I remember that that was the period. I remember going to the. I don't remember the exact studio.

Gloria Sachs  03:10
Did you actually? I mean, what did your parents do? I mean, what was your father? Who's a professional man? Was he?

|Geofferey Hermege  03:16
I suppose if one calls an ex-merge of professional man, yes.

Gloria Sachs  03:20
Have you got brothers and sisters?

|Geofferey Hermege  03:21
I have a brother who is now in Vienna, in charge of the Austrian Broadcasting British service out there. He's been out there for years, but he's done. He's concerned with broadcasting rather than films.

Gloria Sachs  03:32
He's younger than you're.

|Geofferey Hermege  03:33
Eight years younger, he is. And

Gloria Sachs  03:35
when you were when you started working, were you still living at home?

|Geofferey Hermege  03:38
Going, yes. And then, having served, I think something like a couple of years of apprenticeship, I decided that I wanted to broaden my technical knowledge, and so I managed, due to a fairly good scientific background at school, to get into the research laboratories at Kodak , then at Harrow Willlsden and got in, and was very lucky in that I got a very good grounding in sensorometry and the general photographic technology from them. And then, of course, everything was interrupted by the war. And as a serving soldier, being in the TA, I was whisked away, and eventually landed up after, I suppose, like 18 months in what was intended to be West Africa, but ended up to East Africa, and ended up in Ethiopia, and I was then my arm got broken up in the war, and I ended up graded down from being an infantry captain in the infantry, and I could not return to my battalion, and so I was, which starts my film life. The the authorities, in their infinite wisdom, decided that they'd find out what knowledge, if anything, I had about anything other than soldiering, and they came across my photographic and technological background and said, "Right, you are now in charge of an army film unit, which came as a fast surprise, and I was then given an elderly IMO camera that took 100 feet spools. I was allotted two sergeants from the Army Film and Photographic Unit, and told, "You are now a film unit. Whereupon, for some years, two or three years, I made films for the army.

Alan Lawson  05:43
Can you remember the names of the sergeants?

|Geofferey Hermege  05:44
Yes, I can. One was a sergeant Mortimer, and the other one, which is here, comes the surprise of all time, was Sergeant Cyril Stanburg, who again, regretably, is dead, but was a very old and distinguished member of ACT in the Stills Department, and together with one or two locally enlisted personnel, we made films on subjects ranging from how to stop VD with African troops, films about camouflage for the for the artillery, films on family welfare for the troops, films in Madagascar, the strange campaign when we tried to oust the Vichy French, the arrival and departure of troops on various campaigns, including the troops going to Burma to Ceylon, and regrettably, I had to send the nucleus of my unit, not including Cyril, across to Burma to carry on the good work there, but I was deemed to be medically unfit, and then I returned to England, and once again, in their infinite wisdom, they transferred me to an infantry battalion to the Royal Army Ordnance Corps and decided that I was then in the Army Film Unit, but so I was then sent to Wembley, where I found the lovely sight of people being graded according to their technical capabilities. I think if you were a focus puller, you were a corporal. If you were an operator, you were a sergeant, and if you're cameraman, you became a captain. I'm not certain of the exact ranks, but everybody was posing around pretending to be

Alan Lawson  07:27
soldiers. Soldiers,

|Geofferey Hermege  07:28
and I then they decided that game because of supposed technical technical knowledge, they said, "Right, we're sending you on to run a cinema in Blackpool, which didn't please me, but on the other hand, I was within striking distance of demobilisation, and I thought, well, Blackpool doesn't sound too bad. And from Blackpool to Nottingham, and from Nottingham, I was demobbed, and then it all started.

Alan Lawson  07:56
I have to just correct you a moment. It wasn't army filming it. You were in the AKS Army Kinney Service.

|Geofferey Hermege  08:02
Ah, when I went on the projection side, yes,

Alan Lawson  08:05
Wembley was AKS. Yes,

|Geofferey Hermege  08:07
but there was also there were people there at Wembley who were army films. No,

Alan Lawson  08:12
no, no, AKS.

|Geofferey Hermege  08:14
Well, they they certainly had they were did some production there. I can't highlight what they were doing. They did, but they they I thought that they, having been in the both, and not myself. It was not actually army films, right? AKS. AKS. Anyway, but as I say, they certainly seem to share personnel to a certain extent. I mean, the answer was I believe in Pinewood, basically, wasn't that right? Basically,

Alan Lawson  08:39
Pinewood, Burma, India, everywhere,

|Geofferey Hermege  08:43
except and indeed Middle East, where I drew my supplies from. But being East African Command, I was a law unto myself, which is which was a good thing. At a good

Gloria Sachs  08:55
Have a good time, did you? No, very far from there we are.

|Geofferey Hermege  08:59
And then, as I say, having left the army, I took advantage of the government's scheme, educational scheme, and I landed up reading anthropology in Cambridge, just to change things around. But my only continuance of filming, of course, was that there had been no Cambridge University Film Unit or Film Society basically during the war years, and so, with two other people, and I think I can remember their names, we restarted a production unit in Cambridge, and the two people concerned, or three people concerned, were myself, a man called Stanley Oriano, who was a research chemist, who I have never seen again, and a man called George Nordhoff, who is now at Brunel University, I think, or has been, in somehow in a film capacity. I'm not quite certain of his role, but in an act as an academic filmmaker. And we attempted to make an experimental film with little or no success, but it was a start. And we had a don from Trinity, a Marxist don who was a historian, whose name I'm afraid escapes me, who was vastly interested in film and gave us a vast amount of help, but we did manage to start a university film unit, something a little earlier than the Oxford one, started a little later. And having come down from Cambridge, I then went for a very short time back to Kodak in their research labs again. This time in a thing called the Applied Photographic Group, where I took over from a man called Derek Stewart, who then started Derek Stewart Films, and he and myself and a man called George Hadland, who was my assistant, John, John Hadland, started John Hadland, who were the great firm on all aspects of high-speed cinematography, and are now in I think Bovingdon or something like that, and are the major in the world, the greatest people on the techniques of high-speed cinematography. So again, I added a little to my knowledge, and having done that, I felt an urge to go back to East Africa. So I headed once again for East Africa, this time for the Colonial Office. But again, hoping to get eventually into the Colonial Film Unit, I actually became part of the Information services, which then came under, I suppose it would have been the Minister of Information, and they had a regional office in Nairobi where I was the in charge of all the stills, and but I managed to fringe onto films because Bob Kingston Davies, who was the colonial film edit, with a man called Stuart McAllister, who I'm sure you'll have come across, came out with a very large white truck and spent many, many, many months wandering around Sambora Land, shooting a vast amount of film, which, to the best of my knowledge, never saw the light of day, and wasted a vast amount of natural government money, and filming was just starting there, and the Colonial Film Unit then arrived in force with a lot of bodies and little expertise under a man called Sellers, who was then the Colonial Film Unit boss, with a man called Eric White, who was I think their senior cameraman editor, and they set up a small unit, but again, I don't think made many films. But I liaised with them, helped out because there I was not officially part of the unit. Since I was there and spoke the language and knew my way around the country, I found myself virtually working for the CFU. And in those days, it was Sellers, and I think Vic Goover was the boss, one of the boss man, and I don't remember all the other names, but there they were the outpost. But like all good things, it had to come to an end, and the Colonial Office closed everything down, and I was left stranded or more or ess stranded, and so I joined MGM, which I thought was a step in the right direction, in that they had come out with a full Hollywood unit with Stuart Grainger, Jimmy Grainger, Deborah Carr, Richard Carlson, to make King Solomon's Mine in '49, and they employed what we laughingly called poor whites.

|Geofferey Hermege  13:40
The poor whites being the local settlers, who the Americans could not afford to send certain grades like third assistants and clapper boys and still photographers, and I ended up as still photographer for MGM, which was very fine, and Kane gave me a chance to work with or work around Bob Surtees, who was the cameraman, one of Hollywood's best, and Gene Polito, still in Hollywood, and I can't remember the names of the others, but a very fine crew, both of sound and picture, and an old British editor directing, who unfortunately got the sack halfway through the picture, to wit, Bob Compton Bennett, and he, this being archival, one must give the truth as to why he left the unit. But left he did halfway through the picture, and his place was taken by the second unit director called Andrew Martin, who is, I think, now just about dead. Oh, he may not be a Hollywood director of considerable second unit repute, who did things like Ben Hur and many other great pictures. And anyway, having served my time on King Solomon's Mines as the still photographer, I came to England to seek fame and fortune in the film industry, and of course. To ACT, and with the, I can assure you know the inevitable response. A ticket, you must surely be joking. The fact that I had had quite large technical experience, including incidentally making a film when I was in the army from the from Cape Town to Cairo, the overland route. So I mean, I knew something about filming, but ACT, I was then laughed at and told, "Go away! And I heard the usual stories, which I'm sure you've heard many, many a time. And so one had to find a way in to ACT, which in those days consisted of subterfuge. You went in through the back door, either through labs or through somewhere. Well, I decided not on labs, so I went and again because technical knowledge, I went as a senior technician to the National Coalboard Research Unit under Dr. Bronowski, where I then again utilised all my cinematic skills again as a Cameraman mostly working on very specialised scientific cinematography, or again not a non-ACT grade, but I managed by some-I don't know quite how to persuade them that I was a suitable candidate, but once again I had to come in under the stills, which I did do. But then I had the very good fortune to meet Ken Gordon, who I'm sure is well known as ACT, and I managed to transfer to the under some clause or rather into the camera department, and then I started as an assistant with first on my own as freelance, and then with Worldwide, and I went to Worldwide where I became Ronnie Anscombe's assistant, and I managed to stick that for two or three years. I can't think how, and managed to upgrade myself by working with Jimmy Allen and himself, Tiger Reeve, Ken Reeve, other cameramen. Upgrade myself to operator and eventually to cameraman, but found that working with a small documentary company was never going to. I might make the staff grade, but it would be a long time with a lot of sitting tenants, and so I went freelancing somewhere round about. I suppose it'd be around about 56 or 57, somewhere around about then, and then from then onwards, my life was one long grind, doing everything in the film business in the camera department. In other words, I I started as I never worked in the in features as a clapper loader. I went straight to focus puller because, at that age, I thought it was fair enough. And as a freelance, I managed to work with the cameramen.

|Geofferey Hermege  18:09
Alan's been talking about people like Desmond Dickinson, with George Perrinel, with many many directors, often on second units, and on commercials, or and on those early days for Rediffusion on television material, sometimes as an operator, occasionally as a cameraman, doing again occasional films as a cameraman, but I managed to find work with both the coal board , doing some mining reviews with British Transport, where I made four or five films as a documentary cameraman, quite a few documentary films and television material for odd American companies, including the American Sportsman, and I worked for Colonial Film Union or the successor when Vic Goover went and started his own overseas film and television, I managed to latch on due to my American, my African experience, to go to Africa, and I made many films in Ethiopia, Liberia, the Gambia, some in Kenya, all over the place, basically for overseas film and television, with an American producer called Bill Alexander, and I went on doing this continuously until basically the present day, working as a freelance. But when I have to write on paper what films I have made, you find that the only person who might know would be my accountant. I mean, he certainly doesn't know all of them. But it was a long. It was a matter of coming and sitting, waiting for the telephone to ring, putting your cards into ACT, and as far as I was concerned, going anywhere where there. There was experience to be gained, and as such, I worked. Oh, people like the children's films. It was another happy choice with Henry Geddes when he was there, and I worked as an operator for Johnnie Cockion, now alas dead, and I worked on films for them again for Worldwide. One film directed by Jimmy Hill called Peril for the Guy, but basically, all I'm very happy to say that in those years from '56, approximately, to the present day, I've been working on and off as a cameraman or an operator all the time, and finishing, and I have just finished. I am finishing today, more or less, the five films that I have been doing for the United Nations University in Tokyo, where I've been working in Africa for 15 months in Nigeria as a cameraman director, and hopefully we'll get some more. But that is basically the the framework into which my career in films had been.

Alan Lawson  21:11
Wait a minute. Now that you've got a hell of a lot of experience there. Which which which of the camera men that you worked with, if you like, gave you the most help?

|Geofferey Hermege  21:34
I think I must say Desmond Dickinson.

Alan Lawson  21:38
That's not nice to hear you say that. Because he,

|Geofferey Hermege  21:42
we established this is not strictly archival, but I will say it. We established a rapport very early in that I was sent for at a moment's notice to go to Sandhurst, where he was doing a film for Clive Donner. It was a television picture of some sort, and I happened to have a hangover, and at the first tea break, he-it was my first occasion on working with him-and he took me aside and explained to me that he didn't himself take a cup of tea during the tea break, but he normally had a glass of sherry, and and very politely he realised my predicament and asked me if I would care to have a glass of sherry. So I said yes, and he said, "Do you have any particular brand that you like? And I said, "Well, actually, Dicky, I do. I like Garvey's San Patrigio. Well, that's a very strange thing. And he opened his leather briefcase. I can see it in his back room at Sandhurst, where he produced some cold potatoes and a bottle, two glasses, and a bottle of San Patrizio. Well, that was the start of one says of a beautiful friendship. He restored my confidence in the human race, restored my health. We went on to do some extremely good filming, and on my part, some good operating. And I subsequently worked on quite a few second units and quite a lot of commercials for him at Shepperton. And we shared many interests. Not that I am a flyer, but he was a keen flyer, and quite a lot of things. He spoke French. He liked the French. I speak reasonable French. He liked French food, and we had a lot in common. But apart from that, he was a delight to watch, to work with, and he never minded by asking a question, and was perfectly happy to share his expertise with me. And I think if I had to say any single camera, and I've met many, I think he will be the one that will come out top of the list.

Alan Lawson  23:44
Yes, but I'm with you there. Now, in in what way has colour made any change to you, or is it just one of those things that you accept and it made no difference?

|Geofferey Hermege  24:04
No, it hasn't made an awful lot of difference. I liked working in black and white very much, but purely by chance, I had worked with a Dr. Spencer, who was the founder of a firm called Colour Photograph Ltd, or Vivex, as it was known as in those days, which was the first, one of the first colour processes used commercially for advertising. It was a three-color Carbro originally, followed by dye transfer, which of course became a process from which Technicolour was derived. And having worked this as an apprentice with Dr. Spencer, who was then a director of the Sun Engraving Company, and late latterly became the director of research at Kodak and his own firm, and I became very interested in colour. In fact, I invented, and unfortunately, was picked at the post for. For a thing called chroma colour, and I read the works of people like Beatrice Klein and colour cinematography, and I was early very very interested and fairly knowledgeable about colour in cinematography. And of course, when I went to Kodak , because of that, I worked a lot on with early Kodachrome, both on the 16 mil and on the still side, and I had always done a mass of colour myself in stills and in 16 mil before the days of the Technicolour three strip. Yes, and I was I was always well apprised of the technology of it, and then when I worked on King Solomon's Mine, the unit was using. It was one of the first major pictures to use Monopac, which was of course a modified Kodachrome, which was then transferred eventually to Three Strip Technicolour, and of course I went along, saw the early Eastman  colour emulsion , and the moment I could lay my hands or work on it, watch people working on these things, I did, and I always liked working on colour. And when I went to both, not so much colour, I worked in black and white there, but certainly with transport films, I managed to shoot almost everything I shot. There was on colour, including Sea Speed story films on training, electric train drivers, all in colour. And then I made quite a few commercials and things like that in colour. And colour to me, I would work happy on either, but I realised that colour was had to be the one you concentrated on, and now I've gone the other way round. I would love to go back to black and white because there's so few people can work on it, and I still sit upstairs with a box full of black and white filters, which every camera man acquired for himself, because he always had his own little pet filters for doing day for night, or for any particular effect. And I today would happily shoot in black and white were I given the chance, but I'm afraid that day has passed.

Alan Lawson  27:17
Now, how reliant are you on meters?

|Geofferey Hermege  27:23
Well, I think one has to be historical about this. When I started in a fashion studio, you had a large rubber bulb on the end of a long piece of rubber sheeting, and a very large 10 by eight camera, and you took the bulb in your right hand, and you squeezed it. And when you thought it had had enough exposure, you let go the rubber bulb. And by practice, of course, that worked. Meters were rare. I had one of the earliest two-cell Western meters because when we worked on colour, we had to be more precise, and I started on those. I had some of the earlier Western meters, Western cine metre. I've tried many of the early meters, and nowadays I would, though I could judge exposure, I'm naturally will normally work completely with a meter, but if I'm stuck, and my meter fell on the deck and was broken. I would happily work without a meter in most circumstances. I know I'd be well within the range, but of course, nowadays I think that to fail to take make use of modern technology is absurd. And yes, I would use. I have modern type spot meters spectrometers, which I use all the time. But if I'm pressed for time or working under pressure, it doesn't worry me at all if I have to work without a metrer

Alan Lawson  29:00
How when you're when you're working on a film, how close do you work with the labs?

|Geofferey Hermege  29:08
In my case, extremely closely, because in the latter part of my career, I did have a spell of some couple of years or so with with the laboratory as a technical rep with Kay laboratories, and I've always known of lab technology, and I think that as a cameraman I'm a better one for my knowledge of lab technology. Many cameramen have little or no knowledge of labs, they send their rushes off, and they look at them, and they don't, in all cases, know what a lab can do, or know how to use a lab to its full advantage. I, I like working with labs, and I do always. Check everything through a lab from printer lights to analysis of faults to actually checking the emulsions that they're using for my brush prints and my altar prints because labs are again this is archival are crooks and they will try and swing Fuji or cheap stock for their rush printing on you. They will also pull a gag where you will reject an answer print, and you will possibly reject a show copy and have another one. But they'll take those prints back, and when you have the bulks done at 50 copies, they'll put them into the belts, and I know every trick that a lab could get up to. And they go

Gloria Sachs  30:46
white, and they know your copy, don't they? Yeah.

|Geofferey Hermege  30:48
And as Sachs knows, I had a while as the I think I rendered my title technological head of technological services or something at the COI for a while, where I was intimately concerned with the production end of the output of the COI when I was dealing on a day-to-day basis with a very large account with one particular lab. And yes, I do like dealing with labs, and I think it's effing essential for cameramen to know everything about a lab, what you can do, what they can do with their their types of printers, their types of stock, what they can do in the way of forcing film. In fact, everything about a lab, I think, is an essential for camera.man

Alan Lawson  31:35
Now, coming back actually onto camera equipment itself. Over the years, what changes have you seen in equipment?

|Geofferey Hermege  31:48
Well, the basic changes are, of course, first of all, the changeover to 16 mil for a vast amount of television programmes. Secondly, I think the major technology. change is the use of through the lens viewfinding, because having been brought up with Newells  Mitchells and things of that, where an operator had to be a master mind to manage to match a viewfinder to what he what actually came onto the film. An operator was a highly skilled man, quite apart from turning his handles, which of course nowadays operators can't do if operators ever exist anyway. But you now can see and have superb through a new technovision, through a new movie cam or a new Panavision, you can have the most superb viewfinding, and of course, the thing I don't like doing is the having an add-on television door and a camera, which enables the director, Uncle Tom Cobley and all, to sit on the on the sidelines criticising your operating, the average operator camera detests that, and I don't like it at all. It is an aid because if you have to choose which take to print up, a director can just quickly run through on a video and say, "Oh, I like take two, but it stops an operator alibiing and saying, "No, I don't like that because the actor did something. When in actual fact, you've had finger trouble and you've locked up the handles. But I think that the major things are, of course, the fact that nowadays a steady picture is you you have pin registration on most cameras, even arroiflexes can be fitted with it. You have superb lenses nowadays, whereas we were limited to originally a standard T 2.2, T.3, or something like that. Nowadays, the high-speed sets of lenses from Coward, from Canon, off to Delatte and Besche, or wherever, are working at apertures like f1, f1.2. You can shoot available light on almost anything. The labs get you out of trouble in the grading. You have such wonderful HMI lights and things like that that you can. Lighting is no longer a question. Having to have 235 air barks, you can work with much more portable lighting, and the public is nowadays prepared to accept lighting that would never have been accepted 30 years ago. Things come out every colour of the rainbow, pink, blue, and one thing or another. But that is an accepted convention, and people do not notice the fact that the interior lighting is no way matching the exterior. Everything is. I think the standards have fallen off dreadfully badly. There are still great cameramen around, but there are still any person nowadays can, as has been proved time and time again, equipment now with automatic focus, automatic exposure, automatic loading. And a complete lack of knowledge of what decent operating is. The standard of camera work, to my mind, has fallen off grossly. There are still good cameramen about. There are still great operators about. But the general standard on pop films nowadays, I think, is so low that I don't think people ought to be given the title of cameraman. But having said that, again, it's archival title to express my opinion when you asked the question. Yes, that's

Alan Lawson  35:29
right. That's fair enough. Have you seen much changes in in in the way of crews?

|Geofferey Hermege  35:37
Yes, I have, and I think the greatest lack in a modern crew is the fact that the operator has now been downgraded and not required. He's sunk to the American standard. An American operator does what he's told. A British operator liaises with the director and is, to my mind, an essential part of a crew for making good films, nowadays they've cut the crew down, and a cameraman is half the time operating and not concentrating what he's meant to be doing, which is lighting. And I think on crewing, the one thing that I resent nowadays is the fact that operators are not used the way they used to be

Alan Lawson  36:20
used. Have you ever worked on any specialised processes in in filmmaking at all? I mean, I was thinking like kind of independent frame, but you

|Geofferey Hermege  36:29
independent frame. I never worked on. I saw it. I have worked on with ordinary back projection, front projection, seen what can be done with the various processes, but I've never been a special effects specialist. I've known what I needed to know about blue backing or working on the normal technology, but I've never had much. I've not had an awful lot experience. No, I know of it, and if asked, I'd jolly soon be able to upgrade myself on it. But I've I've left that to the specialists.

Alan Lawson  37:12
You were you were saying that what what direct which directors that you've worked with, have you found most appreciative of like a camera man's problems? You know, if they are problems, well, I suppose they are problems.

|Geofferey Hermege  37:30
I think going to not one of, shall we say, the acclaimed greatest, but certainly the cameraman turned director that are two, that I remember working with, the two directors that I have worked with who have appreciated cameramen's problems, the two that have appreciated the most were both ex-Cameraman. One was Pennington Richards, and the other was Bernie Knowles. Oh, and the other, he said, it was Cyril Knowles, his brother. But Bernie Knowles, I did. I worked at Danzigers, or could have been ABPC, it could have been MGM. I don't remember on one of the many television series. It could have been Martin Kane, Private Investigator. It could have been Mark Sabre. It could have been I don't. I worked on all of them, but of the two of the directors that I remember that were most helpful, in fact, Bernie Knowles was so helpful as to be unhelpful. You'd say so. No, that's over 50 or 12 feet, and that's exactly what I want. He was right every time, Mark. You, but he was appreciative of your. He knew it backwards, having been, in fact, both of them having been operators and cameramen, particularly Bernie, who'd been very good operators.

Alan Lawson  38:38
Of the, you know well again on the on the reverse of that, which is if you like the the least appreciative if you like the the most dogmatic of of people that,

|Geofferey Hermege  38:52
well, having watched and not actually operated for him, I think Otto Preminger, I won't say it was less appreciative, but a ruder and more dogmatic, and he's the only man I know that reduced one of England's best operators almost to tears, and that was Erwin Day on Exodus, when he Ernie was the quietest and the most well-mannered operator I know, but even he very nearly gave up the ghost because Otto could be absolutely impossible. But he's the only man I've seen who really could reduce. And he, incidentally, talking about Desmond Dickinson, was the only man I know to have sacked Desmond Dickinson on the spot.

Alan Lawson  39:34
That's right. Yes. Leon St. Joan. St.

|Geofferey Hermege  39:36
Joan.

Alan Lawson  39:37
Yes. Yes. This is

|Geofferey Hermege  39:38
again archival.

Alan Lawson  39:40
Well, now you've done a you know you've got an enormous wide experience. I mean, the would you ever would you have wanted to switch at all at? And if you could go start again, would you want to switch?

|Geofferey Hermege  39:58
Had I.

|Geofferey Hermege  40:00
If I could go back, first of all, of course, I have to postulate the fact that the war stopped a normal career thing. But having come in late, and having eventually got my ticket

|Geofferey Hermege  40:14
into the

|Geofferey Hermege  40:14
industry and been able to work, I let personal feelings, what where I wanted to go, wanted I wanted to do overcome my better judgement. I should have stuck quite simply as a focus puller in features and just gone up as an operator cameraman and never deviated. So when somebody would say to me, as they did do, Jeff, can you grab a camera and go out to the Gambia for a fortnight. We want to do a little thing for the Duke of Edinburgh's award scheme. I'd say no, that's not my job. I want to become a feature cameraman. I should never have deviated and done interesting little films in Africa or in Europe or one thing or another, which I did for interest as a cameraman on a lower type of picture. I should have done what guild members nowadays do. You say, right, I'm a feature focus puller, a feature operator. Stayed at that grade, gradually working upwards, and never deviated, never gone away, do anything that was not straight features. That's what I would have done, or should have done. I don't regret having. I've had a probably more interesting in that I've been out making films with Tom Stobart on man-eating tigers in Bangladesh in the middle of the war. I've played wildlife pictures. I've done all sorts of. I mean, I could go off hours of the making films for American television in Africa with people like Bing Crosby and Goon McConley.

Alan Lawson  41:46
Did you ever work with Armand and Michaela?

|Geofferey Hermege  41:48
I worked very briefly. I knew them well because Armand and Michaela came on King Solomon's MInes  as they'd made a film called Savage Splendour, and they came as technical advisers to MGM, whereupon they spent the whole of the picture conning the company, and they were just doing surveys for films that they were going to do later. And Michael, of course, was doubling for Deborah Carr, and so I got to know them very well and helped him a lot in helping him set up camera stuff out there, and I worked very briefly with him before he took on Tom Stobart, who probably have come across, and then he took on a man called Des Bartlett after that. But I was with him in the very from his very earliest ones, helping him when he started his things after he'd done Savage Splendour and before he went on to do his BBC series and things like that. This

Alan Lawson  42:41
was when you were the what became the colonial. Yes, I was out

|Geofferey Hermege  42:44
there. Actually, they had packed up. They packed up. I went to MGM and then met Armand and Michaela. And when that picture finished, I went to the Sudan with the the American Museum of Natural History, a man called McQueeny, who was a he was E. Monsanto Queeni, who was the head of the Monsanto Chemical Corporation, and every year he took an expedition to Africa, and he picked me up in Nairobi, and I went off as a cameraman to the Sudan with him, and came back, and then through that I did a few odd things for Michel. I knew them well, but I never, I never, I was never one of their staff cameramen.

Alan Lawson  43:19
Tell me, when you were in Ethiopia, did you know Chapman Andrews at all?

|Geofferey Hermege  43:24
Chapman Andrews absolutely categorically known, and they never.

Alan Lawson  43:27
He was he was the political adviser to Hale Selassie during the war.

|Geofferey Hermege  43:31
During the war, because I was in the army and I knew most of the people close to the emperor, and the only film or people that I knew, Gordon Waterfield, who ran a paper, of course, and a man called Leslie Cramer, who was Dennis Cramer of Ranks' brother, who ran a, I suppose, a film facility company, whenever he was not running a harem of Ethiopian ladies in Ethiopia.

Gloria Sachs  43:56
When times were bad, you mean? When times were

Alan Lawson  43:58
bad. You never, you never actually did any actual work with Armand  and Michela Not

|Geofferey Hermege  44:10
paid him.

Alan Lawson  44:13
Right, I think we've. I think. Oh, Lesnar. No, no, no. Hermeges  side too. You you were talking when we when we were switched off. You were you were you were saying that you you remembered you worked on a film for Lucille Ball.

|Geofferey Hermege  44:50
Yes, it was rather interesting because the Americans, I think it was the American Broadcasting Company, came over to make a. I suppose. It would be I don't know how you term them a television feature or no television

Alan Lawson  45:07
part of a series sure I suppose it

|Geofferey Hermege  45:08
would be and which I think it would working title would have been Lucille Ball in London but anyway they came over and it was a story of roughly Lucille Ball arriving in London, and being met by a man who's been allotted to her as to take her round, and it turns out to be Tony Newley in a in a motorbike, in a sidecar motorbike, and anyway, many actors turned up on it, as I say, Tony Newley, James Robertson, Justice, oh, a whole host of British actors, but they made it on quite a reasonable budget, and they came over with what in those days was a revolutionary idea. They transported a motor vehicle, rather like what would now you'd call a mobile home, and it was called a cinemobile. It was had been invented by a man called Fouad Sayid, who was an American Cairo gentleman, and it was fairly large, quite a motorised caravan. But in it, it had everything needed to make a film, in that it had a very special generator, very compact generator, providing the power for something like I don't know how many 50 kilowatt of lighting or something. I don't know what it was. Silent, baffled off. It had all its lights racked in it. It had 35 mil cameras all racked in it, space for a mobile darkroom, and carrying of crew, and it came shipped complete, and you just took it off the plane, and there you were with a complete film unit, and I was taken on as the English cameraman, and I had an English operator, and again had an interesting twist. I had no idea at that time. I'd only recently upgraded an operator, and I rang ACT and said, "Have you got any operators? He said, "Yes, we've got one here Ernie  day. I said, "Well, oh dear. So I rang early because I'd beat his focus plane about weeks before, and I said, "Ernie, would you care to be my operator? He said, "Jeff, for money, I'll do anything or what works to that effect. And so I had probably the best, one of the best operators in England working as my operator. But that is the way of filming business: that you do have your ups and downs, and you don't kick anybody because on the way, you know, you may be on the way up, they may be on the way down, but anyway, I had him, and we went off and made this film all round London with the Dave Clark Five, and we we filmed on location at Egham , at Madame Tussaud's, all over the place, and it was one of those strange things where the Americans worked very well with the British, but unfortunately, the director was a boyfriend of Lucille Ball's, very young, and I fell very slightly foul of Lucille Ball in that she insisted on seeing all rushes, and she had a neck rather like a Brontosaurus, and unless you filmed it with a very heavy diffusion disc and not closer than six metres on a 50 millimetre lens, she would scream in rushes if she saw her neck looking rather horrible. But you got used to this, and the rest of the executives realised that she was a tricky lady, and she held court in the Hilton Hotel in a suite at the top of the Hilton, and she was a very imperious lady, but got on all right. And the film, I believe, was quite successful, and it was a very funny film. But they spent a lot of money. But it was very interesting working with an entirely American crew, because their sparks and their gaffers were very, very, very efficient, and their sound crews, their cameraman. I was the first time I'd worked with that type of television type crew, and it opened my eyes as to how you can work very fast with limited amount of location lighting, and it was most interesting as a technical experiment.

Alan Lawson  49:18
What camera equipment were

|Geofferey Hermege  49:21
using quite straightforward arri blimp tarifflexes. In those days, you had a blimp 35 arri the first of the blimp 35 mil arris, plus ordinary 2C arris for silent shooting, mute shooting. But the they were using heavy these big blimp arris, which at that time were suitable for that type of filming because you were not dependent on a highly stable image. You were not doing any opticals or anything like that. And given good crews, they were very quick in operation. They needed you needed to know them because they were comparatively new in those days. But we got the results, and that was. Basic equipment with in those days something quite new, which was that we had no brutes, and we were working entirely with quartz lights, and they were one of the first pictures which we made entirely with blondes and redheads, which in those days were very new, and worked from this cine mobile truck, and actually vast numbers of them. We had probably something like 24 of them. So you could light quite large exteriors, or could boost light in sunlight, and without having to have roots. And these were in the days before HMO eye lights, or CD eye lights, or anything like that. These were the the early days, and they were all used with blues on, we, I think we had a certain amount of colour trans. Those monstrosities, but they were quickly shelved.

Alan Lawson  50:49
Why do you say monstrosities to colour trans?

|Geofferey Hermege  50:52
Well, because you had to have this vast transformer box, very heavy. The light output wasn't very high, and they worked on three or four types of head, which were sealed beam lights, which were very hard to control, very hard to put barn doors on or anything like that, and they would, you had to use a lot of them, so you had multiplicity of shadows, and they gave the light. They were okay for newsreel filming, but whereas you can use quartz lights virtually for feature lighting, colour trans were all right, but they were much more difficult to use and nothing like the power. And they had to be stepped up to on a variable transformer, stepped up and up and up until you got the required colour temperature, and they were much more much more difficult to use, and you had, in those days, to use really to be effective colour temperature meters, to see that your lights were in fact matching to whatever.

Alan Lawson  51:56
Were they expensive to use in as much as replacement bulbs?

|Geofferey Hermege  51:59
Replacement bulbs were reasonably expensive. The lights themselves, the the boxes, were quite expensive. But if it was cost per lumen or whatever, however you rate it, they were not desperately efficient. You will still find them knocking around in old cupboards, but I don't think you'd find one in 1000 if you'll ever use them

Alan Lawson  52:21
nowadays. On on this this. Lucille Ball thing, what sound equipment was there?

|Geofferey Hermege  52:27
We used, strange enough, not Nargras, and my memory is good because I'm very interested in sound. We were using perfect tones. There were the early days of perfect tone

Alan Lawson  52:37
tone,

|Geofferey Hermege  52:37
which were before you had the I think it's one now called the spec spec is it spectrum or spec spectra or something there is a new one begins with S I can't remember but anyway it was the one it was considerably smaller than a Nagra no larger than a small laptop computer I suppose that sort of thing but it gave you sync sound the pilot tone on it was different was not the same as the Nagra. I do not know the exact technology, but it could, in fact, be used on location from batteries, and it will would give you a synchkable track on quarter-inch tape, and it was used. And in those days, it was one of the forerunner. I think it was certainly on the market or in use before general use before the Nagra. I won't swear to this, but I think I'm right in exactly.

Alan Lawson  53:27
But you've done you've done other things with foreign crews too, haven't you? Yes. Have you any in particular? You've got any particular memories of those at all?

|Geofferey Hermege  53:37
I think the only one I don't say working with them, but having watched them in action, I was taken when I was in Dakar, in what was then East Pakistan. I was taken to see to see an Indian, or to be more exact, an East Pakistan film studio, and then I saw what technology was like in the early days of film, and this was in 19 the 1970s, early 70s, and the the labs were huge pegboards and large vats with red lights, and you actually hand dipped, you unrolled the film onto onto pins and rolled them round a huge former, and then you dip them into the tanks up and down until they looked right, and then you dip them in the next tank. And they were still making feature films with that type of laboratory. And I, I'm not at all sure that they were using. I think I remember rightly, they had something that I had not seen since a studio in East Africa in the 50s, the 40s, which was a huge booth in which they had a silent a camera, and the the camera was not blimped, but the camera man and all his crew were blimped in a huge enlarged. Telephone box, and this was then trundled round the studio, and that is, I think, I think that must have been one of the last outposts in that type of

Alan Lawson  55:11
1930. Yes, but it was

|Geofferey Hermege  55:12
still in use. I saw it in use in in Nairobi in a small film studio there, with a cameraman called Vernon Vernon name. We set a small studio up in Nairobi in the 19 late 1940s. They thought of starting up a film industry, and in those days we did, in fact, because we couldn't get a blimp camera, we did do this thing of putting a camera into a thing. And when MGM came out to make King Solomon's Mines, they wanted to do some artist tests and one thing or another, and they did it in this film studio using this enlarged blimp. And the American cameraman, who was indeed Bob Surtees, I cannot imitate an American accent. Neither can I repeat his obscenities. But when he saw this thing, it was surprising that he permitted it to be used, but being a gentleman at heart, he eventually used it.

Alan Lawson  56:12
But you tell us some more about the Dakar, or wasn't there any more to do? Well, no, it

|Geofferey Hermege  56:19
was really.

Alan Lawson  56:20
What what kind of films were they making? Like the Indian films, they

|Geofferey Hermege  56:24
were making the typical made in black and white, mi you?

Alan Lawson  56:28
Yes, yes, yes.

|Geofferey Hermege  56:28
Typical Indian film, which consisted of many scenes of the hero, hero, or the heroine, or both, staring straight at camera and singing a very long Indian love song, there were many songs interspersed with dancing, a minimal plot, and they were mostly people chasing each other round the set, and very simple romantic tales. But they were the staple of the Indian film industry. Some of which made the Dakar, some made in Calcutta by Glazier Studios, and in Bombay where I didn't, but those are the sort of three main centres. But the Indian film industry in those days was very primitive, and the films were very censored  which you were not allowed to show many taboos on love making on screen and things like that, and they conformed to a pattern, they were very stereotyped. The plots.

Alan Lawson  57:22
Did you ever work with you know the the two famous people from India?

|Geofferey Hermege  57:29
I cannot think which. Not James Marchant and I. Yes, no. I regret very much. Several British cameramen have, and the ones that spring to mind are Walter Lassier, and also one of their best films was lit by, to my mind, one of the most underestimated British cameramen, who started in documentary and was at the Cold War at one stage, was Larry Pisa,

|Geofferey Hermege  57:52
yes, yes, who did I think

|Geofferey Hermege  57:54
I'm right in saying Europeans, and made one of their, and I think it's one of their best pictures, photographs. Yes, yes. You

Alan Lawson  58:02
never had the chance to work. Well, I would very

|Geofferey Hermege  58:04
much like to.

Alan Lawson  58:05
Yes, yes.

|Geofferey Hermege  58:06
But I've never had the chance. I've never, as I say, Walter Lassley and I. We've never worked together, so I don't think he'd have me on his crew.

Alan Lawson  58:18
Oh, thank you. Geoff Hermeges , cameraman, interviewer Alan Lawson, the copyright of this recording is vested in the ACTT History Project. This is the second session recorded on the 22nd of March, 1988. Side three. Jeff, in the earlier sessions we had with Gloria and myself, you did talk about starting kind of specialised training at Balcott School of Printing. Can you describe the course?

|Geofferey Hermege  59:18
Yes, certainly I can. This course was a very small course in that there were but I think when I was doing it I think there were four students. It was a full time course that was also an evening course that I continued on. But as a full time course, it was one of the few very well. planned technical backgrounds that you could get at that time. There were other courses like the Regent Street Poly, but this one had a leaning towards technology, and it was run by what was then known as the London School of Photo. Engraving and lithography, and it had the four full-time students, and you spent your time between the theory of photography and optics, plus a certain amount of photo engraving, and a certain amount-I think one day a week-which was art training in graphics, and the instructors were had a bias towards optics and photo engraving, and there were very famous people, people like Boole and Turner and Smith, who were the in those days the greatest experts in photogravure and in colour printing. All of which had a very great influence on my technical knowledge, and it led to the examination of the City And Guilds in photography, in pure photography, and you got a very good training in all aspects of sensitometry, of theory of colour reproduction, optics, and I say a certain amount of art training, but basically it was to equip you with all the background you needed for any job that used photography as its was its basis, and as such, I found it immensely useful right the way through my career because things that I learnt there, particularly in sensitometry when I went to labs and COI, that that was a basis that very few few people had had. So that was basically it, and this I can't remember. I think it was I must have been there two years, something like that, and I did finish, in actual fact, top of the the exams that year throughout England for that sort of thing. So I did have a very good technical background, but that was basically the background of Bolt Court. Bolt Court, at the same time, as I think I mentioned, did become what is now the London College of Printing, which now, of course, has a flourishing, very large film and video school. But regretfully, in the days that was in 1936, 37, somewhere around about then, there was there were no real film schools available, and there were no other than the Poly. There were very few trade or technical training places for pure photography, and that's precisely what Boltcourt was.

Alan Lawson  1:02:25
And you came out of that what with a diploma? I'm

|Geofferey Hermege  1:02:30
not quite sure what it was called, but I can probably find out.

Alan Lawson  1:02:35
On the medals,

|Geofferey Hermege  1:02:39
it was known as a technological examination, City and Guilds, and I think I got it in front of me. Frank Ceoffrey Hermge's photography first prize equal 1937, and that was it, City and Guilds So that's just to prove that in fact what I say happens to be true.

Alan Lawson  1:02:57
Then from there you went to Sun Engraving.

|Geofferey Hermege  1:03:01
I went not. I went to a subsidiary of Sun Engraving, which was the. It was known as Studio Sun, and it was one of the. I think I would say two top advertising photographic studios in London, because again that was quite an innovation. Yes. Because in the old days, you had the Bond Street portrait photographers, and you had the High Street man who took groups and things like that. But advertising photography was in its infancy, and Sun Engraving set up one of the two studios. Studio Briggs was the other one, and we were in Blandford Street, and we had a studio which is still in existence. I think it's called Blandford Studios, and I'm not quite sure what they do there, but they are still basically the same thing. But it had three top photographers, one of whom was Jack Lee, who is now in Australia. Not the film Jack Lee, another Jack Lee, who was a fashion photographer, a man called Gordon Crocker, who may well still be alive, who was a brilliant creative photographer, but not specifically fashion, and a man called Matthews, who became the head of the Ealing School of Photography, who was their technical expert, and these three photographers were the best in London at the time, and there were two apprentices: myself and another young man who was killed in the war. And I was basically attached to Matthews, who was the technical photographer, although I did do fashion as well. And they there, I had the chance of starting or acquiring a lot of knowledge of colour photography, because they, being tied to sun engraving, they had specialised in very high quality colour photography, which in those days was almost non-existent. It was in the days before, or virtually before, you had. Ektachrome, Kodachrome, and other still materials, and we worked very closely with Dr. Spencer, who then later became the head of Kodak Research, and at that time ran a firm called Vivex or Colour Photographs Limited, who were the early developers of both a single shot camera and repeating back cameras, all of which worked on three colour three colour photography, and were the early developers with Kodak of the what was then known as dye imbibition or the colour dye transfer system, which was again closely linked with the system used by Technicolour. Before that, they used Autotype, three-color Carbro, things like that for colour printing. But they were they were turning out at that time very very high quality colour photography for advertising, which of course the principles all ended up in the principles used by Technicolour, and of course on the colour transparency side, the things would have ended up as mono pack, Kodachrome, and eventually Eastman colour. So all of it was a development really of knowledge, and I went on to that as an apprentice.

Alan Lawson  1:06:19
And then, then from there you went to when you went to Kodak.

|Geofferey Hermege  1:06:21
Then I left there.

Alan Lawson  1:06:23
Was the Kodak job up there? You know, not an apprenticeship. No,

|Geofferey Hermege  1:06:26
no. I went. I, I found that after I think it was about somewhere after a year at Studio Sun, I'd, I wasn't really getting very far forward. Yeah. And so a good friend of mine, a school friend, who called Derek Stewart, who became Derek Stewart Productions, had gone direct from school to Kodak's research laboratories, and having been a life friend all at school, he rang me up one day and said, "Look, there's an opening in the research laboratories, and if you'd like to go in to Kodak in Kingsway in those days and see Dr. Roy, who's the head of personnel, and I've arranged for you to see him, and it's up to you to convince him you're a good chap. So I went down see Dr. Roy, and I started work at Kodak  the following Monday, in what was then, the research laboratory had an extension under Dr. Manlove, which was known as the testing department, and we were responsible for all the basic sensitive metric work on all Kodak sensitive materials, let's say the the product testing development of photographic materials, and so I stayed there, and we worked closely with the actual research laboratory. We were all at Kodak under the same roof, and I stayed there until the war started, working with Kodak and their research campus at at Harrow,

Alan Lawson  1:08:04
was there was there independence from Rochester, or were you there?

|Geofferey Hermege  1:08:13
No, there was a very close liaison on the scientific side because all scientific papers from Rochester and from that matter, from France and Germany and Australia, where they had factories, all were available to us in the research library, and the materials, all the data on the photographic materials, were pooled, and there were joint standards for all the materials. It was though Rochester were our parent company. We still coated. You would get material which we shall we say plus X or super X or one of the black and white stocks, and they would only we in the factory could tell from emulsion numbers and cone numbers where they came from, and in theory they were all identical materials, but there was we were very closely linked with Rochester.

Alan Lawson  1:09:07
And was was there much difference?

|Geofferey Hermege  1:09:08
As a practical cameraman, one tended to think that the Rochester material was more consistent. I don't entirely agree with that. This is prejudice only, and I don't. I don't think there was very much difference. We use the same raw base material, acetate, nitrate base. We use the same gelatines, dyes, the same patents, basically the same processing formulas, the same sensor metric standards, same quality standards. There really was no difference. Occasionally, you would find a product that was only available from Rochester. You would find perhaps a new, certainly in the later days when colour came, there would be things that were Rochester coated and only coated in Rochester. But then later, of course. Coatings were done at Harrow in those days, long before Hemel Hempstead or whatever. It was all centralised in Harrow.

Alan Lawson  1:10:09
Yes, yes. Then in the post-war period at Kodak, what were what were you doing then? Well,

|Geofferey Hermege  1:10:14
that I went back. I was since I was taken. I was in the army. You had a right to go back to your previous firm, and Kodak were remarkably good to their employees. Throughout the war, I received, while I was in Africa and various places, I received food parcels and various things from them. And when after the war they got in touch with everybody, and they offered me a post back in the research laboratories, working with a man called Arthur Ham, who was again in charge of a division which was known as the Applied Photographic Division. In other words, it was a part of the research laboratory, which was concerned with the scientific applications of photography to industry, to research, or for that matter in the film business or anything like that, it was the applications of photography, and I went in there with. In fact, I took over the job from Derek Stewart, who became Derek Stewart Productions, who had left Kodakto set up his own, what was then known as Scientific and Medical Photography Simple S I M P L, which was down in Lambeth, and he set up a very specialised photographic laboratory to do just that thing with a man called Robin Weston to set up a specialised laboratory concerned with the applications of photography, specialised applications, whether they be high-speed cinematography, photomicrography, anything where photography was used or cinematography used as an experimental tool, he left to set up as an independent, and I took over his job in Kodak Laboratory, and I had the as an assistant a young man called John Hadland, who became John Hadland Industries in Bovingdon, who became the world, and in fact are still the world's greatest experts in high-speed cinematography, and we worked. I worked in those days on early development of the earlier. I think they were called the Edgerton Coda Light, or I think it was. It was. I don't remember the name. Anyway, it was an early electronic flash, which in the days when the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, under Dr. Egerton, were developing this discharge tube, which in those days gave an astoundingly short exposure for those days of approximately a 3,000th of a second, or something like that, which in those days was fantastic. And we did a lot of these public photographs of drops of water, things dropping into milk, and bullets emerging from muzzles of guns, and golf balls being struck and deforming on striking and things like that, and a lot of the early work on that we did in the laboratories, and also the work on the processing of the material to overcome reciprocity failure, and to the general development anyway of high-speed cinematography. And in those days, of course, we had the Eastman Mark III cine camera, which is the first camera with a rotating prism, which again worked at I don't remember. I think it went up to something like 3000 frames a second. I can't remember exactly. But anyway, it was the early

|Geofferey Hermege  1:13:56
cine

|Geofferey Hermege  1:13:56
camera, which was used for many purposes of for analysing motion, again a development of cinematography as applied to industry, and I stayed there for a couple of years, I say something of that order. I don't remember exactly. Working with in those days the head of the laboratory course was Dr. Spencer, who had come from colour fresh grass, and it was a very fruitful time for me because it enabled me, after the war, to update myself on all the developments of emulsions of optics, and particularly work on the on the on high-speed cinematography because which interested me, and I had a chance to work on that, and and I only left there when I was offered a job. Having worked in Africa during the war, I was offered a job to go back to the colonial office to go out to to Africa to join what was then known as the regional information office, which. Was tied up with, of course, a regional, a branch of the colonial film unit, who were also out there making films. So we all worked happily together on both films and films.

Alan Lawson  1:15:12
Did you? Did you? Did I understand you actually went and joined Dere Stewart for a time?

|Geofferey Hermege  1:15:17
No, I never. I had hoped to leave Kodak's to join Derek down at his firm, but whether the firm was not doing very well, or for what reason I don't know. It was nothing personal. But I did not, in fact, join Derek. We stayed friends, and I, when he became Derek Stewart Productions, one thing another, I still, I'm still in touch with him, in fact. But no, I never joined him. But I was, I did, in fact, do odd jobs as not exactly a consultant, but Derek naturally retained his links with Kodak and would tend to ring me up if he wanted something done on the quiet. He wanted some little bit of information about sensormetry or filters or optics or anyway as a close liaison between Derek and Simple, as it was then known as, and the Kodak Research Laboratory.

Alan Lawson  1:16:10
Now, one of the other things which I should have picked up in the earlier session, you dropped the you know you dropped the little remark that you've been a contact man at Kay's Labs. Now let's talk about that. Well, it was not the first contact man we've we've talked to. Well,

|Geofferey Hermege  1:16:32
it was a very simple story, really. In that, I suppose I can't remember the exact period, 1520, years ago, whatever it was, I was working as a freelance cameraman operator, and frequently it was not working as a freelance cameraman operator. And as many jobs crop up, this job cropped up in a pub, the Lamb and flag in Floral Street, where I had for many a long time talked to a man in a group who I knew had something to do with films, but I realised that he was nothing. He was a financier, but I couldn't quite understand. One doesn't in a pub discuss other people's business, but on one occasion, this chap whose name was Richard Sidley said to me, "Jeff, are you doing anything at the moment? And I said, "No. He said, "Do you want a job? And I said, "Yes. He said, "Well, go out to Kay's lab and tell George that I sent you, which sound it good enough. I said. I presume you mean George Hawkes, who was then the technical manager of Kayes. And I said, Yes, certainly. And I said, But tell me, I have never asked you, Richard, what is your connection with Kays? He said, Well, I'm their financial director. I said, Well, that's as good a recommendation as any. And it turned out that this gentleman had come in with a team, a management team, at that time to revitalise Kays, and anybody who's in the lab business will remember this. And Kays were in the depth of despair, and a team came in, including an American called Marshall Koshman, a man called Bernard Crayton, and this man Richard Sidley, and they came in to go from top to bottom of Kays and give it a new image, and one of the new images they wanted was to improve their links with the documentary film movement, where and documentary scientific and industrial side of films, and their reputation at that time was remarkably low, as labs go. And I was interviewed and asked what my interest. I explained my technical background, and explained that I had had by that time, of course, I had left the coal board, but I had had masses of contacts in with industrial and scientific applications of photography, and I was told, "Well, right, can you? You are now our contact man with particular reference to documentaries and particularly scientific and industrial work, and get off your butt and go around and see all these people and try and you know use your contacts and bring in some work. And I very happily did this for a couple of years or so, working again, making a mass of contacts with all the small specialised production companies working on not on commercials but on places like O Shell and ICI film units and all the units working with the major contracting companies with any any. Had any scientific application of cinematography, and I managed, of course, to give them a liaison with the lab because I knew their problems, and I also knew what a lab could or could not do, and could advise them on how to best use the lab. And I stayed there very happily until I went to the COI.

Alan Lawson  1:20:20
Tell me, you you were concentrating then on documentary. Did you have any contact with the feature side? No,

|Geofferey Hermege  1:20:27
because the the people who did, I would if I had contact with any features, which I did do through work. If I happened to hear that a production needed some special service, or I would always I just pass it on to whoever was the man in Kays who was dealing with the feature world because we didn't overlap. There's no point in it. And when it came to the contractual side of feature work, I certainly had not got enough knowledge of the financial side of lab work. My my financial thing was quite adequate to cope with documentary production, but it certainly wasn't good enough to cope with the Wheeler dealers of competition between laboratories to get contracts and discounts for feature films. So I stayed right out of that.

Alan Lawson  1:21:21
Were you satisfied with your results from your work at Kays?

|Geofferey Hermege  1:21:26
Oh yes, entirely. It was an uphill job because Kay's was indeed becoming a much better lab. They had got new machinery. They had updated things like, in those days, the Seeky printer, Wetgate printers, they'd made their service a good deal better. Their quality control was better. Their chemical control was better. Everything was getting better, and their deliverers were getting better. They were not telling nearly as many lies to customers as they did normally, because it used to be the one man who should be called mr. X, who was fairly senior, was known as the films on the van, because whenever anybody rang to find out why their rushes hadn't arrived, and it was always on the van, and then of course the shit used to hit the van, and then within two or three hours the film was on the van, but it became, I mean, it was a standing joke. I mean, the Kays  was well, it was on the up and up, and I'm very pleased to say that while I was there, not just due to my efforts, but the lab certainly came out of the trough and did get their quality and everything became infinitely better. And of course, they were beginning to get the share of the commercials market, which was, of course, in those days a very critical one.

Alan Lawson  1:22:45
Yes, I realised, you know, as we as you started to answer that question, I should have asked you about your session at the coal board as a senior research technician. Exactly what what kind of work was that? Well,

|Geofferey Hermege  1:22:59
it It involved. It was Kitty. Will take that downstairs.

Alan Lawson  1:23:09
What do you want to take?

|Geofferey Hermege  1:23:10
Sorry, no. Kitty will take that downstairs. I'm sorry about that.

Alan Lawson  1:23:12
It's right.

|Geofferey Hermege  1:23:13
Let's just take that. No. It. It while I had come back from Africa, and had gone to ACT naturally, trying to get a ticket, and failed dismally, and I was very unhappy at being unable to work in what I considered to be my own job, and I saw an advertisement in the Times saying that the National Coal Board at their laboratory, their central research laboratory, needed an expert in all aspects of scientific cinematography and scientific photography to set up a new photographic laboratory to to be concerned purely with forward research, and gave a number which I rang. I got an application for, and was summoned to be interviewed at Cheltenham at the Central Research Establishment, and I was interviewed by Dr. Bronowski, who was the head of the laboratory, and as luck would have it, we seemed to hit it off, and he realised that I had something to offer, and I was on the spot offered the job to take over the or to set up this photographic laboratory at at Cheltenham, and I proceeded there, and from scratch built up what I consider extremely good in-house specialised photographic service for them, which. Involved a lot of work on high-speed cinematography, on basically on the design of cutting tools for coal machinery, plus a lot of work on the fracturing of coal, the way it reacts under stress and strain. Also, a lot of very specialised photomicrography, reflex. What do I talk about? Not transmitted, reflected light on mostly on tungsten carbide tips, metals of one sort, and also containing the structure of coal. And I was given absolutely free hand to get Equipment, high-speed cinematography equipment, lighting equipment, microscopes, everything I needed, and set up this laboratory, and eventually had two of my own assistants there, and then when the laboratory enlarged and split, I changed and went under a new boss called Dr. Tite, who came from the Atomic Energy Research, to set up a new coal laboratory at what was, in fact, an old film studio, to wit, Wharton Hall at Isleworth, which had been taken over. So I came again from scratch and set up a brand new laboratory of a similar type, dealing with slightly different work. I did a certain amount of work on dustborne, the measurement of dust in mines, and also a lot of work in high-speed cinematography on the flow of fluid flow of coal in fluids in pipes, which was a method of transporting coal, crushing it underground, transferring it, you know, in pipes and things like that. Again, very interesting work, and I stayed there and would probably have stayed for the rest of my life, but I had a chance to work with the National Coal board Film Unit while I was there, and by dint of banging on ACT's doors, I did eventually persuade them that since I was working with people, though in a specialised capacity, with an accredited ACT crewed film unit, that it'd be a good idea if I myself paid my dues and became a member, and I managed to get this thing through, despite an objection as an AGM when an old fellow called Harold Hanscom. It was unfortunately when my membership came up, he who would have opposed it bitterly was asleep at the time. When he woke up, it had been passed that I had an ACT ticket, so I did in fact get in, and had the pleasure of working with as an assistant with Ken Gordon, a very famous ACT name, and ACT as I think it was in those days, and having served my time under Rule 13 or 10 or nine or whatever it is, where I was limited to both my grade and my department, etc. I did manage to get myself in the clear, and the moment that I was in the clear, I left the coal board and went freelancing, which was then my start really into an ordinary common or garden working camera system, come operator, come everything, and

Alan Lawson  1:28:32
these the high speed camera you were using at the Coal board What what kind of camera was that one? Well,

|Geofferey Hermege  1:28:38
it were two. I used one that was known as the it was made by Dawes Instruments, high-speed camera made by Dawes with a thing called the Dawes Microflash, and it was a very ingenious and very heavy camera, working at with a rotating prism, and it would work on a full frame or a half frame, up to something like 10,000 frames a second, and it worked on the principle, both of a rotating frame and as an illuminant. It had a flashing strobe light which was linked, which is the door's micro flash, which in theory went down to a microsecond flash. So you could have a millionth of a second exposure, which in those days was pretty good. You had to go into very very secret and expensive equipment used on atomic bomb research and things like that, and used by the Admiralty research and people like that. Although I did work closely with the Admiralty  research at Bushey, I met. I went down there. They they were using the same type of camera, so I liaised with them. But that was the main one. But also, I developed and but at the time that I was leaving the coal board, I was developing a new, a brand new. Camera, which depended on crossed lenticular plates and a thing called a Nipcon disc, which worked at far higher speeds and would in fact give you on a five by four glass plate an image on one single plate, which you then had to analyse and reconstitute into a cine film that would probably give you, I can't remember, maybe it was 50 frames or something like that, but you could synchronise this camera to give you speeds going into the mill, as opposed to the 1000s going into the millions of frames, but only over the total span of 1000s of a second, or something like that. In which case, then you would have your 50 images, whatever it may be, several millions of a second, a Nipkov disc. In fact, I went to Paris to pick up these plates because they were made. There was a firm who I think called themselves Deep Pictures, and if you remember, you probably still see them on on funny postcards. They are things that you look at like a postcard, and as you shift your eye around, you see a stereoscopic image. Now these were done by plates engraved on plastic or embossed on plastic, which enabled you on a single photograph to get 20 or 30 images, which you could only see by shifting your eye round the plate. But it was I helped to develop the system whereby you took two of these plates and you crossed them, and they would split up the images into a series of dots, which could only be seen when looked at at a certain angle. And this angle was determined by a spinning disc called Nipkov disk, after I think a famous Russian physicist. And by spinning this disc in front of the plate, you could have on one plate perhaps 50. I won't say the exact number, but 50 sets of dots, each one that could be reconstituted to give you a reasonably high image, a high definition image for the analysis of events that were of very very short duration, such as in this case, a piece of coal, which, under pressure of several tonnes, would, at a certain pressure, would crack and split. And the way coal split under pressure was of interest to the coal board because it would enable them to design tools for breaking up coal underground.

Alan Lawson  1:32:41
Yes, yes. Actually, those Nipkow discs actually was the basis of the flying spot scanners and Baird  television.

|Geofferey Hermege  1:32:48
It is very much the same idea.

Alan Lawson  1:32:52
Yes, yes, yes. But

|Geofferey Hermege  1:32:53
it had been developed by, as I say, I do not who know who mr. Nipkov was, but I suspect he was a Russian physicist.

Alan Lawson  1:32:59
Sounds like he did. Now you from K's you went to C O I, didn't you?

|Geofferey Hermege  1:33:05
From Kay's again, I went to C O I because I had been when working at Worldwide long and my first real what I call pucker job in the industry, we had an editor called Frances Coburn, who by then when I was working at Kay's had become the director of the films division at COI, and knew me from my days in worldwide, and also we'd met socially over the years, and she'd known of my involvement at Kay's because the COI had a very large contract, an exclusive contract, in fact, with the COI, and K and the COI were not best pleased with the results they were getting from Kays, the service, and one thing another, and they badly needed somebody internally at the COI to be a liaison, a technical expert, to make to be a really in charge of quality control from the point of their COI's film output, and they recruited me. They rang me up at Kay's on a personal basis. They look, come down and see us, and they said, "We are shortly. This, I suppose, should not be said, but it will be said. Well, look, we are shortly advertising a post as senior technical officer in charge of technical services, and. Always marked by cards. It'd be worth your while applying for it, and I was interviewed, and one thing another, and my technical background was deemed adequate, and I applied and went in. Originally, I was on my own, and I later recruited another man called Morris Draper from Kays, who subsequently died, and we then took charge of all the technical liaison and the technical side, technical requirements of COI, and my particular brief was all the work up to the up to the show copy state of a film, all the bulk distribution and the various other aspects were not in my hands, but all the getting of the image onto film, the troubleshooting advisory organisation was mine. In addition to a staff of 29, of which were seven editors, seven assistant editors, a neg cutting and everything. So I had a all the cutting rooms all came under my jurisdiction, but basic and also of course I had to advise on all the technical requirements because the producers at COI were frequently Inexperienced in the film business, they were they'd come from various disciplines, but very few of them had come from the film business. So when they were setting up shoots of one thing or another, they wanted cameramen and they wanted technical facilities, special cameras, special lighting, specialised staff. I was there to advise them and liaise, and liaise, but they act as a liaison between the COI, their administrative officer, who was responsible for booking crews, and the actual companies, Platypus and Worldwide and Crystal Films, all the companies that were used, and the requirements of the COI were filtered through me, so that if they said, "Well, what do we need as a package for daily rate things? I say, "Well, you'll need a BL camera plus a NAGRA with so many mics. You'll need so many lights, the basic crew, so many lenses, certain filters, certain types of stock, certain allowance of stock, and all the reporting procedure from the labs, the evaluation of rushes, so that if there's anything wrong, there would be an arbiter. I would say, look, this has to be restocked because this is not up to our standard. Or if the labs let us down, and there'd be a complaint, we've been getting all our rushes are coming out. The flavour of the week, which is bright olive green, or something like that. It was down to me to get to the lab, or if sound transfers were wrong, if densities of soundtracks were wrong, if in fact any technical fault of any sort was under my jurisdiction, they referred to me, and I would be asked to arbitrate. And if I said, and naturally the labs knew, and they hated my guts because it was a case of a poacher turned gamekeeper for having worked there. When we had, I think I mentioned, you'd have an answer print go back for correction, and then the same answer would turn up in the bulks. I knew the tricks, and so any any trick that the labs, not only Kays , but all the other labs were used, any tricks they got up to were quickly scotched.

|Geofferey Hermege  1:38:35
And in fact, I was the complete liaison, and I would visit all the production companies, and if new camera men were required, or I was asked, well, so and so doesn't appear to be a very good cameraman. Do you think that company we could possibly we could put the black on him and say we don't? Whenever we have a crew, we don't want mr. X, or we don't. I hate to say so. Sound men were the most difficult, because documentary sound men were tended to blind you with science. But there's only one thing tells you: is when I sit and I'm listening to the original quarter-inch state, I can tell you if that sound is there or not. There's no good them trying to tell me anything about sound. I mean, I'm not going to check the circuits of the diagrams, but I do at least know when sound comes. If if that thing is under recorded, and I know, and I'm looking at those dials, I know on the transfer what they've got to do to bring that. I mean, they would try and fool me so that when they had their transfers done from quarter inch, instead of being done level on a tone, on a minus four dB totaling at the beginning. They say, "Oh well, couldn't we sort of fad to these a bit? We're afraid we've under accorded all these bits. We'll make level it all out. No, no, you don't level anything out. I want to know what's there. I'll make the decision as to whether we can get away with it in the dubbing. But all the aspects of technology came under my jurisdiction at COI. Did you have equipment at all? Oh yes. Well, you see, we had.

Alan Lawson  1:40:03
No, I mean sensormeters and these companies. Oh yes, you did. Yes. Oh,

|Geofferey Hermege  1:40:06
sensor tometers? No. I had to depend on going to the labs and using theirs, or densometers. Sensitometers naturally the labs, but sensitometers. No, I didn't have. But any sensorimetric tests or anything like that would be initiated by me, and BP, I would go out to the labs and check the orphanness. I go to Kodak Research or anywhere like that, and any sound stuff we could basically check because we had our own theatres and our own tele cine and everything there. So basically, anything on the sound side I could check internally, and we also had, of course, had the radio division, so I had access to their sound equipment there. So sound was no problem. Camera-wise, I mean, I had to depend if there were any questions about lenses or being checked or any sensitometric work done. I would go to the laboratories or go out to the film laboratories themselves, go to Agfa, go to Kodak, or and I luckily through my having worked in Kodak Labs, I could pick up the phone and get an honest answer of added problems. I'd just get in the car and nip out to Harrow and say, "Look, I've got a problem here. Look, or I'd say, "Well, look, we've seen him getting on batch number so and so, and look, I just want to know: is this a duff batch or isn't it? I don't want any flim flam. Look, do we put the black on batch number 3974, or don't we? And if they say, "Well, look, we have let it out; it's okay, but if I were you, Geoff, I'd look just scrap that batch of stock and that. And I mean, I had problems because I wanted to, for instance, buy all our stock in bulk, have it tested by me, and then issue it out to companies. But companies wanted to supply their own because they obviously made more money on doing that. So I had certain. I didn't win all my battles. You never do. But by and large, COI was fine, no troubles at all. I liked and thoroughly enjoyed it.

Alan Lawson  1:42:00
You enjoyed your you enjoyed your statement. Oh

Alan Lawson  1:42:02
yes.

Alan Lawson  1:42:03
Now, one thing you did say towards the end of our first session that you'd rather deplored the fact that the role of the camera operator was now being kind of brushed Aside now, is it is it market forces? Is it the new cameramen coming in? Perhaps don't have the confidence of of a crew.

|Geofferey Hermege  1:42:32
No, it is largely due to the. There are two things. One is it's economic, in that film producers and production managers think that it is an economy. If you're paying a camera operator X pounds, and you're having to put him up and pay his air fares one another, and if you can con the cameraman into doing his own operating. They think that it's an economy not to have one. And at one stage, the ACT had crewing levels. You had a minimum crew, and on a sound crew, on a feature film, you had an operator. That was it. There was no argument about it. And then you would have Certain cameramen, who said, "Oh, I much prefer doing my own operating. I like doing my own operating, and they would then, then the problem would come up against minimum crew. You'd have four on the crew, and they would then, by talking, smooth talking, somebody, mr. X or Y in ACT, would agree that you could put an extra body on, and he'd be paid a clapper loader's rates, and use as a odd job man. But you got away without having an operator. You saved money, and the cameraman had his way. And then foreign producers, various people came in and said, "Oh, I much prefer my cameraman to the operating. I don't think it was a good thing because I don't think the product improved, and it meant decreased efficiency and also decreased work for operators. That shouldn't be relevant, but I sincerely think that the the decline in the role of the operator is bad. I've seen it in American films, where an operator is is he is just a hired hand. He's told what to do. But in my day, in your day, in British films, an operator was a very important person. He knew a lot of the directorial side. He may not have known. He might have been the world's worst focus puller, and he might well have been the world's worst cameraman. But he was the world's best operator because an operator. Can stay as an operator all his life, and there are operators to this day who will never become cameramen, and there are few that have become cameramen. There are quite a few who are more than happy to stay as operators because you have a very important role in the creative part of filmmaking because you work with the director and the liaison and the rapport between an operator and a director can be very close, and operators frequently make good directors.

Alan Lawson  1:45:30
Yes. Yes.

|Geofferey Hermege  1:45:31
They sometimes don't make good cameramen, as once again cameramen often become rotten directors.

Alan Lawson  1:45:37
Yes.

|Geofferey Hermege  1:45:38
And I've been invidious to mention any names, but it can-they can make good ones. But I do think that, as I say, my own feeling is very strong, and it's the feeling of many operators and many technicians in the film business. If I might, I will-you keep the machine running. I may just have. Wait a

Alan Lawson  1:46:33
minute. Yes, your room. Jeff, jHermeges side four. Yes, Geoff.

|Geofferey Hermege  1:46:38
No, we were just talking about the role of the operator, and I think that certainly most of the older camera members of the camera department deplore the

|Geofferey Hermege  1:46:54
death of

|Geofferey Hermege  1:46:56
operating, because many I've observed over the last few years, that a lot of the modern generation of camera technicians tend to go from camera system to cameramen without the intermediate state of operator, and very few of them work can work on a Moye head, on a geared head. They simply can't do it. And I was brought up working with people like Jeff Se Holm, Cece Cooney, O Dennis Coop, as you know, working as an assistant with operators and having the chance when they went off to have a pee to get on handles and work on handles. And it is a very specialised art. And I know the very first time that I went as an operator to Brighton Studios to do a commercial for one of the soap powders. I could have been Daz. I don't know. And I was put on this crane with a camera with a 75 lens on a handle, and I had to do this thing. And I've never been so scared in my life because it had not. By then, it was not completely instinctive. By now, it's completely instinctive. I can point a camera without having to think which way the handles turn, which is what an operator, of course, should do. But it does take a long time, and I have seen people, many people who can operate on ordinary slip head or friction head, who will never in a million years become operators on handles. And nowadays, it's quite common. See, certainly on television. I mean, to have things on handles is rare.

Alan Lawson  1:48:31
Yes,

|Geofferey Hermege  1:48:31
it's only on real what I call real pictures that you actually find genuine operators who can work, and who can work with Congot here with the director, and they know how things are cutting together. They're working. It's a very, it's a very specialised craft, not related to camera technology.

Alan Lawson  1:48:54
No, it's

|Geofferey Hermege  1:48:54
related to editing and directing.

Alan Lawson  1:48:56
Yes,

|Geofferey Hermege  1:48:57
the fact you're looking through a camera, you might just will not be looking through a camera. That's not important. That's just the mechanics of it. It's the knowing how shots will come together, and what is needed to make a story. That is operating. But as I say, to me, I feel very strongly on the subject. As do many of us in the Guild of British Camera Training Contents. We deplore the fact that people now, with the connivance of ACT, are bowing to the thing that if you want to save money, it's the same way as a sound man can. You know, you you really do need a boomswinfer, and you need a bloke to run out the cable, and you really need somebody to do the maintenance if you you know on a big on a big feature. But of course, if you want to, you can

|Geofferey Hermege  1:49:43
one man.

|Geofferey Hermege  1:49:44
You can stick neck mics or radio mics on everybody and sit there with your neighbour of there and do the whole bloody thing yourself. But that's not, to my mind, that is not a development. It's not a good way of going about filmmaking. But this is. Matter of opinion, I express an opinion, but that

Alan Lawson  1:50:04
is it. Now, the the other thing, what what how do you feel about zoom? The use of zoom lenses,

|Geofferey Hermege  1:50:12
very simple. There are two things. One is that the actual picture quality of zoom lenses is approaching the quality of prime lenses, but to my mind has not quite got there. Years ago, it was hopeless, but it's now miles better. Secondly, the actual aperture of zoom lenses again is approaching the the apertures of prime lenses, though you're not, of course, up to the high-speed lenses. But thirdly, the most important aspect is that if you go from a medium shot to a close-up or anything with a zoom lens, the it never looks right because you are all you are doing. The perspective is never changing, so it gives. It is not as as if you are walking towards somebody, because all that happens is the image size changes without the perspective, and no zoom can ever replace proper camera movement. There is a use for zoom lens, and it can be used two ways. One is it can be used in combination with camera movement, so that the deficiencies of the change of perspective are not seen because you're changing the thing, you're changing the viewpoint at the same time as you're changing the scale, that's one thing. Or it can be used as a variable prime. In other words, where time is of the

|Geofferey Hermege  1:51:51
essence,

|Geofferey Hermege  1:51:52
and you do not need extremely large apertures, you can save a vast amount of time in lens changing by using it from setup to set up and really changing using a zoom not as a zoom but as a variable focused lens. That is, to my mind, a perfectly valid use of a zoom lens. But I do not like using a zoom as a trombone, when every shot has the man has to do this with a handle, and it goes in and out, and you simply cannot have a shot sitting still. You've got to have somebody fiddling with a zoom, either a zoom motor or a zoom handle or zoom. Yes, they can have these various controls on it. I do do not like them, although I recognise their value in certain types of production. For quick wham-bam, thank you, ma'am, television things where you're working at high speed, and there are certain effects that you want. In other words, if you are sitting on the top of a high tower, and there's a man with a radio mic standing down in a courtyard, and you've opened the shot, there's this little man half a mile away, and suddenly on a 10 to one or 20 to one zoom. You can go in to a close-up of his head still talking. Well, no way other than with a helicopter could you get that shot. Not, I think the shot is often necessary, but you can get certain effects which are nowadays accepted. But to me, they jar on my nerves when I see this lens going in and out, this image going in and out in scale. It doesn't relate to human beings, human beings sitting and talking to each other. I can get up and walk around the walk to a bookcase and turn around and look at you, and the camera could be doing that with a lens, and it would be, it would be, it would be as I would see it.

Alan Lawson  1:54:07
Yes.

|Geofferey Hermege  1:54:08
But the moment I start zoom with a lens, then the mind automatically says there's something wrong. Some time ago, it would have seemed as obviously wrong. Nowadays, people have got used to watching television. They've got used to certain types of film, and they will accept a lot of things that were not accepted 20 years ago, because the eye has become used to them. It's a convention that you that you see a thing as seen through a zoom lens. But just thinking of when I see a film made possibly by an old-fashioned director or old-fashioned camera, it is sometimes more trouble to do it by moving a camera or changing a lens. But I think the end result is more peaceful and more conducive to. Good filmmaking, but that again, everybody to their own taste.

Alan Lawson  1:55:04
Well, again, I suppose really you would probably agree then that the the the use of hand, you know, the handheld camera should be also be limited. A

|Geofferey Hermege  1:55:16
handheld camera is immensely useful if, in the ordinary way, it doesn't look like a handheld camera, like a wobbly scope, a camera, particularly using a thing like a Panaglide or a Steadicam or one of these stabilisation systems, enables you to do shots which would be impossible or very nearly impossible to do with a camera on a crane or a dolly, then they are fine and used by a really good steadicam operator. Simply superb. But when you see the only time a handheld camera is valid is if it's meant to look like a handheld camera. If you've got a shot supposed to be a newsreel camera in Vietnam, or somebody in the middle of a riot, or something like that. Well, then you do not expect a camera to be dead steady and everything look as though it's being shot. Then that is a handheld camera. Giving the impression of a handheld camera is a reason for it. But unless that when that I do I don't mind when I see a thing on the screen if that picture everything is cutting well together and everything the motion is smooth is meant to be smooth I don't mind whether it's a sense handheld camera or how that camera is supported but it's when it is badly used and at one time, it just became a hallmark of cinema verite or new wave photography or something like that. That you had to have everything wobbling about. I don't personally don't like it, but with the proviso, if it's used to create a shot that's meant to look like a handheld camera, or if it is put on a Steadicam or Paraglide mount, where it it is a help, it's something. It's it's merely a tool to help you get your shot. Then fine, no trouble at all. But I detest wobbly scope and handheld, the what I call new wave things, where it to me it is hard to watch. It's it it detracts from the story, and you once you're aware, once you're aware that it is a handheld camera, then forget it. It's bad. If you're not aware of it, and this does happen. Then it is fine.

Alan Lawson  1:57:43
Yes, there was a period in I remember in television documentaries. As long as it come and darling,

Alan Lawson  1:57:48
as long as it won, but it must be good. Yeah, let's stop. Jeff, you know I know you've worked as lighting camera in many fields. Would you like to give us a list of some of your credits? Well,

|Geofferey Hermege  1:58:04
I think what I might do, of all the ones, there's certain ones that stick out in one's mind that were either amusing or unusual or something like that. Because having worked on so many films as second unit cameraman, picking up shots here, a day here, and a day there. It all paid the rent.

Alan Lawson  1:58:24
Yeah. But

|Geofferey Hermege  1:58:25
on the other hand, I did manage quite a lot of ones that were types of things. I did. I mean, just talk. It pointed to put them in chronological order. But I did do two films for British transport films, which which I found were well three in fact that were intriguing. One was called Sea Speed Story, which was again the story of the hovercraft, which I found visually and story interesting.

|Geofferey Hermege  1:58:59
Did that one again. That was with an old filmmaker, Rod Baxter, directing it, regretably. I did another one for them, or many for them. I found it probably more for them than most people. I did one which, in theory, was extremely boring, which was known as the techniques of driving electric locomotives, and you cannot imagine on the title anything being more boring. But in actual fact, it won a prize BAFTA that year for the best instructional film or something like that. But it fascinated me because the director was a man called Ken Fernburn.

Alan Lawson  1:59:43
Oh yes, boy, you know him. Yeah,

|Geofferey Hermege  1:59:46
who I'll mention another director later on. He was one of the directors I adored because I detest directors who do not know what they want to shoot. And Ken would start the day, and he would have his script, and he would know that he needed 43 shots or 23 or 27, and he would tell you what he wanted, and ask you for any problems, lighting-wise or camera-wise, let you get on with it, direct them, and having done 2743, or 28 shots, would say, "Well, now we'll go and have a beer. That was the end of the day. He didn't suddenly say, "Well, I think we'd better have this or that or the other, just in case. He knew what he wanted, and it was sheer delight to work with a man who knew his subject, knew the limitations of the camera and the lights, though he was not himself a cameraman, trusted you, and the end result was that we made a film in two, three, or whatever weeks it was, all round the Midlands and things like that, that was technically efficient, astoundingly cheap in the point of view of stock ratios, and was a classic example, really, of a well-made film with a definite objective. Yes, yes, that was one. Sea Speed Story was again ingenious, and I made several for them: line maintenance and a whole lot of films, transport. I also Did another items of an entirely different type for the coal board on one of their series called Mining Review, which is again a thing never seen by the general public, made in mining villages in Cumbria, Northumberland, dreadful places, black and white, of course. Yes,

Alan Lawson  2:01:42
yes.

|Geofferey Hermege  2:01:44
Items for mining review, which again you can't really put in a CV. They're not. They're never going to be seen. People say, "Have we seen your picture? You say, "Well, no. Many, many people may have seen it. They interested me. They interested the audience at the time. There were those. I made lots of odd films in Ethiopia, where all of which have died and they've been long since lost. When I was recording what was then an unknown country for the Ethiopian government, one was made on what was called religious tolerance. The joke is, of course, there is no religious tolerance in Ethiopia. When I was supposed to show that the Christian Church, the Muslims, the Jews, the Falasha, and people like that were all tolerated and encouraged in this modern democracy, well, it was it was impossible to make because the subject didn't exist. But I did manage to make a film with a lot of incredible religious festivals in Ethiopia, and many other films in Ethiopia, gain or loss. I did a similar thing for Liberia, where again an unknown country, and I made a film which was virtually the life of President Tubman, which included trips to America, where he went to see his steel mines in Bethlehem in America, not Bethlehem, Israel, because that is one of the major exports of Liberia. And of course, he had a great interest. So we went there, and also to United Nations and the White House and one thing, and I went around America, made a fascinating film of a man now dead of a country that is now nobody knows anything about. But in both cases, the interest of the story is that I needed to, at one stage, a year or two ago, to get copies of these films. So I went to the appropriate embassies and was told, rather in an Orwellian way, they were never made. I said, but I made them. Ah, yes, but you see, that was in the period before the present regime, or before we got rid of Haile Selassie, and all traces of that period have been destroyed. Now it's a terrifying story that you hear of Russia and places where, shall we say, Stalin's name is obliterated from everything, or Trotsky's name, or his even his picture is taken out of still photographs. But you can have these two very interesting countries where I filmed as the part of the exclusive contract given to this American producer, who was actually a CIA man, to make these films. And that period of my life, which it represents several years of work, have been lost, not lost as films get lost because they're a nitrate film and they've rotted, or because the copies have been destroyed for because a company has brought up and bought out a play and they don't want the original play on film to be. They've destroyed all the original. These have just been lost by this strange political. Thing I made also films in Ghana again at the time when Nkrumah, just after independence, was the president of Ghana. President, I'm just president of those who could be, and where I took over a film building over there from George Noble nowadays. Oh yes, because George was out there as the official photographer , and I went out there. He'd left Ghana at the time, and I went out for rows film and television to make films about the Ghana police and Ghana industry, directed by one, directed by both effects, directed by another famous British film director, famous but not famous, Brian Salt, the famous well man, great expert on on on animation. I mean, it films again about the Garden of Peace, Lost. But films that might survive. I went. I was phoned to make a film, phoned by a man at what was then TVA. I don't think they exist now. Television advertising they were called, and they had gone, just about to go broke, or go to liquidation or something, but their managing director, whose name escapes me, but he was a man.

|Geofferey Hermege  2:06:26
If he wasn't a colonel, he was a general, or he was a man, a fairly important man, but knew nothing about films, had, on a social level, agreed to make a film for the Duke of Edinburgh's award scheme, and the company having gone bust, the I don't know who would be the production manager, somebody who knew me anywhere where I'd been working for TV and commercials, rang me up and said, "Jeff, this being like a Tuesday, can you on Thursday go to the Gambia? I said yes. He said, "Have you ever been there before? I said, "Yes. Have you filmed it after? Yes. Do you mind just grabbing a camera and going on your own? No. So he said, "Well, grab. He said, "Go to Sammys, get a camera, get 2000 feet of stock. He says you're going to make a film about the stone circles of Cantua. Oh yes, tell me more. He says the Duke of Edinburgh scheme are sending 4 17, 18-year-old boys out on a scheme, and they're going to dig up this this archaeological thing. There's an archaeologist from the University of Legon in Ghana going. There's a man called Derek Evans who is the late. He was either the chief secretary or even the governor. He might have been the chief secretary of the Gambia going in charge because he's now working with the Duke of Edinborough. He's going, and there's a wonderful man called Sir Percy Wynn Harris. Says yes, I know him. He said, "Who used to be the governor of Kenya? He has a yacht on the river, on the on the Gambia River, and you're going out for about a month with these boys to film their expedition. I said, "Well, that's fine. How much do I get paid? Well, well, that was a bit of a hum, but I said, "Okay, fine. And then he said, "There's one little snag. What is the little snag? He said, "Well, the last expedition that went out to dig up these stone circles, they all died within the year. He said, "There's a curse on them because you've been disturbing the graves, and there's a curse on them. Do you worry? I said, "Look, you ought to know me well enough. I don't believe in this cobblers at all. So he said, "But nevertheless, we'll have to get you insured. I said, "Well, that's okay if I'm me. So of course they went to Lloyd and they had to have special insurance of this thing. In fact, I did go out. I did make the picture. It was shown. To the best of my knowledge, nobody has died as yet, and many stories could go around it. But it was interesting to find out that when we dug up, finally dug up these stone circles, we went out at dawn. We thought it was a primitive stone hedge, one thing or another. It turned out that they were in fact not of very great antiquity. There were matters of 1000s rather than 10s of 1000s of years old, and they were burial places. In fact, and it was all very interesting. But made an interesting little film, which would be on record at the Duke of Edinburgh's award scheme somewhere down there. I showed it to film schools and things like that. Yes. Okay, but all these are part of being the type of camera, type of person in the film as I am. These are the sort of films that came my way that would never come the way of a standard feature or documentary camera. I did a similar one again, having filmed in Ethiopia, not only filmed in the. The appearance, but also been there in the army and knew the country very well. I was phoned by by a well-known gentleman called Tom Stobart, who was clearly in Ronald Everett, who was an old personal friend. Yes, and he rang me up one day and said, "Oh, I. I lie! I've got the story back to front.

|Geofferey Hermege  2:10:25
A firm called Graphic Films, Countryman Films, Graham Tharp, Lean Claw, had been pestering me for a very long time to go to Ethiopia to make a film, but they were always putting it off and saying, "Well, we haven't got the money, or we've had trouble with getting permits, or we've got something that the film is not going to go, and I was very keen to go. So one day they rang me up and they said, "Jeff, you're off to Ethiopia on Monday. And I said, "Well, I have news for you. I'm not going to Ethiopia on Monday because I'm going to Tripoli. I'm going on a feature film. Oh, they said this is dreadful. You've let us down. I said, Well, I'm very sorry. If you'd be buggering me around for a year or so, I'm sorry, can't help. They said, Well, we've got to have somebody. I said, Well, look, I tell you what I've got. I've got a cameraman for you. I said, I'm sure I can get him. He's just finished the Everest expedition. He's he's writing a book, and he would. I know he's very interested in this sort of film. I give him a ring. So I rang Tom Stobart. I said, Tom, can you get me out of trouble? Go to Ethiopia. Sure, no trouble. So I said, Well, ring Graham Tharp, Freddie Pithard, who was the man who directed the Lindsay Theatre, who's your going to be your director, and that's that. And left it. I went to Libya, came back. When I got back, the phone rang. Was that Tom Stobart? I said, "Oh, Tom, are you phoning from Addis? He says, "No, I'm phoning from the Middlesex Hospital. What do you mean, phoning from the Middlesex Yes, I suppose in Ethiopia. He said, "Well, didn't you hear? I said, "No. What? He said, "Well, the driver, who was an interpreter attached to us from the Foreign Office in Ethiopia, went berserk, took a 45 Colt, shot the driver, shot the other driver, shot the director in the chest, and then he shot me in the in the leg and the shoulder, and his last bullet hit a metal bottle opener  in my pocket. He said, "Otherwise, you had my balls off. And he said, "I'm in hospital with all these bullets in me. So I said, "Oh dear, oh dear. Anyway, he recovered, not entirely mark you. He always had this gabby leg through this shooting, you see, and they caught the murderer, and in fact, he's still in jail, and that was the end of that beginning of that story. But then, months later, the phone rang, and it was Tom Stobartt. He says, "Jeff, I'm going to get my own back on you. I said, "What do you mean? He said, "Well, look, would you? I want you to come to East Pakistan to make a film about man-eating tigers. Well, that's okay by me. So I want you to find an assistant. He said he was a zoologist and so forth. Okay, fine. And so I went out and made a film called Tiger Trail, which was shown on BBC, which we spent three and a half months in the in the forests of the what then became Bangladesh. We got caught up in the middle of the Bangladesh War, and finally escaped in Sampans. I was the last person to get out across the river into India with our equipment. We were arrested by the Indians and we got out. But the film was finished. We lost some rushes. We sent off with. We had an Italian priest who was a sort of assistant director, and he was captured by the Bangladeshis, and we, we think he was killed, but the rushes  turned up three months later in London. We never know; they were pretty well ruined by then. But the film was made, and this is a film called Tiger Trail again, and it was shown on the BBC, and a book was written about it by Tom. Again, another film. I made films. I went out to South America to film, but I didn't know. I didn't finish that film. That was only on my own. That was an all-women's expedition. I made a mass of small advertising and commercial documentary films, but they've all been not things basically.

|Geofferey Hermege  2:14:29
Oh, they've been made for companies like Saab and Caravans International. All basically documentary films. Oh, I made one for Shell, which is long film, I again went round the world to make a film called Load on Top, directed by Alan, anything else. It was a film about the way oil. Is dumped at sea by tankers. I went all around the world 27 weeks on tankers for Shell again in the or in the Shell Library. You know, and I made lots of films for people like COI about clean milk and how you use your doctor. They're all very boring films, but they they all paid the rent. Yes, and in between that, I'd be doing operating on second units for feature films and quite a lot of those, and operating on television series like I did a mass of those ones at Elstree but they made really bad ones like Dial Nine Nine, Martin Kane, private investigator. Mark, what's the one called? Something Sabre. I can't remember whose name made it. The Dancing Groups. Mark

Alan Lawson  2:15:50
Sabre.

|Geofferey Hermege  2:15:50
Mark Sabre. Danzigers.

Alan Lawson  2:15:53
Danzigers. Robin

|Geofferey Hermege  2:15:54
Hood. Sword of Freedom. All these ones. I mean, I made a lot of money just operating on on these on television black and did all black and white television series, working for such names to conjure with as Harry Alan Towers, the Danziger brothers, and people like that. All the and Harold Bain was another one. I think I've worked again strictly libellous. I think I've worked for every spiv producer in the British film business, but they were all perfectly all right. And they would ring you up and say, "Jeff, got a few days on that film, so and so. You say, "Yes, come round to the office and see me. You go and see Harold Bain You have a big cigar. You give me a big cigar. You say, "Well, there's the camera. You have an old Newman Sinclair. There's the stock. You have a whole pile of short ends about 20 and 30 feet. You say, "Well, you go off. You're going off to serve. I said, "Well, what about the assistant? "Oh, you don't need the assistant. Well, look, you know, I'm sorry, Harold, hand on heart, but you know, you know, ACT, I can't do it. Oh, all right then, you see, and then he'd say, "Well, of course, I mean screw you, but if you paid for, he'd pay you, and he always paid me.

Alan Lawson  2:17:08
Yes, yes.

|Geofferey Hermege  2:17:08
But working with these people like Harold Bain, and as I say, Harry Allen Towers, name but two of them, it was you were living on a knife edge all the time. But it was all experience, and working on television series, you were doing certainly the Alfred ones. You were doing two working on there were two crews: a studio crew and an exterior crew. And you were in and out, or you sort of chop and change. You do both, but you'd have two crews and you make two pictures a week. You spend two days in the studio, two days out, and one day, sort of changing over, and you turn out a feature, you know, a half-hour picture a week out of those things. But all that was good grist to the mill, and you managed to work. You, I mean, I worked with people. I mean, people who were directing you in those days, people like Gerry Anderson, who became, you know, Startrek, one of your star. What Star was he?

Alan Lawson  2:18:00
Skytrak.

|Geofferey Hermege  2:18:01
Sky, whatever it's called, he directed Star Trek. Penny Richards used to direct them. Bernie Knowles used to direct them. Harold Lester used to direct them. Harold not left. Harold Lester. What's his bloody name? Peter John, the Canadian chef. What's his name? Dick Lester.

Alan Lawson  2:18:20
Dick Lester. Yes. Yes.

|Geofferey Hermege  2:18:22
So I had the chance of working with lots and lots of cameramen, lots and lots of directors, on the the lower levels of features. But as I say, I've managed to keep going through the years and been all over the world at various places. As I say, forgotten about most of them. But you know,

Alan Lawson  2:18:42
which which of the which of the directors you know in on the feature side I mean will take in television series in that if you like has impressed you the most.

|Geofferey Hermege  2:19:03
I think, strange enough, the man that impressed me most as a as a a film maker, a poem or something who really was Otto Preminger, and I went out not funnily enough on the camera crew, but on the sort of publicity for on Exodus and seeing directors at work, I think Otto Preminger should impress me more than anybody. Yeah, he was a man I happen to get on with well, but ruthless, but a great man who again knew exactly what he wanted, and that is the one thing I value in directors, I've worked with, and again, this would be terrible to name them. Certainly, documentary, whereas worldwide, I'd work with directors who, when you thought you'd finish work, would then say, "Ah, now I'm a bit-they're uncertain." They'd want to shoot everything five ways to cover themselves, and that, to me, is the mark to my mind of a really bad director. Because I did work worldwide on a lot of films because I was again only acting and operator for the most time with the Ronnie Ansker, who was then the the cameraman there, and working with their directors, Jimmy Hill was one. Now that's another thing. And also, I did worked on two pictures for Children's Film Federation with Henry Geddes, who was the was the then the head. But I I sort of in those days sort of doubled up as sort of second unit camera and operator. One was called Eagle Rock, which was the one we made in the Lake District. With I doubled up the Johnny Cockion on that one, and also I've done. Oh, by the way, I've done quite a lot for American World of Sport.

Alan Lawson  2:20:57
Oh yes, I

|Geofferey Hermege  2:20:58
did there one in Scotland for them, and one which these American worlds for. I don't think they even had titles. I did one in there, one in Scotland, one in Africa for them on the big game. And oh gosh, what others were out there? They're out there. You know, something starts coming back to you. All the the ones you you you think through. Sometimes you go through you know old bags of stills. Yes. Good God, I've just suddenly remembered I've done that one. But honestly, I I could go on for hours. But it's really no. As I say, my I don't. I'm not a bullshitter. I've been making claims. I just can only say that since 1937, I have been working continuously on all aspects in the film business, doubling up in all these different jobs, and as such, I've enjoyed it, and it's enabled me to have a very wide knowledge of the film business, very wide knowledge of technology and things like that, and it means that nowadays I can work on things from BKS and you know work for the Guild of British Cameramen and you know work on committees and things because I happen to know the the pattern can still be of some use although with modern pop films or the other I've rather lost my value as I mean I can't go out and sort of do pop promos or anything like that and frankly on on features nowadays that the work is so small that and you know there's a handful of people working on it and so I've abandoned that. I mean, my agents abandoned it, but anyway, it's all in the past. What the hell? Thank you, Jane.