The rescue of 'Tolkien in Oxford'

A quick report, to thank those who expressed interest...

I nipped down to London for 2 days last month.

The BBC paper file of Leslie Megahey's 1968 film 'Tolkien in Oxford' was made available to me, and I was able to go through it.  I spent all of Wednesday, December 18, in the editing suite, with Leslie Megahey and Charles Chabot, film and video producer.  The video file supplied by the BBC Library - technically a PRORES 422 HQ file - was of very good quality.  We were all very pleased with the quality of the images - especially remembering that the film was originally shot on 1960s 16mm film. 

Just to sum up what was done on the day...

1.  Captions

Captions were inserted where they would have been inserted during the original transmission.

2.  Credits

The original film was broadcast in 1968 as part of a BBC arts magazine series called 'RELEASE'.  It shared the evening, I understand, with a film about Barbara Hepworth, and combined credits for both films were floated in towards the end of the slot.

On Wednesday December 18 2013 we created and installed a sequence of credits for the 'Tolkien in Oxford' film ALONE - the sort of thing that would have appeared in 1968, had the 'Tolkien in Oxford' film been broadcast alone.  In re-creating these credits we called upon our joint memories AND the BBC paper file, which we had to hand.  So, we think they are right.

Typefaces for the Captions and Credits were simply a judgement call, as were placing and timing.  Since we had the original director of the film in the room, there was no argument about that.

3.  Some tidying of the actual video file.  A few scratches were removed, as were most of those jumps and clicks that are artefacts of the original negative cutting technology.  These are especially noticeable in the rostrum camera sequences.  A little bit of theological discussion here, about how much we should interfere with an archive 'document' - but from the BBC side an insistence that what we were aiming for was a 'transmission quality' file.

The amended and restored video file has been returned to the BBC.

I think we are happy enough with the quality of the restored piece.  The image quality is generally very good.  The overall structure, now that we can see it, is good.  The gags work - now that we can see the complete piece.  Individual contributions are good - we were struck, for example, by how good a job Joss Ackland had done with the readings. 

And, I think I will add, we liked the integrity of the piece.  Leslie Megahey remind me about the decision to NOT include talking heads academics - for example, he remind me that I had negotiated on his behalf with J. I. M Stewart (Michael Innes), before he decided that that was not the way to go.  And you have to think, what, in 1968, could the talking heads academics have contributed to the discussion?

I understand that there is now beginning within the BBC some discussion about how these BBC TV arts 'magazine' films might be restored and re-displayed - though they were not broadcast as individual pieces, they were costed and created as individual films, and work as standalone films.  So, we might have started something.

Patrick O'Sullivan

Love Death and Whiskey - now on Amazon at £1.17, including postage

I have mentioned before, in this blog, my mix of amazement and consternation at Amazon's pricing of my song lyric book, Love Death and Whiskey...

Last year the price seemed to have settled down at around £3 per copy.

Ok.  Now amazement, consternation, bafflement...  Amazon is selling the book at £1.17 including postage.  Including postage.

This, of course, is a price far below the price I can manage.  It practically guarantees that no other book shop will stock the book.  What will it do for sales? And, if copies do sell, what part of that tiny price will eventually reach me?

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Love-Death-Whiskey-40-Songs/dp/095678240X

Well, I wanted my song lyrics to be in the hands of singers and musicians.  The book was meant to work as a box of samples.  I guess that I am, maybe, in the end, happy about this strange development.  But baffled.

The Wild and the Innocent

My favourite Audie Murphy western is The Wild and the Innocent (usual date 1959, the Audie Murphy web site gives 1958, directed by Jack Sher)...

http://www.audiemurphy.com/movies26.htm

Audie Murphy and Sandra Dee are the rustic innocents, who attract the interest of corrupt sheriff, Gilbert Roland (and here I have to put in the !).

There is this exchange between the sheriff and his sidekick - from memory...

Sidekick:  What do you make of them, Sheriff?

Sheriff:  Very dangerous.

Sidekick:  How so?

Sheriff:  She doesn't know how beautiful she is. 

             And he doesn't know he's in love with her.

A historical source...

I recently found that one of my first publications has become a historical source. Which is a bit spooky...

SEE...

John Davis, The London Drug Scene and the Making of Drug Policy, 1965–73

Twentieth Century British History (2006) 17 (1): 26-49.

'...It is important, though, to distinguish this sort of multi-drug use, spurred primarily by the junkies’ search for heroin substitutes, from the poly-drug use characteristic of the wider London scene that was rooted in eclecticism and experimentation. ‘The typical young user’, a Medical Research Council Working Party concluded in 1970, ‘is now much more often a poly-drug abuser than someone exclusively dependent on any one drug.’60 Hard figures are, as usual, hard to find. Elizabeth Tylden’s study of cannabis users found that whereas 80% of users surveyed in 1965 had used no other drug, this was true of only 11% of users surveyed in 1970; the proportion ‘on multiple drugs’ had risen from 2 to 21%.61 Patrick O’Sullivan, working with teenage users in Camden, found that experience increased with age: those approaching twenty had experimented ‘over the years... with most of the “soft drugs”…  Through experience and contacts they had therefore built up a good deal of drug knowledge of the kind lacking in those younger groups.’62...'

And Note 62 is

62  P. O’Sullivan, ‘A Square Mile of Drug Use’, Drugs and Society 2/2, November 1972, 14.

Further on 'Tolkien in Oxford'

My thanks to people who have made encouraging noises...

I have now been told that the BBC should be able to make available for repair the digital video version of 'Tolkien in Oxford', in order to restore the missing material.  The issues have been taken on board - well done.  I will sit in on this process, informally - and I should be able to review the paperwork, and ultimately make a lot more background detail available.

Judging from the amount of interest we really should put some more formal things out into the academic research record - and I do think we have a duty to the research record.  But, early days, let us solve the problems one by one, I make no promises, work loads, life...  You all know the routine...

P.O'S.

Tolkien in Oxford

As, perhaps, an example of the strange, visible, inter-connected world that is developing...

I was contacted last week by Merton College, Oxford.  Next year is the 750th anniversary of the founding of the college, and as part of that they want to do something about their (current) greatest son, J. R. R. Tolkien.  And they wanted to speak to me about a project I was involved in in 1968.  Yes, I said 1968.

That was a short BBC film called 'Tolkien in Oxford'.  Leslie Megahey - later to be Head of Music and Arts BBC TV - was the director.  I have been told that somewhere I have been listed as 'writer' on the project.  Nothing so grand.  I think I was 'researcher' - in other words, the gofer.  Because I knew Tolkien's work and I knew Oxford I pulled things together as the director wanted them.  Most of the things you see on the screen I set up, the interviews, the locations, the room that stood in for 'Tolkien's study'.  You can see me in the extended Merton College sequence, as I choreograph the gaggle of 'tourists' weaving in and out of shot.

The film was made at a very specific time in the development of Tolkien's reputation.  The crew, for the most part, knew little about him.  I remember saying to the sound man, 'Look, this is exactly like interviewing Lewis Carroll.  In the future people will want to know everything he said, however trivial.  Save everything...'  But television shoots do not work like that...

Talking to Leslie Megahey and to Merton College over the weekend...  Comparing notes and memories, looking at surviving paperwork...

There is work to be done.  The film has appeared on the BBC web site - but the information given on the web site is wrong.  The actual film as displayed on the BBC web site is incomplete - notably at some points it has Tolkien talking gibberish, because explanatory captions have been lost.  For technical reasons the captions were floated in at the time of broadcast. 

We need to restore the captions and restore the end credits.  Clearly - because the film is on the BBC web site - the film has already been digitised.  So, maybe, that should not be too hard...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/archive/writers/12237.shtml

At the same time the film has become a sort of ur-document for Tolkien scholars and enthusiasts, but comment is a bit confused - partly because the research record is incomplete, and because very few people will have seen the film as intended, and as broadcast. 

Examples...

http://www.tolkienlibrary.com/press/814-Tolkien-1968-BBC-Interview.php

http://forums.theonering.com/viewtopic.php?t=80278&p=2749244

I have never seen a cineaste study of 'Tolkien in Oxford'.  Does it exist?  I mean something about how the approach of the young auteur seen here is further developed in later Leslie Megahey works - a narrative that is visual and filmic, quite elaborate camera sequences, Leslie himself taking over the interviewing, and so on.  Also, it is an Oxford man's film about Tolkien in OXFORD - the student body (in its myriad daftness) becomes a character, Merton College itself becomes a character, and in the final helicopter sequence the whole city becomes a character.  Tolkien in Oxford.

Leslie Megahey is increasingly recognised as a very significant figure in the development of BBC documentary - see, for example, the recent British Film Institute re-release of his Schalcken the Painter...

http://www.bfi.org.uk/blu-rays-dvds/schalcken-painter

...or his study of Orson Welles...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00gn2vx

So, Tolkien in Oxford...  Find ways to restore the film, find ways to rescue the research record.  For a start, does anyone have the original Radio Times to hand?

Patrick O'Sullivan

Amazon/Createspace - strange experience

I created my song lyric book through Createspace, which is now part of

Amazon.  As I explained in one of the things I wrote about this project -

'Love Death and Whiskey - the Hollywood movie'  (it is on this blog, lower down...)  - suddenly in 2010 all the elements came together.  Self-publishing

such a book became not just possible but easy.  This has worked well - 

once you accept that you have to work within Amazon's rules and methods... 

For example, the print on demand source is in the USA...

The book has worked for me, as a little basket of samples - and in other

ways.  In working out ideas, in developing new projects.  The Amazon links

have meant that the book is visible throughout the world - and can be bought

throughout the world.

I keep an eye on the reviews on Amazon...

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Love-Death-Whiskey-40-Songs/dp/095678240X

(Recently there appeared a review by a former lover...  And we have to

wonder what would happen to sales if we wrote to every former lover saying,

You really should look at this book - you might be in it...)

And recently there appeared on Amazon 3 copies of my book at absurd prices -

one copy at 6 pence, one at 7, and one at 8.  Including postage - which is

how these book dealers make a profit - that is £2.86, £2.87, £2.88.  How was

this possible?  Where had these copies of my book come from?

I bought all 3 copies.  And - of course - it turned out that 2 were signed

copies that I had given to friends or to contacts, as gifts.  Or samples...

Judging by the printing information so was the third copy.  So, all fair

enough...  Maybe...

But...  I seem to have created a problem for myself and the world.

Somewhere within Amazon an entity - I think it must be a computer, it cannot

be a human being - has decided that there is a market for my song lyric book

at around the £3 mark.  Amazon is now selling the book for £3, including

postage.

I look at the costs - Amazon's costs and my costs.  Clearly now, for Amazon,

the cost of producing a paper copy of my book is almost negligible...  Is

their print on demand source still in the USA?  I am tempted to buy a copy,

to see what they have done - but that would confirm the entity in its belief

that the ideal price for my book is £3...