This is part of an interview Series for the National Film and Sound Archive Aural History Programme.
My name is John Fife (JF) and I have with me Morrie Pilens (MP).
JF: I want to just go back to those very early days. You said to me before that channel 0 originally had its beginnings in Swanston St, and then right from day 1 of broadcasting were they out at their studios in Nunawading?
MP: No, from day 1 broadcasting we were broadcasting from the tower. On the top of the hill. Well, WE were – don’t know about the rest of it. We had music playing – beautiful music, which was rating *the pants off everybody else. And we did all stories which I filmed and Stan Harder? edited, and we had two Steinbecks (editing machine) which are machines that replay film, synchronised up at the rooms up at the tower, and who stand by and make sure we press two buttons at the same time, one for sound and one for pictures. And that was the first transmissions for channel 0.
JF: Have you got a camera pointed at the screen of the…?
*MP: Yes, your camera’s pointed at the straight top on? And the Steinbeck and you’re switching on two Steinbeck’s at the same time. One for sound, one for vision.
JF: These were kind of like a test broadcast?
MP: Yeah, all this is in between test pattern. Yeah. It might not work! It’s been done before – well, I don’t know if it’s been done before but we did it! Actually I did similar thing transmitting thing from Hobart. We went there for some sort of sports meeting, and I did the same thing with TCN, VC6 or *something… with Tony Dougherty? and similar type. He had a mirror to look back so he could read the prompts as well!
Laughter.
MP: Ah, I tell you what. It was good fun. You could do it, you know? You couldn’t imagine today, that that sort of thing could happen. You couldn’t actually do it today – well, I wouldn’t know how. But then, I did. So we did it.
JF: And there’s a spirit of adventure.
MP: Oh yeah. If you don’t try, you won’t succeed. But we tried. And thought, alright.
Another one was when William De L’Isle, our governor, arrived by ship, and there was a big parade in front of the ship that had arrived, and things were going on. It was a windy day and the plume blew off his hat and what have you. ABC news was direct telecasting. And they say ‘Oh, I wonder how we can get clips of that for the news. We just can’t get it, there’s no possibility of taking out the tape of the direct telecast and putting it on the news.’
I said ‘Yes you can!’
They said ‘How can you do it?’
I said ‘I’ll show you.’
So I got an Arrifflex and I got them to play the incident back on the monitor. And I got a two shilling *piece, controlling the movement of the motor so that the 50 cycle bar(?) stays in one place. And we had 60 seconds of news of his plume blowing away! You can’t do that today, can you?
JF: No.
MP: But this is like fun and games.
JF: Those early days in the channel 0 newsroom, when it very started, almost from day 1 – what was the set up? What was the atmosphere? What did people do? What was the daily routine?
*MP: Well it was interesting because Ian McFarlane? was the news editor, and I helped him select – he used to ask me whether there was any journalists on the road that were worthwhile. So there was a couple of guys that I thought were good on their own, so we collected those. The rest of them came from other channels.
The atmosphere was such that we could beat them. We knew, we thrash all this old fashioned crap and restrictions behind us! Like restrictions at channel 7 and the mucking around at channel 9 – actually, the channel 9 newsroom wasn’t bad, they had some good guys there. And the feeling was really terrific. We can do it.
JF: Why were the others restricted, what was their problem?
MP: Well, one problem was belonging to The Age, and the other was belonging to The Herald. The Herald was basically dictating the news service. If the Herald didn’t know, the newsroom didn’t know. And channel 9 had old Packer – the real old Packer (Sir Frank Packer) – he was running the place. And he was running it with a whip and a chair. So whatever was said was done. So were the only ones with no newspapers to dictate to us, no radio stations to tell us what to do.
It was good from beginning, it was fantastic.
It was a bit hard to collect news because we didn’t have the backing of those organisations, but we got familiar and friendly with some of the radio stations which means we pick up local stuff from them and we were doing very well actually.
JF: So you’re free really to do what you want to be doing, but where were the stories coming from? These days it’s often dictated…
MP: Handouts
JF: Yeah, handouts and manipulated, but, I mean, you’d have a telex service I guess?
MP: Oh yeah, telex service, we monitored the police radio, I asked and got installed a high power radio set, we were listening to overseas news. But (mimics whingers)’It’s too much bloody trouble, you got to tune in, find this…’
The facility to receive and listen was there. But most of the time the patience and the willingness wasn’t *so much. Basically we were picking up things from, you know, listening to typhoon? from the amateur readers, amateur bands… if something happens.
JF: And you’d be getting press releases coming in?
MP: Oh yeah, press releases came in all the time. And by telephone, and by mail and you know. That’s the regular things, you only have to sit it out.
JF: And so the original news bulletins in the very early days…
MP: Oh, God forbid! Oh shit. There was an hour’s bulletin, of two bloody news readers standing up and reading news! They discarded that eventually. That was a disaster.
JF: That was channel 0’s first attempt at news?
MP: Yeah. Two guys standing in front of a lectern reading news and then film comes in between. But for an hour!
JF: And was the news service 5 days a week or was it a seven day operation?
MP: it was 7 day a week. I think it was cut down on Saturdays and Sundays, because Saturday was sport and you film highlights of footy on 400 feet of film.
Chuckles.
JF: So you were allowed to just go in and film an AFL game?
MP: Oh yeah, no problem, yeah.
JF: No rights restrictions?
MP: No rights restrictions. If you’ve got a film camera you can do anything! Just walk in and do what you want.
JF: I guess that meant with any sport then, you could go in and film? Cricket, tennis.
MP: Yes, I think there is something that says you’re allowed to use a certain amount, a certain length for the news. But I’ll tell you a nice little story about football. This is going back to ATN7 Sydney.
Sydney rings me up and wants the finals of the Melbourne footy. So I write a letter to Jack Hamilton. Back comes the letter, says no. So I go into the office. I say, ‘Look Mr Hamilton, I represent ATN7 Sydney. Sydney wants highlights, whatever I can get on 100 feet of film of the final football game.’
He says ‘No. You’re not covering in the week, you’re not getting anything.’
JF: So what, he felt that you should be covering football..?
MP: …right through the week, you know. And if you’re not doing that, no, forget it. You’re not going to just come and pick the eyes out of it.
And I said to him ‘Look Mr Hamilton, with due respect, I need it, I have to have it, and I am going to have it.’
He looked at me and said ‘Okay, if you can get in I won’t chuck you out.’
And I said fine, okay.
Up comes Saturday, there’s me with a tripod on my back and a camera in my bag, and the other Bell and Howell in my hand and I walk up to the gate. Up til then if you had a camera they just let you in.
‘No ticket? Sorry, can’t come in.’
So I walked to the next gate. Same. ‘No.’
I tried half a dozen gates and thought ‘Shit, what the bloody hell. How am I going to get this?’
*And I’m just up the front when a famber schneip? arrives – a black bloody limousine, and out comes Bob Menzies. And from the stadium side, the big roller doors are going wobble wobble wobble (Morrie makes this noise much more eloquently than I can write it), and Hamilton and his cohorts come to greet Menzies outside.
See, he’s too fat to get out through the turnstiles. So I wind up my Bell, lift it up and walk backwards through the door (pretending to film), Hamilton looking at me and smiling, and just shaking his head! I never had any trouble with him since.
Laughter.
JF: So your old mate Bob got you through.
MP: Oh, yeah.
JF: And this is for the Grand Final?
MP: Yes, the Grand Final.
JF: You just can’t walk in there these days.
MP: Oh, you can’t even get past it.
JF: Did you ever use your cunning to get into any other places?
MP: If I needed to. I just can’t recall anything specific. Oh yeah, of course. I’ll give you another one.
*Zara Bates? Libby. Holt’s ex wife married this farmer – big story, she got a cow as a present, and then the wedding’s in the church. Of course, it was closed, nobody there. So I thought, I’ll fix the bastards!
I go home, get changed, get my tuxedo, black tie, the whole bloody big, with a Bell and Howell hidden underneath my armpit, just walking with the rest of the guests and just get myself a seat within about 20 feet of the alter where they’re going to get married, on the aisle side, and I just sit.
And up comes ‘I do’, out comes the camera and goes blirrrrrrrrrrr. Of course, they turn around to see what’s there, and so I’ve got pictures of them looking at me! (laughs) ‘Sorry!’ And off I went!
So, another one like that was ‘Golden Products.’ Similar thing, a guy was here from America, one of the actors that was helping to promote this ‘Golden Products’ bloody thing. We covered it for Dateline. We were running a story about what a sham this was, pyramid type of selling. So I did the same thing. Walked in with Bell and Howell, half way through, filmed what I wanted. I got escorted out! There’s been a couple of things like that.
Another one was a strike at ‘General Motors’. I did the same thing but this time I had a little cassette camera strapped to my belt.
JF: A cassette camera?
MP: Yeah, a little 16mm cassette camera slipped onto my belt. It’s one you wind up, so you just flick your coat open and press the button. You’re in the middle of whatever’s going on, you know. But was difficult with silent cameras you know, because they weren’t silent. They were very bloody noisy, silent cameras! They mostly string driven or motor driven – Arriflex was noisy. Was long time before we had a sound camera that wasn’t noisy.
The first portable sound camera that wasn’t noisy was the CP16. Top camera for me.
JF: I’m familiar with that camera, but we’ll have a chat about all the equipment a little later if we can, ‘cos we know that in fact you went through so many generations of equipment. In itself, that’s fascinating.
MP: Well, you know. Once tape came in, and the first lot of tape was great big bloody BK6’s or whatever they call them, connected to a two inch tape recorder which basically two people had to carry, you know. I had one bloke carrying for me, I was filming a coal fire up at Yallourn. And he got home and just dumped the camera in front of the bloody mansion and said ‘Stick it in your arse, I’m not picking this up, I’m not going to kill myself.’ It was just too big.
JF: And that was to record two inch?
MP: Yes, that was to record two inch.
JF: Let’s talk about the equipment a bit later. Going back to the old channel 0 newsroom, you’ve set up your office in the studios out at Nunawading?
MP: Yes, office in the studios. And in front of receptionist on the left hand side was the news editor, then you came into the news room, and the right hand side was the projection room where you viewed your rushes, then you had an open room with desks and typists and journalists. First come, grab whatever seat you can…
JF: So in fact, when film came in off the road and had been developed, you’d all go into that projection room?
*MP: Yeah. We give it to Stan Harder? which was a little bit further down the left, he had a couple of editing machines. So he’d put it on a reel, and everybody gets in. You may have 3 or 4 stories that have just come in off the processing…
JF: Stan Harder, did he do the processing as well?
MP: No not at that stage. It was somebody else. He was just editing.
*You may have 3 or 4 news stories on a reel?. 3 or 4 journalists who have the story will come in with *their clipboards, and they’ll sit and watch the story. Ian Mac Farlane says ‘Oh yeah, we’ll have this and we’ll have that. And we’ll have a bit of this and a bit of that.’ And then they go out, and they have couple of other people that were editing…
JF: So the journalists really hadn’t been much on the story themselves?
MP: Oh no. Oh no. You were very lucky if they went out with you on a gig. Because mainly what happened was the cameraman went out, shot it, and gave them a rough shot list because there was no sound.
JF: So there was no use going out to grab interviews?
MP: No. You couldn’t interview anybody. You could go off and do the shot list, or you can do whatever. Which they did sometimes, they came up and said ‘Can I have a little bit of this, can I…’ and you finish up with 3 or 400 feet of film, but you can’t use 400 feet of film. It’s just not on. So you just have to educate them. That one story at the utmost, hundred feet of film. But they couldn’t get that in their head. Even later, sometimes they come back with 4 rolls of 400 feet of stand ups that you just have to chuck out anyway.
JF: So the cameraman who’s out there, he is in fact – he’s got to grab the whole story rather than have a journo telling him what to do.
MP: Yeah. If it’s a scheduled thing, like a handout or what have you, the journalist would know what it’s all about so he tells the cameraman what the story’s about. Otherwise the cameraman turns up there, has a look around and says ‘Oh yeah, this does sound good’ and okay, fine.
JF: How were you sent out? Did you have your own car?
MP: Oh yes, yes. Each camera crew – I insisted – had their own car and their own equipment.
JF: When you say crew, was that really just a cameraman? A one man band?
MP: One man. He was in charge of the equipment, and he was in charge of the car which he took home. Because he could have been rung up – like me – at three o’clock In the morning. ‘Go and get it boy!’ Everything’s there, he can just go and get it.
JF: So you’re equipped with your Bell and Howell? In your car,
MP: We had the Bell and Howell and also had sound camera. Oricon 100 foot, converted with an Arriflex magazine. Then we had a Pro 600 with an optical amplifier. And that was in certain cars. If there was interview needed you send the cameraman out and send the journalist afterwards, so they can do an interview or whatever.
So camera crew was basically one man.
JF: And he had a radio telephone in the car?
MP: He had a radio in the car, yes. Not a telephone just a two way radio.
JF: But I guess the restriction on that was as soon as you got so far out of the city, you couldn’t communicate.
MP: That’s true.
JF: So what did you do to communicate?
MP: You got to the nearest telephone. You can’t carry a can of pigeons can you?
JF: No, we forget that this is before the mobile phone and all that. So, you’re back in the newsroom with your film – you had a fulltime film editor?
MP: Yes, we had three. Three full time on roster.
JF: Most of the bulletin then, would have been someone sitting at a desk and what we would call a voice over?
MP: Yes
JF: That film processing that took on, did channel 0 have their own film lab?
MP: Yes, they built their own film lab.
JF: What about 9 and 7 – did they have their own labs?
MP: No, 9 was still processing at Cinevex and then eventually they did have their own lab. 7 was processing at Victorian Films Labs and I think eventually got their own lab. Because you go to the lab and you give it to them, and you might get your film back tomorrow or the day after because they’re waiting for a full run, they’re not just going to run 800 feet of film for you.
JF: Oh, so channel 0 had an advantage here
MP: Eventually, yeah.
JF: But at the same time they had a disadvantage, because they were further out of the city as well.
MP: Yeah, that was a problem until I got myself friendly with the Horticultural Society and moved into their building, right square bang in the middle of everything. And we even had our own carrier pigeon installed there! So I’d come in and shove a cassette in and ‘send it out to channel 10’.
JF: But when you had film, you had to make that journey…
MP: If you had film you had to make it all the way back to Nunawading.
JF: Down the Burwood highway…
MP: Whichever way you can get there. Say you come back from the country races at Craigieburn, and you want to catch your 6 o’clock bulletin. There’s no speeding, there’s low flying all the way. And eventually again, we had a machine which was called Whiskomat (this is actually an Eastman Viscomat) (black and white processing machine) the forerunner of video tape. You’d put 1200 feet of blank film on it, and film a studio sequence. You might film Magic Circle Club or the Ray Tayler show, and that’s all being photographed on this Viscomat, while you’re transmitting from the studio.
*JF: So it’s kind of like kingy? recording?
*MP: That’s it, like Kingy? recording.
So I came in one day and said ‘Hang on, wait a minute, look. I know it’s your studio, I know it’s your *program (I think it was ian mac farlane). If we can get somebody ready and standing by the Viscomat when I come in with the races filmed from Werribee, we won’t be stretched.’
‘Oh, we can’t do that.’
And then the engineer ‘Oh, we can’t do that, this is not a machine you can be chucking round with the news film and what have you…’
And I said ‘Just try it.’ I got out of that conversation because they weren’t going to have a bar of it, they didn’t want the news to get their fingers in something. And a couple things like that, that I had to fight for, you know.
*And somehow Mac farlane won, we did the test, and every time we had races in the country, or any time we had anything in a hurry in the city, if the machine wasn’t working for the studio, it was standing by for the news. And that’s how we got stuff on air sometimes long before the others.
JF: You take the Viscomat to the venue?
MP: No no no. The Viscomat is in the studio. It’s permanently set up as a machine there. All you do is bring in your 100 feet of film, put it in the Viscomat and process it. Bypass the photographic side. Just use the processing rollers and process your hundred feet, or two hundred feet, or four hundred feet of black and white film with a machine like that, instead of running it through a processing machine – you’re running it through a cream. The Viscomat has a creamy surface – very fast processing.
JF: How fast was the other method? How long would it take you to put through a hundred feet through?
MP: Ooooh.. Twenty minutes, half an hour, by the time you load it through and get it off. This one, you get it through in five minutes.
JF: Right.
MP: Except you had to keep the thing so bloody clean it’s not funny. Because the slightest bit of dirt and you’re stuffed. Like if there was the slightest grain in one of the rollers, all you had was black film with a white stripe in the middle. So machine had to be pristine clean. One of the senior technicians was doing that.
JF: So normally though, you were just bringing in your 16mm film for processing at the lab.
MP: Yeah, If you knew that you were running late, you’d tell them on the way, where you are and they’ll be ready and waiting for you and, you know, just put it through the Viscomat and that’s it.
JF: Yeah. What about stories from interstate, because there was no cable to begin with.
MP: It came by mail to begin with, or it came by – there’s some sort of way of transmission, I think some of them were recorded…. I don’t know!
JF: I’m just thinking, if there was a big fire in Sydney…
MP: Yeah. Get it tomorrow morning.
JF: Okay, so it would come down on a plane?
MP: Yeah.
JF: What about overseas news? Where did you get all those pictures from?
MP: On film. Come by plane or whatever.
JF: So that meant that if something took place in London today…
MP: It might take two days. Might take a day. You get it on the plane – because there was no possibility of transmitting any film through from anywhere, except from your OB van.
JF: Okay, right. So your overseas stories come in on little rolls of film from maybe agencies like Disney or people like that?
MP: Yeah.
JF: What about the OB van. Did you use that much?
MP: Oh that was used quite a bit, for bushfires and all that. Laughs. Ahhhhhhhh yeah, OB van. Ah, Holt went missing. Somehow (this is middle of story), next day after I’ve been filming and …challenged what happened down below, there’s been a big storm and the planks and tree trunks and coconuts and god knows what, strewn all over the beach. Filmed all that. Sent it back. We had midday’s transmission *from the OB van from the top of the hill. There was going to be Barry McQueen and Cyril Jones, going to do the reporting.
And I’m just hanging around there, I’ve done my job and am ready to go back to studio to take film in. And one of the the guys from the OB van points a finger to me and says ‘Quick! Quick, quick.’
I get there and say ‘What’s the matter?’
He says ‘Here, take this’ and he gives me this bloody microphone with a little rat tail down there and I was playing with the rat tail.
I said ‘What the hell is this?’ and he gestures to me that he wants me to talk. I finally get the message that I’ve got a radio mike in my hands – the first time I’ve seen a radio mike – and I have to cover 5 minutes midday transmission to the studio, because my two journalists have gone for lunch!
So, I’m talking my head off. I was friendly with Tony Eagleton because I’ve worked at the ABC and I’ve been able to court him and able to name his name, plus I was able to talk about this flotsam and jetsam that was down on the beach. The planks that were washed up, and the trees and the coconuts. ‘Where the bloody hell is coconut coming from?’ I said! If that’s floating around and hits you on the head, then you’ll know it!
And I get on for five minutes and the guy says ‘Thankyou, terrific.’
I said ‘What was all this about?’ and he said ‘You just did a crossover!’
Laughter.