Page 26 - CR31R.pdf

from there, some of them came from Crawfords, after junior So, you were virtually concerned primarily with video tape
cadetships and stuff. Well, we had Mike Reed and Ray Daley these days?
as editors through here, and Gary Wapshott came here. He Most of the productions here now are quite industrial or
started in the lab in a white-coat processing film, and now he’s corporate video productions as such that film is a little bit
one of Sydney’s top cinematographers and earns about five expensive to use on most of them. We’ve only stopped
thousand dollars a day. John Dixon was affiliated with us here. shooting film three years ago.
He’s a screen writer and one of the producers on The Man
From Snowy River series films and he’s produced corporate So, that film that you would have been shooting three years
videos and documentaries around the world and he’s a very ago would have been processed at another lab?
good writer. He started in Post Office Place as one of the staff We had it processed at Victorian Film Laboratories, and now
editors up there, and has a fairly well-know name now. A lot Cinevex in Elsternwick, which is about the last remaining
of the people have been through, who are still in the industry professional laboratory in Victoria.
and very well known they were using it as training grounds.
What happened to Victorian Film Labs?
So would it be fair to say that some of them graduated Victorian Film Labs were taken over by AAV some years ago
from the purely amateur ranks? and partly shipped down here in South Melbourne to the AAV
Well absolutely, ’cause in those days film schools weren’t like office which left the processing machine and messy chemical
they were today. There was only probably Melbourne Uni and part back in Hawthorn. After a while, the cost of, well, getting
Melbourne Tech, and probably a couple of other ones, which a license to use such chemicals in a new building and building
one of the teachers used to come down here and I’d do his economically friendly machines as they’re called would cost
editing for him when I was a kid anyway so I didn’t start from several million dollars and AAV decided to close the operation
there. I sort of knew just as much as him, I was such an eager which finished VFL.
young man. A lot of people didn’t have training. They started
from scratch here in the lab or something, or running cables. I think VFL in Guest Street Hawthorn had quite a large
section of the building. The building on the other side of
Or as “gofors”. the road devoted to sound recording facilities.
“Gofors” sort of thing. It did, yes.

Go for this and go for that. How have the technical A gentleman called Wally Shaw was looking after that.
facilities and operator expertise of the people working in Wally Shaw was there for years, and Peter Lord in the early
the labs changed over say the last forty or fifty years, since days was a partner in Victorian Film Labs, with Peter Watson
for instance, since television began. and he really ran the optical and the sound side of it and Wally
Well it has actually. I mean seeing the laboratory back, as a Shaw worked there with him and they had a rather large setup
young man in Post Office Place with rack and tank which was for sound recording, magnetic optical sound recording.
chemicals spilling all over the place. You’re really working
racks in chemical tanks with your hands, and you know those That’s right, yes. A huge machine that occupied nearly the
white sort of foam growing out of black hand painted walls entire room, from memory.
and sumps full of evil chemicals and old printers grinding and Yes. I used to see Peter in that room, the “room of gloom” I
‘canite’ walls and people screaming out “shit” regularly. So I used to call it, with headphones on, and old controls.
think they’re really much more streamlined nowadays with
automation, machines are much smaller, the buildings are Yes, wheels madly turning and tapes flopping around
much designed specifically for chemical use where chemicals you’d never think you’d get anything out of it but it
are piped in and used and piped out again and stored cleanly, seemed to work alright.
and technicians are trained specifically to start with. It’s a Yes. Wally was there years. Wally went out to be a freelance
much smoother more professional operation, I suppose you’d sound recordist for years and years on, but Wally only died a
call it nowadays. little while ago.

Do you still have those sort of processing facilities here at Did he? Well he may not have died because I saw him
your premises in South Melbourne? about three weeks ago.
No. Cine Service closed their laboratory down probably Oh, he’s fine then. I’d better not write him off yet then!
completely about fifteen years ago. We weren’t going to go on
with building bigger than 35mm machines. Labs were changing Unfortunately, Wally is not terribly well, he’s got some
over the new technology, automatic processing machines were muscular condition which virtually tends to turn him into
at probably about Stage 3 of that. So Vern decided at his age not someone sitting in a wheelchair, which is unfortunate, but
to be involved in all that, and closed the labs. Then we really of course he was the first sound man or the sound engineer,
went into more video duplication and transferring of domestic the top sound engineer for Channel Nine, when Channel
movies, stuff that replaced the laboratory and electrical side, Nine began in 1956. Wally set up the sound equipment out
and sunk a bit more back into production. at Bendigo Street there.

26 Spring 2001 CINEMARECORD