On the other side of the TV screen
Here it is, this is the Penza suspension bridge over the Sura River, near which, in this very place, the very dramatic events that will be discussed in this material took place...
When it was,
When it was?
In a dream? In reality?
In a dream, in reality,
According to the wave of my memory
I'll swim.
Words by N. Guillen, trans. I. Tynyanova
When it was?
In a dream? In reality?
In a dream, in reality,
According to the wave of my memory
I'll swim.
Words by N. Guillen, trans. I. Tynyanova
Memories of times gone by. In the last article, I promised to talk about working on Penza TV and how television programs were prepared and conducted at that time, and in general, what it was like to work on USSR television at that time.
I already wrote that for a 30-minute program they paid 40 rubles, and the size of the fee, as it turned out later, depended on the population of the region, which was covered by TV broadcasting, and the larger it was, the greater the fee.
Well, it occurred to me to contact the editorial office of our local TV, of course, for a reason, and not only because after three years of working as a teacher in a rural school, I was no longer afraid of anything.
No, the fact is that somewhere in the 60s, a children’s television program “100 ideas of two friends” was broadcast on central TV, and I really liked it. And it was there that they showed how these two friends, under the guidance of an experienced “uncle,” made various homemade products.
For example, I really liked their matchbox camera. Moreover, it was quite possible for them to take photographs, although this had its own difficulties. Moreover, I was lucky to buy a book published on these programs, and it helped me a lot later in working with children.
And, apparently, it was a secret childhood dream - to be there, on the screen and... Just like that, to do something there with your own hands.
One of the readers asked to talk about walkers, one of which was even proposed for production at the Penza Toy Factory. And I must say that the same “Young Technician” wrote about them more than once... Here is one of the issues that talked about the models depicted on its cover
And a childhood dream came true! The program was called “Let’s Make Toys” (fortunately, the author worked at the Regional School of Social Sciences as the head of the “New Types of Toys” circle) and...
Here we go. The second program was devoted to making a model of a Viking drakkar, then... Well, and then I don’t even remember.
“Young Technician” also wrote about such a “walker,” but building it turned out to be very difficult. And most importantly, so that he could turn, he had to put a rotating support on the bottom, like a table. And this is another engine and gearbox. That is, this machine was a “dead-end” design, just like the vibration drive. But at least that one was easy to do. Although they wrote about them constantly...
The specifics of my work on TV were very different.
Firstly, the script had to be written for exactly 30 minutes, that is, it had to be long, scheduled minute by minute, which I personally did not need at all. But... they paid specifically for the script, so it couldn’t have been short.
Secondly, I constantly had problems with the Committee for the Protection of State Secrets. The fact is that in his work he was guided by a “book” produced in 1959, but the time was different - 1980! It was impossible, for example, to write T-34-85 or Mig-29 in the script, because these names were missing in this thick book.
So they called me there all the time, and they asked only one question: “where did you get this from - show me!” And I regularly had to carry them the magazines “Young Technician”, “Model Designer”, and “Technology for Youth”. And every time, the lovely women there apologized to me and said that they “can’t know everything,” and I told them that I, too, “don’t invent anything myself (as I do now), but take it from completely legal publications!” “And we don’t have others in the USSR.” But nevertheless, accusations of divulging state secrets were constantly repeated on their part.
And during filming in nature, it was necessary to ensure that in the 30 degree sector there was no... Zarechny, a city near Penza, where the “nuclear plant” was located. The fact that the spy satellites from above saw him perfectly was of no interest to anyone. You can't, period!
"Soapbox crawler." Material about him was published in the magazine “School and Production”. Simple, funny, you could play with it. The only pity is that it couldn’t turn - it was possible to put a “table” under it, but the second motor and gearbox simply didn’t fit inside. But he crawled on the sand perfectly!
However, I didn’t pay attention to such trifles, well, nothing can be done.
I liked the atmosphere of the studio. You are sitting at a beautifully decorated table against the background of a partition made of... burlap with letters made of foam, but on the screen it looks both beautiful and expensive! Three cameras work for you, the broadcast is live, you can’t make a mistake, and it gives such a drive that your face is dry, but your whole back and, sorry, your panties, are completely wet from sweat. Twilight...
Pomerezh starts counting: “10, 9, 8... 1 – 0!” A banner flashes on the wall: “Silence in the studio. The microphone is on." And you find yourself on air face to face with your viewers.
“Hello, children and dear fellow adults! Today in our program we will talk about walking mechanisms...” Well, then we make just such a walking, simplest mechanism, again, from a soap box.
Two minutes before the end, Pomerzh shows me a ring made of his fingers, which means “wind up” and... We must have time to say goodbye, and... So that there is time left for the musical beat. Then, then... Everyone thanks you, and you go home, where your loved ones (and the strictest judges!) tell you what was good and what was not so good.
But the magazine “Young Technician” No. 10 for 1983 became, one might say, my manifesto, outlining the direction of children’s creativity “from everything at hand.” It told about several models made from jars of Penza processed cheese “Yantar”, which is why such a drawing was placed on the cover
Every year the cycle was updated. Following “Toys” came the “UT Studio” cycle, then “The Stars Are Calling” - a program that ran for three whole years, and at the very end - “For the Inventor Guys”. My daughter Svetlana helped me in this program, and she earned a nickname at her school, which seemed very offensive to her, “the child-inventor.”
A lot of funny and not so funny things happened to me on our Penza TV over these ten years. But perhaps the most memorable cases were only two or three. But one absolutely incredible thing happened not in the studio, but during a trip to nature, or rather to the city center to the suspension bridge over the Sura, where a program about floating plasticine models was supposed to take place.
Here is one of such models: the body is made from a sour cream jar, the wheels are made from Yantar cheese, the hubs are made from polystyrene egg cassettes. The child himself only had to make the bottom of the housing (13), glue in the engine and put the drive wheel (1) on the spoked shaft. Well, paint it silver, of course. The result was a very beautiful homemade toy, assembled in literally half an hour from practically... nothing, or rather, 100% from household waste
It was there that our huge bus arrived from Moscow, which was a mobile television studio and allowed us to film and record color programs. True, the time for using it was strictly limited.
The program was dedicated to making floating models of ships from plasticine, and the children who made such models were invited. They pulled out the cameras and placed them on the shore, began the “tract” (rehearsal), and then it started to rain. “Cameras for cover!” - Pomerezh shouts, and the workers carry them under the bridge. But then the rain stops, and they are uncovered again and installed on the embankment. The route is completed. Everything is fine.
The recording begins, and then from the bridge, where there was a crowd of people who were interested in looking at all this, a man falls into the water (leaned over the railing and... plop!) and immediately drowns! And another person rushes after him and tries to save him. It pulls out a clump of hair, but cannot keep it on the surface. All this ends up in the camera, and all our work goes down the drain!
Another version of the “can” all-terrain vehicle. Plastic toothpicks served as lugs on it! The astronaut figurine had to be molded from plasticine and painted with nitro paints
The police arrived and sent divers into the river. And time goes by. And we have exactly 4 hours for the entire recording. And I had to start recording it again in the middle of all this chaos. And as soon as things got going, a diver climbs out of the water right behind me and says: “There is no corpse!”
The camera operators simply burst out laughing. And I had to re-record everything again...
I’m sitting at the table, my nerves are on edge, and on the bridge there’s a conversation: “What’s going on? Yes, a man fell from a bridge and drowned. Why television? Well, they’ve arrived and are already filming!”
And here is a view of the site of our TV broadcast from the bridge. Moreover, from the very place from which that unfortunate, and perhaps drunk, smoke fell into the water... Once upon a time, above this place stood an Il-18 plane, turned into a children's cinema. Now there are trees all around
We met the deadline then. But the most interesting thing is that no one decided to film a story about a drowned man, although what could it be news broadcast. This is the plan of our society: to be with cameras at the scene of an event and not to film it just because “recording is not planned.” And no matter how many times I convinced my colleagues to not give a damn and make a story “about a drowned man.” They didn't do it. The children's editorial office had nothing to do with the “news.” But the “news” couldn’t come because the bus was reserved for us!
And here is the same ship that we made in that ill-fated program. He later ended up in the book “From everything at hand” (Minsk, “Polymya”, 1987)
From the experience of working on TV in Penza and Kuibyshev (and there I hosted the program “Workshop of the School Country” from 1985 to 1989, while I was in graduate school), I came away with an interesting conviction that the “one-eyed dragon”, among other things, is also... a great deceiver! For example, I once needed to depict an alien flying saucer arriving in a city and meeting an alien in our studio.
I made the “plate” from a disposable plastic plate, with legs and supports made from razor razors! I painted it in a metallic color, decorated it with flashing lights and hung it on a rod from the balcony of a house in the city center. The camera was filming from the balcony, and it turned out that the plate was flying directly above the center, and the fishing line was not visible.
Page from “Young Technician” No. 12, 1985. This is where V. Zavorotov took these two all-terrain vehicles for his 1988 book... So I wasn’t the only one promoting my homemade products from cans, matchboxes and thread spools!
As for the alien, it was my daughter. I dressed her in a blue tracksuit and put her in front of a blue screen, called chromakey, which “dissolves” the blue color on the screen. He also put a blue stocking on his head and, in addition, wrapped it all with staniol ribbons.
Finally, when the camera started rolling, the blue color disappeared, and her entire figure also disappeared. What was left was a metal skeleton, somewhat reminiscent of the Terminator, which moved and waved its three-fingered arms! The spectacle was creepy, but the children really enjoyed it.
On the screensaver for the program “The Stars Are Calling,” a fantastic spaceship was flying against the background of the starry sky. It was made from... the filling of a powerful radio tube and suspended on a black thread in front of a rotating black cylinder with holes. And inside it there was a burning light bulb. In the back of the “ship” a small smoke bomb was burning, and a fan in the front blew it, so that the tail of the exhaust gases came out of it very naturally.
And so, when they were filming all this, the screen created the complete impression of a most fantastic-looking spaceship flying against the backdrop of twinkling stars! But, as you can see, it was all very easy to do.
Well, if you didn’t skimp on film for recording (nowadays no one records on film, but then it was very important!), then you could shoot absolutely anything.
But this was only part of the work to... develop children's technical creativity in my hometown. We will talk about how she went beyond its limits next time.
To be continued ...
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