When we had to plan studio productions, we had obviously nice plans drawn up of where
the sets were going to be placed in the studios. This is a plan of the big studio at Riverside
on a quarter inch scale, and we would have a model made to show the director and producer
and lighting what the thing was generally going to look like and how it was all going
to work. And then the director would go home with the floor plan and work out where he
was going to put the cameras and booms for all the scenes he knew he had to shoot. Sometimes
he'd only need one camera on a scene, and sometimes he'd need four. And the cameras
all came from outlets on the walls. And there were outlets on every wall, and outlets also,
as here, for the power to power the crane. And the director had to work out, and it was
trial and error, he would get a paper clip and a piece of string which was attached to
a little plastic cutout of the actual size in the studio of each of the camera, pieces
of camera equipment, and he would go around the studio in the running order that the thing
was to be shot, working out where he would need his cameras and where they would have
to leave a set and go across to another set, while another camera might have to go from
there across to here. And it was terribly important that he shouldn't get the cables
crossed, because if he did, the camera would never get there. Sometimes it was possible,
and it did happen, that a couple of camera cable wallers would come along and lift the
cable up and let a camera go underneath. And then, of course, it would be necessary for
him to go back later. And he'd go right through the show like this, and then when it came
to a planning meeting, the model would be shown to everybody and the plan would be on
the table, and the director would go through and take everyone through the whole plan of
the production, so everybody knew exactly what was going to happen on the day.