L to R:

Ahead of the first link to the studio recordings of Eps 1 & 2, here are a few things you might want to know:1) This was my production team testing equipment on ‘The Lot’ in November 1984.Robert (Bob) Gabriel, Production ManagerMorag Bain, Assistant Floor ManagerLlinos Wyn Jones, Production AssistantYour trulyYou'll see and hear a lot of Bob popping in out of shot, and a fair amount of Morag (e.g. red top, re-stuffing washing into the launderette machines in Sc 8). Bob went on to direct many EE eps in later years, and a host of other popular drama series. Morag went on to produce shows like Emmerdale, Byker Grove and Family Affairs. You won’t see Llinos. She stayed upstairs in the studio gallery.2) Because these were the first two episodes of a hugely important show for Julia Smith (and the BBC), she’d allocated a lot of extra time for actors’ first rehearsals, first ‘Lot’ shooting, first studio rehearsals and first studio shooting.3) Thus on Wednesday 16 January, we’d had the whole day in the studio to rehearse the scenes to be shot on the Thursday. Lighting and sound technicians used the time to correct every problem and every fault imaginable.4) The first three scenes uploaded today were abnormal insofar as they were shot in the morning – not just because of baby ‘Hassan’ (café scene) who, by law, wasn't allowed to ‘work’ after 4.00 p.m. It was to allow Julia a chance to study scenes in three key sets. She could then give feedback to the technicians in time for the evening’s recording session (uploaded tomorrow).5) The timecode (bottom of screen) is real time of day. You'll see we started recording Episode 1 Scene 6 at 09.05.54 – pretty good for the studio session scheduled to start at 09.00.00.6) The studio manager, responsible for making the VHS copies, would try to switch the VHS on and off to catch only actual recordings. But he often forgot to switch it off, thus recording captures between scenes - some of which are, perhaps, more fascinating than the scenes themselves. Occasionally he switched off too early. There’ll be a particularly infuriating example of that in Friday’s upload. (More of that then.)7) As a director, I liked to spend a lot of time ‘on the floor’ (close to the actors and camera crew) and not ‘in the gallery’. Julia, coming from the old-fashioned directing school of the late 60s and 70s, preferred her directors to stay in the gallery under her baleful eye. But, after two years working together - relatively harmoniously - on ‘Angels’ in the early ‘80s, she’d given me licence to ‘do it your way’. In deference to her, I stayed up in the gallery for the first two scenes but, as you will hear (and sometimes see), I appeared ‘on the floor’ more and more from the third scene onwards.8) Reviewing the scenes I’ll be uploading this week, I was surprised at how few fluffs and ‘bloopers’ the cast makes. Probably this is because, being the start of a key show (for them), they were on best behaviour, learning their lines thoroughly so as not to incur the wrath of their ultimate boss, Queen Julia herself. I was also surprised at their patience and (mostly) good nature with all the many stops and starts you are about to witness.9) Bob got it wrong at the end of Scene 6. We weren’t going ‘back to the café’. We went back to the launderette for the scene we'd rehearsed the day before.10) I'm happy to answer any questions over the next five days about anything you see in the uploads.Please prepare yourselves for this trip down Memory Lane – over 34 years ago. I hope you enjoy it.The link ...