Roll The Credits…Literally

Roll The Credits…Literally

Here’s the way the closing credits were done in the old days. White text on black scroll was fixed to a large wheel. Some were hand cranked and others had a variable speed electric motor. This shot from Radio Canada has a Marconi Mark II ready to shoot when the credits roll.

Source

17 Comments

  1. Leon Zetekoff January 1, 2013

    Yup

  2. Alan Millett January 1, 2013

    So that’s where/why we get “roll the credits.

  3. Leon Zetekoff January 1, 2013

    At FAU when I was there1974-1976 they were designed for a TV station (ch 14) but for some reason that never happened. But they had a beautiful master control and they ran it on time. The had a few b&w telecines with slide tray and I remember using that for credits or cards made upstairs we shot with a camera. Ill see what I can dig up if pictures.

  4. Robert McDuff December 13, 2012

    Je ne me rapelle pas ce machiniste mais il ressemble un peut a un caméramen nommé Majella…Ro….

  5. Tom Coughlin December 13, 2012

    The Bretton Woods accord (post WWII to around 1970) made it difficult for companies selling expensive things abroad to repatriate their proceeds. Typically to get around this, they’d buy goods in that country, and ship the goods home. One of the reasons why Ampex handled Marconi cameras. Canada exported lots of gold to England, so they got to do some shopping there.

  6. Dave Dillman December 12, 2012

    In the early days of WFLD, we had a tricky paper headline crawl. Lots of issues, first the camera had to be switched to negative because it was black type on white paper (and it always seemed hard to key). Then we had a problem getting rid of pin cushion that made the type arc across the bottom of the screen instead of running straight.

  7. Dave Dillman December 12, 2012

    This opens a whole discussion of graphics before the CG. Pull cards, the classy studios that had three ring binders mounted so you could do drop in cards, flip cards and the network news shows that had overhead projectors with multilayer cells.

  8. Don Voigt December 12, 2012

    I remember pulling or flipping cards.

  9. Dave Dillman December 12, 2012

    Many studios retained one black and white camera for titles.

  10. Tom Coughlin December 12, 2012

    1970s era; the ABC soap operas in NY used an 8″ wide linen-backed belt that was made with a phototype typesetting machine. WPIX had a big, backlit drum. Not sure how the type was set for that, but it could have easily used phototype.

  11. Alex Lieban December 12, 2012

    one of my first jobs was to roll the menu board drum with credits. “Lieban! Slower dammit!””

  12. Bob Sewvello December 12, 2012

    It must have been tricky to light.

  13. David S. Deutsch December 12, 2012

    I remember several times that in the frantic period leading up to a live show, the director would check the credits, having the stage manager roll the crawl. Then the stage manager would dutifully reverse the crawl back to the first credit, say the title. BUT would forget to throw the switch to “fwd.” At the end of the show the credits would roll—backwards—the whole roll detaching itself from the top roller. Ahhh, live tv. Ainy’t it great?

  14. Steve Byrd December 12, 2012

    Radio-Canada was, and conceivably still is, the French name for the CBC.

  15. Don Bruce December 12, 2012

    Been there, done that.

  16. Eyes Of A Generation.com December 12, 2012

    Being part of the Common Wealth, I can understand why the Canadian government would want to ‘keep it in the family’.

  17. Terry Ricketts December 12, 2012

    Odd the Canadians bought a British camera based on an American one, thoughts anyone?