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Martin, 1964: 28–9) The montage sequence in The Middle Men may have been one of the first attempts to incorporate a form of Eisensteinian montage into television drama – Kennedy Martin also acknowledged the influence of Eisenstein’s montage theories in ‘Nats Go Home’ – but to attempt to achieve this in a live studio drama illustrates the aesthetic ambition of the production. Whether the sequence was actually realised on the day of transmission is a matter for conjecture. It is possible that during the course of the live broadcast the camera operators and vision mixer
crew, and the tendency for the vision mixer to cut between shots on actors’ delivery of their lines –something that went again Teague’s directorial instincts: 230 For me, it’s about: feel that emotion –go when you want to know what the person’s saying –and this goes against everything that these people have been trained [in] … So I’m trying to do this in … forty-eight hours, trying to convince these people: ‘It’s going to work, it’s going to work.’ And I tell you it was an uphill struggle. It really was, purely because they were, like: ‘But this is the way we
film cost a lot in the time overrun. He did not want to use the standard television close-up technique which results in most close-ups in any confrontation between characters being filmed three-quarter face in angled shots and instantly edited by the vision-mixer. Anderson’s full-face close-ups inevitably meant that the
live recording we were living dangerously.35 White’s memory of Armchair Mystery Theatre as fast-paced and edgy is confirmed by close analysis of the available episodes of the series, and particularly the teleplay Man and Mirror written by Robert Muller and directed by Patrick Dromgoole, a Victorian domestic psychodrama. This episode called on the vision mixer or ‘switcher’ to create striking extended montages of superimposed images in order to produce an impressionist representation of the spiralling madness of one of its central characters. In line with Susan
working closely with actors in the rehearsal rooms, and the technician, planning camera moves prior to entering the studio, and separated from the cast on the day of transmission. At this point in time direction for studio television bore little resemblance to film, due to the fact that editing took place during the performance 49 rather than in post-production; the vision mixer would cut between cameras in real time according to the director’s carefully prepared plan. Although several BBC television directors, including George More O’Ferrall and Michael Barry, had
according to the sets that were erected in the studio, rather than in strict story order, scenes would still have to be played in their entirety, and editing would take place ‘live’, the vision mixer cutting between cameras as the performance took place. This distinction continued to mark television studio drama apart from single camera film production, where scenes could be performed in sections and later pieced together in post-production. Studio work for ‘The Fourth Horseman’ began with eight hours of camera rehearsal at Television Centre on Tuesday 18 February 1975