Page 24 - CR31R.pdf

Peter Wagstaff

Production Manager – Cine Service

An interview by Denzil Howson.

Peter, when was Cine Service founded? and colour, but they weren’t processed in colour, just black
Cine Service was started in 1948 by Vern Wagstaff, and a and white.
fellow called Jack Keane. Vern started as a Civil Engineer,
trained in Bendigo as a young bloke and then he started at Were the printers imported machines or home-grown?
Jolimont Railway Yards working on steam trains and worked There were some home-grown. There was the ‘Depue’, which
his way up to the Department of Agriculture where they set up was the very first one. That machine was a French machine, I
a film unit back in the early forties and during the war years think the ‘Depue’. The processing racks and tanks are all
with a fellow called Jack Keane. So in 1948, together with home-grown, and amplifiers and some of the printing
Jack’s help they started Cine Service which is a processing equipment was ratted and home-made. Vern used to borrow a
laboratory in a small production company at 368 Post Office lot of equipment and look at it, and being an engineer he could
Place, which is Little Bourke Street, just up from Elizabeth Street. draw it up, and then copy it later on. He knew engineers with
workshops and where he lived in Kew he had a workshop next
Did you have film processing facilities in that premises? door. A doctor owned a huge workshop with lathes, spinning
Well, in those days they did. They were sort of, what they call machines and drill presses.
rack and tank, which were like big wooden farm gates with
film strung around them and dipped into chemical tanks, Sounds rather ominous for a doctor to have all that
which were sort of like developer fixer and water, they were equipment.
mechanically spaced up and down inside chemicals and then Well, in those days doctors were famous photographers and
after that they were taken out and rotated on a very large drum engineers, and they had the money, I suppose, for what we’re
which was spun by an electric motor and that was sort of like saying, in those days. But he spent till three or four o’clock in
photographic lamps heating the air to dry the film. I think they the morning making the equipment to take to Cine Service the
had printers in those days that were printing in black and white next day.

Above: Vern Wagstaff (sound recordist) and Geoff Thompson So in other words you used imported equipment as a
(cameraman) in front of the Cine Service TV productions van, 1956. research item that you could research the design?
Photo: Documentation Collection, ScreenSound Australia. Well, as a child I used to see machines in pieces all over the

24 Spring 2001 CINEMARECORD