Highbury Studios (High Definition Films, ATV)

 Highbury studios  were to be found at 96A Highbury New Park, Islington.  They were built originally as a music conservatoire named The Athenaeum in 1882.  The premises included a concert hall and a large rehearsal room.  The main hall was reported to be 85 x 36 x 35ft high.  The small hall was 45ft x 25ft and was at first floor level at the front of the building.  Please note these dimensions!   You will be tested shortly.

The site was converted in 1928 into a recording studio owned by the Metropole Gramophone Co Ltd. Metropole and Piccadilly 78rpm records were cut here and pressed at a factory in Hertford.  The last recording session was in February 1932.  (Many thanks to Hector Hill for this info. )

 

The building was adapted into film studios in 1933 and bought in 1937 by producer/director Maurice J Wilson.  There was one main stage and a smaller one.  The stages were soundproofed and equipped with the RCA recording system.  I have read that for a while Highbury became famous for elaborate special effects spectaculars.

Interestingly, the stages were considerably larger than the original concert hall and rehearsal room, so some rebuilding must have taken place.  The advert below, dated 27th May 1936, has the stages at 110 x 60 x 35ft high and 60 x 30 x 18ft high.  It doesn’t look as though the original concert hall was extended – rather it must have been completely reconstructed as a film stage. Although the length and width of Stage 1 are much greater, interestingly the height was the same as the concert hall – maybe this was a planning restriction.

The original rehearsal room was at first floor level but in the later television years the small studio was referred to as being in the basement so cannot have been the same room.

 

For the two years until the outbreak of war, Highbury was leased to independent film producers making quota quickies and some modestly successful films for the British market.  The studios were barely used during the war – in fact on 20th August 1948 there was a report in the Motherwell Times (no, really) of damage to the studios from a V1 flying bomb on July 2nd, 1944.

After the war the studios were acquired by the Rank Organisation.  The first film to be made by them was Penny and the Pownall Case, in 1948.  I’m sure we all remember that classic.  It is possible that it took that long to resume film making post WWII because bomb damage repairs had to be made.

 

J Arthur Rank established his ‘Company of Youth’ at Highbury.  (He called it that – everybody else called it the Rank Charm School.)  However – it wasn’t at the studios themselves but in a grotty church hall just down the road.  Young men and women were, in theory, trained for stardom – or at least to be stars in Rank’s films.  However, these young people were not picked for their talent but for their looks, and very few actually made it into the movies.  It seemed that, surprisingly to some, you did actually need to have some acting talent in order to be a star.  Names who actually made it included Christopher Lee, Diana Dors and (ahem), Pete Murray – better known to most people as a 1960s disc jockey.

 

Of course, the British film industry went into financial crisis in the late ’40s and Rank were no exception to this. They sold off all their properties except Pinewood.  However, they didn’t entirely give up their interest in Highbury as we shall soon see.

 

What may be surprising to some (it certainly was to me), it seems that in 1948 the BBC were seriously considering purchasing Highbury in order to give them at least one decent sized studio – the two at Ally Pally being relatively small.  As it transpired, they ended up buying Lime Grove – a much larger studio centre – in 1949.  A wise decision in my opinion.

My thanks to Paul Hayes, who was looking through the BBC Written Archives Centre at Caversham and came across a memo from August 1948 wherein the then-Controller of BBC Television refers to “…the acquisition of Highbury.”  He goes on to say how “staff should be ready and trained so that the minimum of time is lost after the Highbury studios become usable for television purposes.”

So clearly, in the summer of 1948, it was looking at least possible, and perhaps even likely, that the BBC were going to take on Highbury – and not, perhaps, as they ultimately did, Lime Grove.  The Controller writing that memo was Norman Collins, who a few years later did end up running Highbury, but not for the BBC.  Interesting that he was already looking at it for television at that point.

 

 

In 1950 the studios were indeed purchased by Norman Collins, with the backing of British Lion, The Rank Organisation and Pye electronics.  Collins was an extraordinary gentleman who began his career in BBC radio.  He was the producer of Dick Barton: Special Agent, and by contrast also created Woman’s Hour.  (No, really.  But then the first presenter was also a man.  Check if you don’t believe me.)  Anyway, Collins became controller of The Light Programme (the original name of Radio 2) and in 1947 controller of the BBC Television Service at the time it was establishing itself.

In 1950 he resigned, with the strong conviction that there should be another television channel to compete with the BBC.  He had visited America on several occasions and had seen that competition between the different channels there was driving up standards.  He thought the BBC was lagging far behind what it ought to be offering the viewing public.  He campaigned loudly on this subject and formed a company called High Definition Films, based at Highbury.  The company was led by Collins and Terence Macnamara – formerly head of the BBC’s Planning and Installation department.  They intended to make television programmes – initially for the export market but always with an eye to becoming actively involved in the new commercial television, whenever that might begin broadcasting.  It was five years before the plans came to fruition.

In the meantime, Collins made some commercials at Highbury – real ones using existing products and showed them to MPs long before they were required for broadcast so they could tell what British ads would look like on the new ITV channel.  Some politicians feared that the commercials would be like the worst kind of brash American ones but clearly Collins plan worked, as permission was eventually granted to create the new channel.

 

 

The technique developed by HDF enabled a 30 minute film to be completed in 48 hours.  Using traditional techniques it would take several days of principal photography followed by a few more days editing.  Sound dubbing would also have to be completed and finally captions, dissolves or any other effects added.  It is easy to see how considerable savings could be made.

The method developed at Highbury was to shoot using three television cameras, which were cut by a vision mixer.  In other words, the usual technique at that time of making television drama.  However, the cameras would have to produce far greater resolution pictures than the normal interlaced 405 lines in order that they could be projected onto a cinema screen.

 

Initial experiments in 1949 in Cambridge using some American-made cameras had proved disastrous but the Pye electronics company were keen to make the system work.  They employed Bill Vinten (inventor of the hydraulic camera pedestal) as DoP – he had lit the 1949 experiments and by May of 1952 a demonstration film had been produced at Highbury.  Others followed, using progressively scanned pictures with around 625 – 834 lines.  According to one account, they settled on a resolution of 650 lines.  This may be true but I have been written to by Maurice Fleischer.  He visited the studios and was told that the resolution was around 1120 lines. 

However, they may indeed have settled on a less adventurous resolution for most of their work.  Some of the ‘filmed’ dramas they ended up making at Highbury were intended for the US television market with its 525-line system rather than for cinemas.  The rest were for the UK with its measly 405 lines.  Perhaps there was not much point in creating pictures that were any sharper.  Nevertheless, the overall resolution of the system was said to be an astonishing 12MHz.

Greater resolutions were tried out – up to 1,500 lines but the advantages were outweighed by the technical limitations of the components in use.  In fact, publicity around the time claimed resolutions far greater – even up to 3,000 lines but this was just wishful thinking.  Still, it is amazing that these cameras could produce pictures as sharp as today’s HD cameras – although of course they were in black and white and suffered the limitations of tubes rather than CCDs.

Today’s HD pictures on broadcast and streamed TV have 1080 lines.  (4K UHD pictures have 2160 lines).  These are the actual lines creating the image.  In the old analogue days, each frame also had a number of ‘spare’ lines that were used to enable the image to scan and synchronise correctly – so  standard definition ‘625 line’  TV actually has only 576 lines of picture information and the ‘405 lines’ of the 1950s had only 377 lines creating the image.  Therefore a resolution of 650 lines of picture information in those days would have been much sharper than people were used to seeing.

The technology was pretty cutting edge for its time.  The cameras used by HDF at Highbury were Pye Photicon types called Photo Electric Stabilised or ‘Pesticon’ (the engineers called them ‘pests’).  Apparently when first switched on, the picture “emerged over several minutes from a mush at the bottom of the screen”.

 

The techniques for recording the television image onto film were also developed.  This ‘telerecording’ technique was in its infancy but Collins’ company worked closely with Pye to produce the best possible final image using a Moy RP30 film camera filming a low gamma, high definition flat glass display monitor.  The field pulses were generated mechanically with a synchronous motor spinning an aluminium disc called ‘The Whirling Spray’ which had a small magnetic insert generating a pulse.  The line frequency was adjusted by a variable master oscillator, set by hand.  The film camera was firmly bolted onto a massive bench to prevent the slightest vibration.  It all sounds like primitive stuff but it was cutting edge technology for its day and most importantly – it worked!

 

High Definition Films was for the first few years little more than an experimental laboratory.  Perhaps surprisingly, despite the obvious success of the system it was never used for its original purpose – making cheap feature films.  Instead, by 1954 the company was going all out producing television plays and other programmes.  Some were exported to the US but the main aim was to produce a valuable ‘bank’ of material for the new ITV companies that would begin broadcasting in a year or two.  The programmes were made far more efficiently than would have been possible using traditional film industry techniques but with picture quality much greater than telerecordings made by the BBC using interlaced 405-line television cameras. 

The plays filmed here starred famous actors of the day such as George Couloris, David Tomlinson and Dora Bryan.  Bill Vinten was invited back to light an extract from  Macbeth  – directed by Orson Welles no less.

 

Unfortunately, most of the 30-minute dramas were not particularly well received in America.  Undaunted, the company pressed on with making series for the anticipated new ITV channel.  Perhaps surprisingly, these are said to have included early recordings of Double Your Money and Take Your Pick for Associated-Rediffusion.  These series later transferred to A-R’s Wembley Studios as soon as they were up and running although Take Your Pick may also have briefly used the Hackney Empire.

The clipping below shows that A-R also used Highbury to make a series of comedy shorts in 1955.  Thanks to Hector Hill for sending it to me.  Of course, since they were recorded on film it is possible that they may still exist somewhere.

 

It seems hard to believe but I have been reliably informed that on at least one occasion the BBC sent a camera crew to Highbury to work on a drama, to be show on BBCtv.  The crew, headed by Colin Clews, also contained cameraman Ron Francis.  Ron mentioned this to Jeremy Hoare, who was interviewing him and he was kind enough to write to me to let me know.  Paul Hayes has also contacted me.  He has discovered that the play was called The Baby and was broadcast on 7th July 1954.

 

Another somewhat unlikely series ‘filmed’ here seems to be Noddy.  Certainly, this was shown regularly in the first months of ATV’s transmission and Guy Caplin has written to me with some interesting info…

 

 

I have lit many shows using HD cameras and almost all have been made using interlaced scan.  (That means that the pictures look like ‘normal’ TV).  I have however, also lit a few sitcoms with the cameras set to progressive scan (or PSF) – to make the end result resemble film.  The cameramen did find it more difficult to hold focus on moving actors but somehow they coped!  However, modern viewfinders are LCD screens which don’t flicker, unlike the CRT viewfinders they had at Highbury.  Working like that every day must indeed have become pretty tiring on the eyes.

 

 

Back in 1955, Norman Collins had hoped to gain an ITV franchise in his own right.  His company – ABDC – did indeed win a franchise.  However, he could not secure the necessary finance so his company was forced to merge with the Grade/Littler ITC company to form the ‘Associated Broadcasting Company’.  Nevertheless, this did mean that the new company already had a TV studio centre up and running – even though it was fitted out with non-standard cameras and equipment.  As it turned out, ATV didn’t use the studio to make any programmes until a year later in October 1956.  From early in 1955, Highbury was busy making ‘filmed’ TV dramas produced by Harry Alan Towers and for the time being it made sense to let him complete his contract to supply this useful programming to the company.

 

 

It has proved quite difficult finding detailed information about the studios themselves.  One couple, Jean and Cliff Ainsworth, joined ATV in 1957 and have given me some information.  They recall one main studio (stage A) and a smaller one in the basement used for experimental and training purposes during the days of HDF. Richard Greenough – head of design at ATV – also remembers a second smaller studio.  He has provided me with a plan for studio A which I reproduce below. 

Writing this history has constantly thrown up seemingly impossible contradictions that eventually solve themselves, although in some cases that has taken years.  Just when I thought I had the studios here nicely tied down, I discovered copies of the Kinematograph Year Book dated 1942, 1953 and 1954.  In them, Highbury studios is listed as having two stages – one at 113 x 60ft and the other at 60 x 30ft.  Similarly, the advertisement for the studios near the top of this section has the main stage at 110 x 60ft and the other at 60 x 30ft.

This does seem incompatible with the drawing above – it is the designer’s plan for the main studio as used by ATV so must be accurate.  I have had it confirmed by Euan Downing that the control rooms were built within the stage at one end so the difference in length can be explained – reducing it by about 30 feet – but the width is more problematic.  The firelanes are about 3 feet wide so that would make the wall-to-wall width 52ft 6ins.  A difference of 7ft 6 in (about 2.3m).  Possibly, unlikely as it may seem, the old stage was demolished and replaced with this somewhat smaller one in 1954.  No, not very likely I agree.  The only other explanation is that Highbury Studios fibbed about the size of their main stage – ’rounding up’ the feet in order to attract business and hoping that nobody would notice.  To be honest, a little bit of that still goes on.  I can think of no other explanation – unless you can help!

 

 

Colin Russell has also contacted me – his father was an electrician at the studios and he recalls visiting as a small boy…

However, fortunes looked up and within a few months the studio was brought back into service using conventional 405-line cameras, at first controlled by an OB scanner parked at the front of building, later the old HDF galleries were fitted out.

 

It is probable that HDF had ceased operating as a separate company in 1955 when ATV became owners of the studios.  Some of the staff are said to have had their contracts bought out and they dispersed within the industry.  Some stayed on to work for ATV.  Pye took over the small studio B for a short while as a demonstration unit for their equipment.  What remained of the HDF Development Group moved into a back room in a Pye radio factory in Tottenham, possibly taking some of the old HDF equipment with them.  However, at Tottenham they used new Pye Mk3 cameras which they blimped with a sound reducing hood to reduce the turret motor noise.  These cameras were capable of operating at 405, 625 or 819 lines.  It seems they also painted these cameras army green for some reason.  (One of them still exists and is owned by Paul Marshall.)  An American entrepreneur had apparently convinced Norman Collins that there was still a market for films made using the HDF system.  Thus the new studio was set up but the project collapsed.  It is unlikely that any programmes or ‘films’ were ever made at Tottenham.

 

Andrew McKean has written with an interesting postscript regarding what happened to the HDF cameras and equipment…

 

It seems probable that the scanner continued to be used at the front of the building for some time.  However, Euan Downing has contacted me.  He worked at Highbury as an engineer from 1960 and says that when he joined, the galleries in the studio were in use – not an OB truck.  He recalls that one CCU operator racked camera 1, a second racked cameras 2 and 3 and a senior engineer kept an eye on both to ensure picture matching.  (Euan recalls an occasion where a cameraman came into the control room after a transmission intending to punch the operator – he claimed he’d deliberately opened up the camera’s iris on shot, causing him to lose focus.  I suggest that possibly he didn’t understand that the shot would otherwise have been underexposed!) 

Euan also remembers that there was a film camera based at the studios, used for inserts into dramas.  The film equipment was kept separate from the TV area.  He was part of the team that removed all the ATV kit when the studio closed and he confirms that the cameras were Pye Mk 3s, definitely not Marconis.

One cameraman has told me that he recalls operating Marconis at Highbury but I can only conclude that after all these years he must be confusing this studio with one of ATV’s other ones at Wood Green and Hackney, which did indeed have Marconis.  Unlike the Pyes, those cameras could be switched to 525 lines, enabling programmes to be recorded for the US market – something Lew Grade was very keen to do.

 

All kinds of programmes were made here with quick turn-rounds from one to the next. Most went out live with some recorded ‘as live’ from about 1960.  I am told that these included live adverts.  It seems that an advertising magazine programme was a regular booking at Highbury each Saturday.  It was called Home With Joy Shelton.  Paul Faraday has sent me some memories of it…

 

Early in 1958 Highbury became the home of the most successful hospital soap for many years to come – Emergency-Ward 10.  The series had begun its life at the Wood Green Empire in 1957.  The show was broadcast live from the studios each Tuesday and Friday at first.  Later, it went out live on Tuesday night and was recorded ‘as live’ on Wednesday.  That released the studio to make other dramas for the rest of the week.  (I’m told that cocoa was often used for blood as it showed up well in black and white.)  Incidentally, when recording the dramas ‘as live’ the crew were given an actual break when the commercials would be on so they could, well, take a comfort break.  When Highbury closed on 30th September 1961 with an edition of the popular soap ,  the programme moved to Elstree.

 

A small postscript…  In 2001 George Lucas claimed he was breaking new ground by shooting his Star Wars feature film Attack of the Clones using a high definition video camera.  Well, in some ways of course he was – but fifty years earlier at Highbury they had been attempting to do almost the same thing.

It’s been pointed out to me by Mitch Mitchell that George wasn’t even the first in recent times.  A handful of films were made in the nineties using the Sony hiVision 1125-line analogue HD system.  One striking example was Peter Greenaway’s Prospero’s Books, made in 1991.

 

I am particularly grateful to Dicky Howett for much of the above information on High Definition Films and to Charles Sturridge for information about Harry Alan Towers.