An Interesting Development…WLS TV’s News Film Process, 1974
An Interesting Development…WLS TV’s News Film Process, 1974
It is easy to forget that even into the early 1980s, some stations were still shooting film. RCA’s first ENG (Electronic News Gathering) camera, the TK76, only debuted in 1976, and by 1984, there were over 2000 of them in use worldwide. -Bobby Ellerbee
The transfer of this video clip made possible by your generous donations!
Here’s a rare excerpt from WLS Channel 7’s Eyewitness News, from back in the days when all reports from out “in the field” came from film, and sometimes were being developed as the newscast was running.
Frank Mathie introduces the “Action Seven” piece, with Geoff Smith reporting about how film stories aired on Eyewitness News are shot; in this instance, one film crew is shooting another film crew. Cinema Processors, Inc. at 211 East Grand was the lab where film reports from both Channel 7 and WGN Channel 9 were developed, amounting to 10 million feet of newsfilm a year (96,000 feet a month). Geoff gives a detailed account of the complex process for developing the film that airs on the two stations, and also mentions other Cinema Processors clients such as the Chicago Bears (for game film, of which 30,000 feet alone are processed every Saturday in season), five major colleges, several smaller ones and 225 high schools. Shots of the lab in action are seen all through this piece. Fahey Flynn can be seen for a couple seconds at the end too.
Notice that the “Action Seven” logo, set in Helvetica Bold, looks very reminiscent of the logo used in the early years of WLS’s The 3:30 Movie (as well as The 4:30 Movie on both WABC Channel 7 in New York and WXYZ Channel 7 in Detroit).
Note: This was originally broadcast in color, but captured on this early home videotape recording in black and white. There are some tape-tracking problems that are noticeable at certain points on this clip.
This aired on local Chicago TV on Tuesday, April 9th 1974.
I still have my Bolex H-16 I bought at a garage sale in Evanston, IL. I used it as the late night shooter at WCEE in Rockford. It was a better camera than the B&H’s they had….and the new Ikegami HL-77. I always kept a few 100′ spools in the car with the camera.
shooting football was my bread and butter throughout the 1980s…I used to love setting up in the press box with my 16mm Arri M, next to all the high tech elaborate video rigs, knowing my gear would produce a far better image than any of them. I remained a film purist as long as possible. The last shoot I did on 16mm was a commercial in 1992.
Aah, the days before ENG.
I was just startin’ out at the tail end of the film era. I worked with the Film Unit of ABC Sports at the 1976 Olympics. I would have preferred working with the then-brand-new ENG crews, but I was quite fortunate to have worked for a while with the legendary Bob Riger. If you wanted to do slow motion back then, it had to be shot on film.
PCP-90s were on the street for NBC in DC (the News Capitol of the world) beginning in 1974. I know that because I got my job there by replacing one of the studio guys who wanted to get out in the field. Film still provided the majority of news coverage as the Norelcos quickly began doing live shots.
Those were the days! We had to prove we could thread film CMs on our TK21 film chain in 30 seconds or less in my TV production class at Ball State University.
Craig, the first video news camera at WIS-TV was also an HL-33, but it was quickly replaced by an HL-35. Ikegami loaned us the -33 until the -35 shipped. Here’s a picture of the HL-35 in 1975:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/dennisdegan/557712780/
As for using a commercial processing lab,it might be quicker if it’s close by. The start up time on the processor was something like twenty minutes where I worked and if it’s kept running with non deadline film the news footage can go right through. Plus the chemicals are hard to deal with in a small space.
And now you know why Kodak made so much money.
The color film stock used was a 16mm reversal film called Kodak 7240 VNF (for Video News Film). The in-house processors were pretty common. It was typically single perf with a magnetic sound stripe for use in a CP-16 or Auricon camera. Here is a spec sheet on the film stock: http://motion.kodak.com/KodakGCG/uploadedfiles/motion/H-1-7240t.pdf
We bought our first ENG camera the Ikegami HL33 in 1974 at KWTX-TV in Waco Texas. We shot film on CP16’s and after a while we would transfer the film (out of our own processors) to tape for editing.
The logo and other graphics looked like Videfont. Is that correct?
Is this museum different than the museum of broadcast communications ( also in Chicago)?
Every station I worked at in the 1970’s had their own color film processing except for the couple that had already switched completely to ENG video shooting.
In 1977 I starting working at WOWK in Huntington WV. They were processing their own news film. By the time I left in 1980 they had switched over to “toy tape” as the engineers liked to call it.
At WICD in ’69, we could process b&w 16mm news film. Color news film was put on a bus to WICS, developed, put back on the bus to us at WICD.
Wow. I really thought that most medium and large market stations would’ve had their own 16mm labs in house.