This is part of an interview Series for the National Film and Sound Archive Aural History Programme by John Fife.
My name is John Fife (JF) and I have with me Morrie Pilens (MP).
MP: Well, I started out. I got a job as a chief cameraman on a recommendation because I was working *for ATN7, working for Mark Tranter and Paul Bricknell who was working for Tranter…. Blah blah blah! Anyway, it was by reputation and I got an offer of a job.
I was asked what sort of job I want and I said chief cameraman. They said okay, fine. So my job was to recommend what equipment a cameraman will use. So being a thrifty sort of man (at that stage, anyway) – there wasn’t much choice. Oh, you could have bought a Bolex and a Pathe, but they would last a month.
JF: Why?
MP: They’re delicate little cameras and you’ve got to treat them like eggs.
JF: So what was that Pathe camera like?
MP: It was an excellent bloody camera in the hands of a cinematographer. Not a news cameraman! Because they had a very very delicate little reflex mirror in it, that would shatter if you even breathe on *it. Otherwise it was a beautiful camera. I had one. I filmed Chucker Mecliffe? with it. Because I could stop the shutter down to the two hundred and fiftieth of a second.
JF: This is a 16 mil…
MP: 16 mil, yeah. But to use it for news, it would not last a week.
jF: And the Bolex you said didn’t work as well?
MP: the Bolex was again an excellent camera for an amateur. But to use it for news it was just too delicate. So personally I chose the Bell and Howell, which was designed as a combat camera for the Yanks anyway. DR70’s… and I think we had 4 Bell and Howells, and 2 Arriflex’s. This was an expensive reflex camera and I specifically fitted them both with Schneider lenses, thinking colour is coming and I want the best lens that I can get hold of for quality’s sake.
JF: Let’s look at the Bell and Howell for a sec. What were the features?
MP: Bell and Howell was spring driven, three turrets for lenses and a hundred foot load/long?.
JF: Heavy?
MP: Yes, heavy. But you can fight your way out of trouble! You can use it as a sledge hammer to get through a riot. Which I have used to get still photographers out of my way! Just accidentally dropping it on their shoulder.
JF: So it’s easy to hold and shoot?
MP: It’s easy to hold and shoot. It’s robust and it doesn’t break down. A very reliable combat camera.
JF: 16 mil black and white?
*MP: A 16 mil copy of a 35 mil Imor which is the combat camera originally.
JF: Could it be called sound?
MP: No. Not Bell and Howell, no. But I could.
JF: With your recorder?
MP: (Laughter)
JF: So Bell and Howell. You’ve been using this around 1964?
MP: yes.
JF: How long did it last?
MP: Well, it lasted until tape came in. Because it didn’t break down.
JF: Haven’t I seen news film that had optical sound on it?
MP: Yes.
JF: What was that shot on?
MP: On the Pro600. I bought one. I bought a Pro600 which was a 600 foot magazine, copy of the original studio camera. I bought a hundred foot load CInevoice, and we had an Arriflex magazine – made it so that you could clip an Arrifflex magazine with 400 feet on it. But that was only a single lens – the cinevoice. Or cinemax. Can’t remember!
JF: Right.
MP: Anyway. That was originally 100 foot long sound camera, we converted into a 400 footer.
JF: What year would that be?
MP: That was when we first started. That was already available.
JF: So when you started, you got your Bell and Howell
MP: Bell and Howell, two Arriflex silent cameras, and two sound cameras. That you could go out and put them on a tripod, and do anything.
JF: And they were shooting optical sound?
MP: They were shooting optical sound. The optical sound was great big amplifier that used 6 different types of batteries in it. (chuckle)
JF: In one bit of equipment?
MP: In one bit of equipment, 6 different types of batteries for each – one for the exposure, one for this, one for that, you know. Optical sound on film was exposed in one stripe on the side, and a different exposure was the difference of what asa film you were using. If you were using try x you were exposed less, if you were losing plus x, you were exposed more.
And sound was alright, but it doesn’t have any highs and doesn’t have any lows.
JF: What sort of microphones were you using?
*MP: Just little ones, little hand held things. Um, radio one. RCA? Rcorps radio? Yankees made them, always American.
JF: And always of course in those days, wherever the camera went the microphone went with it, because it’s on a bit of a lead.
MP: Oh crumbs yes, it’s all on a lead, yeah.
JF: No radio microphones
MP: No, the first time I saw a radio mike was when we were up on the hill looking for Holt, and the OB van handed me one.
JF: Oh, right. So they were in then. So those original cameras, you’ve got your Bell and Howell and others. What were the advantages of those others that you mentioned?
MP: Well, they were available at that stage. And as far as I knew – seeing as I chose them – they were all reliable pieces of equipment.
JF: And are they all running the same film stock through?
MP: Oh yes, they’re all running either plus x or try x, this is black and white. Film stock didn’t matter.
JF: But for the film processor… did he have to set the machine?
MP: No. Just adjust the temperature, that’s all.
JF: But how long would it take to change the temperature from one…
MP: From plus x to try x. I don’t think they did actually. I think they used the same processing. Same temperature.
JF: So when did mag stripe come onto the cameras?
MP: I don’t really know the time when that came in. But that opened up a new box of tricks because all of a sudden the amplifiers being 10 or 15kg, turned into a 1 and ½ little box that you could have in front of you.
JF: So it’s obviously built into the camera?
MP: No it’s not, because you have to adapt the camera for it, so you had to put a sound head in the camera, and put a wire in the camera so that you can switch over film. Sound and film, like optical, or magnetic. You have a switch and go one way or the other. But you had to have a unit and sound head put into the camera itself. Which just fitted there under the gate.
JF: So mag strip was a way forward
MP; Oh yes, a great step forwards. Because from then on all of a sudden other cameras were developed. Gaumont developed a camera adaption that they put underneath an Arriflex. ABC had those.
JF; You’re still using cameras when mag strip came in? Are you still using 100 foot or are you up to 400 foot?
MP: No, you can please yourself. You can have a 100 foot magazine, or if they didn’t have any 100 foot magazines… I think one of the companies had a 200 foot magazine which came in 200 foot spool. But *that didn’t last very long. Because willsplit? magazine which was cinema and cinevoice… you can, put 400 feet film in the front magazine, and 20 foot of spool in the back part of magazine because they’re separate things. And if you shoot 100 feet of film, say for instance you go and shoot cricket, and you shoot 100 feet of film. And there’s nothing on it, you’ve just wasted it. So you take that out, chuck it away and put another spool on, put your lid back on and shoot again. You shoot 100 feet of film, you’ve got something, terrific. So you then had to process it. It was convenient, different.
Eventually the best one that came in, the last one was the Arriflex BL which was very very heavy. Then there were a couple of Mitchell conversions which weren’t quite up to scratch. Ha ha, you know why they weren’t up to bloody scratch? Your camera equipment travels in the back of your bloody panel van… And in the back of the panel van you drive and goes rattle tattle tattle. So things get rattled and screws come undone and windows get wobbled out… and there’s always some problem with it because you carry the equipment.
So smartarse me, I put a 4 inch rubber thong in the back of the car, and put cameras on top of it – semi felt on top of it, so the cameras travel on rubber. We had very little trouble in the maintenance of those, less trouble than anybody else.
JF: I’m with you. What kind of lenses are you using on those cameras?
MP: Well, first sound cameras had SOM berthiot which was a French lens, 25 – 70mil which was just a very short zoom. Then Angino came in with lenses which had standard fitting for most of the cameras except for us. (Laughter). Because smartarse bought two Treiss lenses. Which was the Rolls Royce of a lens. I had people ask from the ABC ‘How come the quality’s so good on your film?’ I said ‘Oh, I suppose it’s the processing.’
*So we had two cameras with Treiss lenses. But they weren’t very popular with the cameramen because their action was the other way of Angino. So if you changed from one or the other, it would stuff things up. You’d forget which way things zoom and you’d always have to go a little bit forwards, a little bit backwards, before you’d know where things were going. Otherwise, quality wise it was a top quality reproduction.
JF: And you mentioned before that one of the cameras you bought was in anticipation of colour coming in? Because you thought it would shoot good colour film?
*MP: Yeah, that’s the Treiss lenses.
JF: Oh right, at the beginning.
*MP: Yeah. At the beginning I bought the Arriflexes. They usually came with Taylor and Hopkins lenses which were American lenses, and I requested Schneider German lenses which were far better quality – and that was in contemplation of colour.
JF: So how much notion did you have in your mind that colour was on the way in?
MP: Oh, they were talking about colour for years. And we knew it would eventually come in. When it would come in, who knows. Then all of a sudden it was in!
JF: Well, so what was the transition like for shooting the news? Did you all of a sudden one night throw out all your black and white cameras?
MP: We didn’t throw our black and white cameras out, we threw our black and white film out.
JF: Oh right, of course.
MP: From tomorrow, we’re switching over to colour. So whatever you’ve got there it’s obsolete. And then the colour film changed about three times. The processing of colour film changed about three times. Again, there was the ‘As from tomorrow, we don’t use this type of film any more.’ Out. If you use this type of film – accidentally put it through the processing – which we had a couple of times, some twit forgot about it and used some stock he had in the car or what have you! It was a different temperature – a hotter temperature. And the emulsion would melt off and you’d have completely clear film coming up, and all the chemicals would be completely contaminated.
JF: Then you have to clean out the bath!
MP: You’ve got to chuck everything out and start completely from scratch. That happened twice.
JF: What were the advantages? Those film stocks, each time there was an improvement, what was the improvement?
MP: The colour temperature, the warmth of the film. The early Kodachromes and Ectachromes were harsh, there was no warm tone transition. Your shadows weren’t grey, they were either black or red. So each time they had a new improved emulsion you just had to shoot it differently, and correct it with filters. And then of course you had film that you can use for daylight and film that you can use for night time. The Tungsten. And each time you had to change it. So they developed a film that you didn’t, that all you had to do was put a filter in front of it. You either use Tungsten or daylight. If it’s a Tungsten *film and you use it for daylight, you put a Rattan 85 filter on, and then later on next emulsion was 85B which was nice beautiful graduated change. Film was developed – today’s film is absolutely superb.
JF: The news cameraman besides having that news sense, also had to have an artistic ability to recognise how to use his equipment.
MP: Yes of course. You could change your colour temperature, you can use split filter that’s got two values for effects. Oh yeah, you had to know your emulsion and how to use it. And you still had to know how to use your filters. Basically you did have to know your trade before you use it.
JF: And in fact, the progression was you didn’t just become a news cameraman did you? You had assistants to help you.
MP: Oh yeah, you had assistants. From the beginning we didn’t have assistants because we couldn’t afford them – didn’t need them anyway. And when assistants came in, they just served their apprenticeship.
JF: It was a good training ground?
MP: Oh, crumbs was it ever. A very good training ground for assistants.
JF: What about lights? What kind of lights did you use?
MP: Well, usually you have three lights. I very seldom used three lights, I mostly used two lights. Because basically your light source – you’re not doing portrait photography – you shouldn’t use photography. Which means in the daylight you would have one light source, and that is the sun. With the lights, if you just had one light you’d have a harsh shadow behind the subject. So you’d use one light to light a person’s face, and the other light diffused the background so that it looks a little more pleasing. But you’re not modulating to the point where you’re showing – like in portrait photography where you have screens … in a studio for instance they shoot through gauze etc, all sorts of tricks. You don’t have time for that with the news.
JF: So you often had a light just on your camera?
MP: Oh yes. You just have one light on the camera run by battery.
JF: The same battery that’s running the camera?
MP: Oh crumbs no. That’ll be flat in about 30 seconds! I told you my story about me and Bob Menzies, with my four lights – you screw it onto the camera and you’ve got it square, bang and you’ve got one source of light and you’re right.
Now later on we had battery driven lights with a small 12 volt battery and a little head that you clipped on top of the camera, and you just switched that on when you wanted it.
JF: Where was the battery pack kept?
MP: On your back. You carried it.
JF: So you’ve got a pack somewhere on your body with the batteries for your lights…
MP: Yes, and you have a camera – late cameras had batteries built in – but the early cameras you had to carry your batteries around in a little box. Plus you had a camera battery, you had an amplifier, you had a camera, you had lights and you had a light battery.
JF: You also would have lights eventually that ran off electricity. What kind of lights were they – what capacity did they have to light up a press conference?
MP: I think they were about a thousand watts. Before that they had flood lights from the very beginning. Little 500 flood globes. They were bloody dangerous! You’d be in the middle of a press conference and all of a sudden ‘POOFFF!’ (Laughter).
JF: I’ve seen one of those go – One went behind Bob Hawke once! And they burn hot!!
MP: Oh they burn hot alright. Yeah. Very hot.
JF: You mentioned the CP16. That was probably the last of the news cameras?
MP: That was the last of the news cameras. First we started with reflex – actually a non reflex – with a view finder going through the lens in front before you get to the film, and the last was a through the lens viewing which means you had a mirror in there and you saw exactly what you were filming and there was an instant start. There was no eauuuuuuwwwwwwww – just an instant start when you click the button. Beautiful. Absolutely beautiful for news. It was perfect.
JF: We sometimes look at progress and say well we haven’t really moved forward here. We’ve got a bit of new equipment but it’s not as good as the last… but was the CP16 as good as it ever got from a news cameraman’s point of view?
MP: Well, yes. Well, they still worked on others.. The CP16 was a bit clumsy to carry because you had to carry it virtually in front of you.
Later on they developed cameras with a magazine on the bottom instead of on the top, and it went on your shoulder so it was easier and closer to your face, plus lower profile up the top. Because if you’re in a situation where somebody shoots at you and you have a great big profile with mickey mouse ears coming off the top, you cop it. So you had to lower the profile of the camera which Arriflex has done by now, and it’s a different story. Like horses for courses. Whatever you want the camera for really. But CP16 was, as far as I was concerned (being a dinosaur!) as good as I ever wanted a camera to be for news coverage.
JF: It’s really brought us all that journey hasn’t it. From black and white to colour.
MP: Silent, black and white, double perforated little noisy cameras going – ohhh – advance to a movie camera that’s silent, easy to handle…
JF: The camera though, I remember the assistants always having to come in and fill up the magazines.
MP: Yes. The best thing was when we were running a hundred foot spools on cameras, and we usually had 600 feet of film come in, in the can. So we just lock up an assistant in the darkroom to break it up into hundred foot spools. So he just stays there for half the day! (Laughter). Hard time!
But they had to see. Look, like any trade you have to have a discipline. You have to have certain things that you do a certain way. And that certain way has to be shown to you. Once you learn how to do it certain way, once you’re disciplined enough and you can do it with your eyes shut, then you can be as arty farty as you want. But as long as you have the basics, you can’t go wrong. So that’s what the assistant has to have, especially for news.
JF: You had to be an assistant for a fortnight before you got your hands on a camera. You were an assistant for a long time..
MP: All depends on the guys you know. I used to have boys that were alert and good, and we’d go out on the job… I remember going out on one particular job with an assistant. He’s shooting all the car racing stuff you know. Henderson was it? Dean Henderson went out on the job and there was a stack on the freeway somewhere. We arrive there, get out, he brings in the camera and gives it to me. I said ‘Okay mate, you shoot it.’
‘WHAT?’
‘Go on, shoot it.’ Just pack him off! (Laughter).
I remember young Terry Carlyon. He’s doing well now. I was in Yallourn and something going on *with the power station. I was there. Young Andy Carroll was the journalist. The night before we did some filming, had dinner and got stuck into the grog. It was pretty windy in the morning, rotten bloody weather. We were going to book the plane to do some aerials. So we get up to the airport and I give Terry the camera and say ‘Oh fine, you go and do the aerials!’ And he did it! He did it. He was sick but he did it! He remembers.
You have to be ready for any situation, and that’s how I train them.
JF: Yeah. And I think they probably remember you for that as well.
MP: Oh shit yeah. And for things I do deliberately just to emphasise a point. Doesn’t matter what happens – I couldn’t care less what goes on. You first get your pictures. After that you can do what you want. If you can’t do that forget it, go and get another job.
They did it to me you know!
JF: You got a tough time?
MP: Oh shit yeah. On 35 mil, magazines and tripods and car batteries and oh shit.
JF: The tripod’s never gotten lighter has it?
MP: No. It can’t because you need solid base for it, you know.
JF: Bet it’s a good weapon to have going through a crowd!
MP: No, not really. A camera – a Bell and Howell is a better weapon! I used to have a Bell and Howell with a coach bolt screwed under it and I used to hold onto it. It was an ideal thing. You’d film it and if come a journalist or still photographer – some of those Pommies who came in for the Royal tour, they didn’t give a stuff who was behind them, you know. So they’re right in front of us – and you’ve got this camera down there and you’ve got a coach bolt sticking out, and you just go “OOMPH” down here between the shoulder blades. ‘Oh, sorry mate!’ (Laughter). But you can’t do it with another camera. Got to do it with a Bell and Howell.
JF: That may be why you loved it so much?
MP: Yeah, it was good. And why nobody else liked it was because you had to adjust your focus by feet, *and you had to adjust your aperture. And you had to adjust your parallex? Because if you change the distance that you’re filming, you’re slightly one sided. So you have to adjust the parallex to bring you straight, square bang. Which means you had to have one, two, three, four things to think when you’re filming. With a reflex camera you don’t have to worry about all that. It’s all there.
JF: What you see is what you get.
MP: Yeah. Except your aperture. After a while you can judge your aperture by experience to what to go for.
JF: How did you maintain your gear when you were on the road – if anything went wrong?
MP: Nothing ever did go bloody wrong because we didn’t have… well, I did have some problem with the sound gear when I was working for 7, because nobody ever cleaned it or maintained it. That was in Melbourne when I was using their gear. I remember I was covering the Voyager disaster.
Geoff Raymond and I got packed off by John Maher to cover the Voyager. And we arrived in Sydney, the bloody thing. The batteries wouldn’t work and the contact wouldn’t work and this wouldn’t work. I got a hold of a length of flex which I stripped it apart and then just all sorts of connections… I got it, I got it myself! But it was effort.
I came home and had a go at the people up at 7 because, even then, that was just a back yard for the *Herald? At channel 7. ‘Oh, I don’t want to know about that.’ Stuart Lake was news editor, he was ex cadet officer, and had no idea. And Mike Bradshaw was film department. He knew what he was doing but he couldn’t care less about news you see. It’s a funny sort of a situation you see. Because there’s always been a little bit of a friction between production department and news department. Because news department always wants to run its own race the way they want. They have to. Because they can’t fart arse around. And production department always thinks ‘we’re the best. We don’t do things like that. Oh, news. Oh, rough.’ You know. There’s always been a bit of a friction in it. Always has been, always will be.
JF: Yeah, kind of… I wouldn’t say they were cowboys in news, but they’re a different breed.
MP: Oh yeah. Oh there are a few cowboys there too. Oh there are a few cowboys. Yeah! But they’re a different breed altogether. But they’ve got a different mentality. Because you go out somewhere, and things you see. You see dead bodies and you see this and you see that. You can’t just all of a sudden become a compassionate human being. Because you recording this, you a cameraman, you’ve got pictures to take. You can’t say ‘Oh, gee whiz, look at that.’ Otherwise forget it, get another job. Sooner or later you learn that you are just stringer. Once the camera comes up you are neutral, it doesn’t matter what happens. As far as I’m concerned anyway. The only thing that upsets me is smell.
JF: Yeah?
MP: If I sniff something that stinks badly, I’m sick. I can’t do a thing.
JF: And a body would have done that to you, in its time?
MP: Oh a few bodies have done that to me, yeah. Spew and then take some more pictures.
JF: But the image…?
MP: The image, nothing. I could sit here and watch your head cut off and it wouldn’t mean a thing if I was filming it.
JF: But if you weren’t filming it?
MP: Then I would think ‘Oh, shit!’
Pause.
JF: How would you go travelling with your magazines and that when you were travelling up the bush?
MP: Oh we had a black bag.
JF: How did that work?
MP: Oh easy, just put your magazine in the black bag, put your two hands in there and fiddle around – unload your magazine, reload your magazine…. What I used to do to my assistants in the city…
I had to take the film out of the magazine to send back to the studio, and they are working on the bonnet with hands on the magazine. So I would come from behind and pull their pants halfway down their bums! They can’t get their hands out.
JF: Oh right. So you’re in the middle of Swanston St…
MP: I did a couple of them, yeah. (Laughter). ‘You bastard!’ Yeah.
JF: It’s been a good life?
MP: Oh, I liked it! It suited me fine. It just suited me fine.
Actually, I always wanted to be nothing else but a news cameraman. From waaaaaaaaay back when I was sitting behind the screen and watching the movies. A couple of news cameramen competing in China. Competing for the news, and competing for the girl – they’re good friends, but they’re still competing. And I thought ‘shit, you know, I’d love to do that. I’d love to do that.’