Me, on "The Cold War Game: The Soviet Union", coping with food poisoning breaking out, actual heart attacks of lead actors - and stolen cameras...
After Channel 4 bought Health Emergency they rang us and said do you know about Video Art? We did, so we said yes (I'd been a member of LVA then LEA then Lux with Tony Cooper and Penny Dedman since 1977). In fact by now Videomakers had become a place where Video Artists could come and do studio shoots or editing (for instance George Barber and George Snow) plus we'd engaged the UK's first Actt/Bectu camerawomen by then.
Ch 4 told us they'd commissioned someone else but it hadn't worked out - so we set about serving up a context based production around the history and production of Video Art in the UK which also served to show the contemporary scene which we'd been so much a part of. Then we heard that another Department had commissioned Ghosts in the Machine and the race was on. But in fact as ourae was contecxt based with interviews with artists and curators and interested parties (and three of the programmes had interviews with Europeans) naturally Ghosts which in the first instance was a compilation of already made pieces by American Artists got to screen first. During the making of parts 3 - 5 I was contacted by John Wyver to make a piece which eventually won awards at Locarno and Montbeliard and was shown on CH4, PBS, RTE and French TV - called The World Within Us. So we kept up a heady mix of shooting many music acts for Universal establishing a documentary company that Renny Bartless joined with a commission called the Cold Ward Game (he directed the USA and I directed the USSR - collaborating with Noam Chomsky and Jonathan Steele of the Guardian).
Below, The Cold War Game: The Soviet Union, Voices Billie Whitelaw and Bob Peck
Imitating Tom Stoppard
Then I shot for Birmingham FIlm and Video Workshop the BFI and Channel 4's video captured Drama Out of Order. This was only the thrid electronically captured feature to be released on film after 1966's Mae West starring Ginger Rodgers (Electronovison a mod of Secam at 819 lines) 200 Motels captured on PAL 625 2 inch and Out Of Order was captured on an analogue to digital chip based system on betacam. This premiered in Los Angeles (and mirrored my 1999 Panasonic based 35mm output for Du Art Labs in New York which paved the way for early video to film outputs). www.imdb.com/title/tt0327082/
Throughout the 80's to around 93 I was integrating film and video cinematography and trying to prove that Digital lighting could be as good as film, working with high level docs on big subjects which I either wrote, shot or edited or all three or parts thereof - and also working with video art aesthetics which become on one side The World Within Us and The Colour Trilogy (the latter premiered at the Bonne Biennale in 1992) and on the other the Building Sights Strand - take a look at The Boots Wets Building with Iwona Blaszwick and the Lloyds Building with Michael Craig Martin to see what I mean (both on BBC iPlayer right now).
Building Sights 1 BBC 2 The Byker Wall with Beatrix Campbell (1989) Building Sights 1 BBC 2 The Boots Wets Building with Iwona Blaswick, (1990) Building Sights 1 BBC 2 The Lloyds Building with Michael Craig-Martin (1990) Many of the projects we made generally were chosen for pick of the day in the broadsheets as well as the tabloids - and we also had premiers of the programmes at the South Back centre and the Tate. Finally the company went down when we were making a project with Animal Rights activists which Channel 4 had put us together with. That was brutal and taught me that you don't mess with 'the Beast'.
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Triple Vision & Channel 4
1985 - 1992 1: Vida 1976 - 1981
2: Transition 1981 - 1982 3: Triple Vision/Videomakers 1982 - 1985 4: Triple Vision & Channel 4 1985 - 1992 5: A Trip Sideways to the BBC 1988 - 1990 6: Cinematography & Scripts 1992 - 2006 7 Academia 2007 - 2016 8. CineFest 2015 - 2016 9. Sedition Art 2015 - 2023 10. Makersplace & NFT's 2019 - 2022 11. 2025 and Beyond? Projects Created in this period for Channel 4 -
you can find videos of these around this website. 1983/1984 Health Emergency Initially Independent and then bought by Channel 4 1984/1985 On Video 1 Channel 4 1984/1985 On Video 2 Channel 4 1984/1985 On Video 3 Channel 4 1986/1987 On Video 4 Channel 4 1986/1987 On Video 5 Channel 4 1986 Out of Order (Flaxton, Cinematographer (BFI/Channel 4) 1986 - 1987 The Cold War Game The USA Ch4 - Featuring Noam Chomsky (Director Renny Bartlett) Voice Bernard Hill 1986 - 1987 The Cold War Game The USSR Ch4 Voices Billie Whitelaw, Bob Peck 1987 The State of Europe Channel 4 1988 The Lift 1988 The World Within Us Channel 4 Voice Jonathan Pryce 1989 Rites (female Genital Mutilation) 1990 (Dir Dedman, Editor Flaxton) Channel 4 1989 I am an Ox I am a Tractor I am a Man I am a Woman (Dir Sally Potter, Flaxton Cinematographer/ Editor) Channel 4 1989 In the Belly of the Beast ITV Director Flaxton, Presenter John Wyver Building Sights 1 BBC 2 1989 The Byker Wall with Beatrix Campbell Building Sights 1 BBC 2 1990 The Boots Wets Building with Iwona Blaswick 1990 Building Sights 1 BBC 2 The Lloyds Building with Michael Craig-Martin Intensive Care 1: Health 1990 Channel 4 Intensive Care 2: Care 1991 Channel 4 1989 - 1990 The Inevitability of Colour, Channel 4, Arts Council, Premiered at the Tate 1991 Echo's Revenge Arts Council Premiered at the Tate 1991 The Object of Desire Arts Council Premiered at the Tate 1989 Hi8US 1 Wingnut and the Sprog (Flaxton Cinematographer Dir Turpie) 1990 Hi8US 2 (Flaxton Cinematographer Dir Turpie) 1991 Hi8US 3 (Flaxton Cinematographer Dir Turpie) 1992 Relative Stranger BBC2 (Director Endaff Emlyn, Cinematographer Flaxton) 1992 Zagorsk - Independent (though on location in Russia for Welsh Channel 4) 1992 Bonne Biennale Premier The Colour Tryptich Arts COuncil and Channel 4 1992 Animal Rights/Animal Wrongs Channel 4 1993 White Goods for the Bonne Biennale - The Dinner Party, Independent 1989 - 1999, The Colour Myths, (AKA 14 History Lessons 18 Transfiguration, 21 Return) Premiered at Salisbury Arts Centre Below: On Video 1
Triple Vision had broadcast three programmes of On Video - British Video Art (above). Then John Wyver rang me and asked me if I had something that might work for Ghosts in the Machine Two and so I offered up 'The World Within Us' Voiced by Jonathan Pryce. This was premiered on Channel 4, and then was bought by PBS for Alive from Off Centre, then by French Television Station RTE for Avance Sur Image. This also went on to win the Prix Graph at Montbeliard and a prize at Locarno Film Festival.
BELOW : Intensive Care Part One,"HEALTH" Voice Tilda Swinton
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A final note on all of this - in some books from the time I am credited with the above, in others I am not, but the work is valued because it's been attributed to others (believe it or not). In one book, I was called in "a sometimes psychedelic artist' and this was when I was writing drafts for the Cold War Game the Soviet Union with Penny Dedman and Jonathan Steele of the Guardian - I've yet to see Noam Chomsky called psychedelic but somehow people who write the histories need to pull down others and I find my own history traduced - which is a shame really.