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“What about Other Optical Effects like Split-Screen, Slow Motion, Quantel?”

Published 27th November 2021

TV Comedy

The other day, I was browsing some paperwork for the Red Dwarf episode “White Hole” (TX: 7/3/91) , as you do. And something interesting caught my eye.

“This programme was recorded on Composite Betacam SP videotape.
Original tape numbers: 83 – 101 (with tape no: 90 being the master insert audience tape). Tape No: 124 + 126 additional graphics tapes.
Tape no: CV37898 (Mirage FX tape).”

Mirage FX tape? What’s that?

I know that some of you are already screaming at me. I have to admit, I am far from an expert on this kind of thing. I do, however, know enough to throw a few search terms into Google. I think we can trust Wikipedia with the basics, at least.

“The Quantel Mirage, or DVM8000/1 “Digital Video Manipulator”, was a digital real-time video effects processor introduced by Quantel in 1982. It was capable of warping a live video stream by texture mapping it onto an arbitrary three-dimensional shape, around which the viewer could freely rotate or zoom in real-time. It could also interpolate, or morph, between two different shapes. It was considered the first real-time 3D video effects processor.”

I also know that sometimes, the best way to get a grip on the capabilities of things like this is to search for demonstration videos on YouTube. In 2021, we’re in a far better situation than we were even a decade ago with this stuff: so much reference material has been uploaded by some extremely helpful people.

I was not disappointed.

And at 1:38 into that video… oh, that’s the bit they used in “White Hole”. Does that explosion effect remind you of anything?

Yes, when Holly is going through the intelligence compression procedure:

Or to be more specific:

Explosion effect in Mirage demonstration video
Same explosion effect in Red Dwarf, White Hole, for Holly's IQ transformation


At this point, my mind was blown in much the same way as Holly’s. But there’s more. How about this segment from Tomorrow’s World (TX: 30/12/82)1, for instance?

What happens at 2:49? Well, see if you can guess. Clearly, exploding the image was a signature effect of the Mirage.

And that’s what I really love about this. In 1990, when “White Hole” was made, the Quantel Mirage was already eight years old. The year before, when Series III was made, Red Dwarf had already made use of Harry, a later, more advanced bit of kit from Quantel. If it’s overstating things to say that the Mirage was old by this point, it most definitely wasn’t new, groundbreaking kit.

Red Dwarf makes the effect look great, though. Far better than either the example in the demonstration video, or in Tomorrow’s World. And it’s better because the effect works perfectly to tell the story. Holly is being dismantled to her very essence in order to increase her IQ; her visage being blown to smithereens and then put back together is a brilliant way to portray this.

A standard Quantel effect, turned into story. That’s some of yer actual, real television magic.

UPDATE (14/12/21): Some days, silly things I write lead to the most wonderful revelations. Here’s a remarkable piece of information on this effect, from the creator themselves:

I think I just need Dirty Feed to be a big list of bullet points stating topics I’m interested in, and then people who are actually clever can fill in the rest.

  1. The YouTube upload itself only said “1982”, so I thought I’d research the full date for you. Don’t ask me why the video is cropped to widescreen either, despite being uploaded by the BBC. I haven’t a clue. ↩

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Sorry, I Was Looking at the Wrong Panel

Published 25th November 2021

TV Comedy

It’s odd, the stuff you just make up in your head about a TV programme, without any actual evidence. Even a programme you’re supposed to know plenty about.

Take Series III of Red Dwarf. Out goes Paul Montague as Production Designer, and in comes Mel Bibby. The look of the show changes almost completely, the grey submarine aesthetic replaced by cream, Alien-inspired sets. At first glance, the show could barely look much different.

Series 2 bunkroom

Series 2 bunkroom

Series III bunkroom

Series III bunkroom

And so, over the years, your mind runs away with itself. You imagine Mel Bibby getting a massive skip, chucking every single last shred of the old sets into it, and starting from scratch. After all, not only do the sets look entirely different, but it’s on record that the show’s new producers – a certain Rob Grant and Doug Naylor – hated the old sets.

Nobody’s ever actually said that no part of the old sets remained in the new look. But clearly they didn’t, right? The new regime would want nothing to do with them.

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Fish!

Published 22nd November 2021

TV Comedy

Series IV of Red Dwarf in 1991 saw many interesting developments. For a start, the show moved down south from BBC Manchester to Shepperton. For another, Grant Naylor Productions took control of the show. There’s a whole wealth of important things to write about.

So I want to talk about some fish.

You know the ones I mean. These ones, brand new for Series IV, on monitors around the ship:

Kryten and Lister with the fish in the background
Lister with the fish in the background


Our question today: where did this footage come from? Surely it wasn’t shot specifically for Red Dwarf?

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By the Book

Published 17th October 2021

TV Comedy

Reshoots. The problem is always damn reshoots.

Let me explain. Over the last few years, I’ve been doing various bits of research into some of the nitty gritty about Red Dwarf‘s production. (Stuff like this article on the BBC Manchester studios is the result of that.) And once you get into the really complex stuff, knowing exactly when a scene was shot starts to become important.

But no problem, right? By this point, the production dates of Red Dwarf – at least for most of the studio material – are widely known. When telling the story of Series III, for instance, we can easily thread our way through the production order of the episodes, rather than the transmission order.

The issue: reshoots. Just because the majority of an episode was shot on a particular date, it doesn’t mean all of it was. Because productions have this nasty tendency to reshoot things they think they can do a better job of, weeks down the line. Damn them.

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Northern Star

Published 22nd July 2021

TV Comedy

Sometimes, finding out the true story about an old sitcom legend gets very complicated. But not always.

For instance, take this old Londonist article from 2008, as rumours swirled about the potential sale of a certain Television Centre. But don’t worry! They have an interesting “fact”.

Interesting Television Centre fact no. 1: Studio 1 is the biggest and most expensive studio in television centre. For the early series of Red Dwarf, there was no budget for any set after the production team hired it for filming so they had the hapless space team running around the exposed lighting rigs and gangways, which worked brilliantly (and cheaply) for convincing us they were on board a massive spaceship.

It’s difficult to know where to start with that paragraph. I mean, the idea that early Red Dwarf had “no budget for any set” is not even remotely true. It is also the case that the show was never recorded in Studio 1 at TV Centre. Or let’s get right to the point: Red Dwarf never recorded a single frame of material at TV Centre full stop.

To be fair to Londonist, I think I know where they got this particular misinformation from: the BBC itself. Back in 2013, I went on a tour of the soon-to-be-closed TV Centre, and sure enough, a version of this anecdote was told to me as well: the series was shot at TVC, and you could see the lighting gantries used in the finished episodes as part of the ship. Believe it or not, no, I didn’t start an argument with the tour guide. I just went back home and wrote a passive-aggressive article, obviously.

So, if Red Dwarf was never recorded at TV Centre, where was it recorded? For its first three series, the answer is: New Broadcasting House. Not the current NBH in London; this was Manchester’s New Broadcasting House, on Oxford Road.

Picture of New Broadcasting House in Manchester

To be more specific: Red Dwarf was shot in Studio A at Oxford Road: the network production studio.1 Over the years, a great many nationally-broadcast programmes originated there; among others, the Oxford Road Show, A Question of Sport, Filthy Rich & Catflap, Cheggers Plays Pop, some editions of The Old Grey Whistle Test2, and a particular childhood favourite, The Satellite Show. And that’s only scraping the surface. Oxford Road Show aside, I expect plenty of viewers had no idea any of those series came from Manchester.

Still, for all the misinformation about Red Dwarf being shot at TV Centre, or having “no budget for any set”, the tales from the BBC tour guides were correct in one respect: certain scenes from the show really were shot on the lighting gantries in Studio A, standing in for the ship itself. Which is indeed an actual INTERESTING FACT.

Let’s take a look.

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  1. Studio B was the smaller regional production studio, although this was also used for some daytime network programming such as Open Air and Daytime UK. ↩

  2. I have to be honest, before researching this article, I thought that The Old Grey Whistle Test always came from TV Centre. But no. Here’s one of the first television performances by Dire Straits, transmitted live from Manchester’s Studio A. ↩

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Seventh Heaven

Published 2nd June 2021

TV Comedy

For years, we didn’t know the true story of how Red Dwarf‘s first episode was made. Not really.

I mean, we thought we did. Blah blah script rejected by the BBC for years, blah blah eventually accepted at BBC Manchester, blah blah electrician’s strike, blah blah remounted in late 1987, blah blah atom bomb. We also knew the rough pattern for the recordings: rehearse at Acton for four days, go up to Manchester for two days of recording – a pre-record day on the Saturday, then the audience record day for the Sunday. Then most people had Monday off, and then back to work rehearsing the next episode on Tuesday. Simple.

That is, until the big revelation. In 2007, a rather curious DVD set was released. Titled Red Dwarf: The Bodysnatcher Collection, this was a grab bag full of Dwarf stuff which – for various reasons – didn’t make it onto the original DVD releases. And one of these features was a proper, in-depth documentary about Series 1 of the show.

ROB GRANT: At the end of the recording of the first series, we had a spare recording day – including a day’s pre-VT – so we could do a whole other show.
PAUL JACKSON: I knew it was there. And I think I maybe even discussed with them [Rob Grant and Doug Naylor], you know, we might have to do a seventh script, and that wasn’t really very practical. So we devised this rather cunning plan of using that last week to go back and do pick-ups for the rest of the series. And again, because the BBC worked in these blocks and then didn’t really monitor it very carefully, nobody noticed, in effect. And we just delivered six.

“The Beginning”, Red Dwarf: The Bodysnatcher Collection

Most of those pick-ups were for that first episode, “The End”; in fact, well over half of the episode was reshot. And in an instant, this changed a vast chunk of what we thought we knew about the production of that first episode of Red Dwarf. From a programme recorded on the weekend of the 26th/27th September 1987, it now also became a programme where huge sections were re-recorded on the 7th/8th November 1987.

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Nice To Be Here, Mr. Rimmer, You Son of a Gun

Published 29th April 2021

TV Comedy

This year has ended up being a rather odd one for Dirty Feed. I initially intended to write precisely nothing for the first half of this year at all. So what better time to accidentally publish one of the most popular things I’ve ever written, and end up deeper in the sitcom salt mines than ever before?

Well, today’s little fact isn’t as good as that one. Or as good as this one. It is, however, something brand new about early Red Dwarf, and clears up a little mystery that has dogged fandom for decades. And by “dogged fandom for decades”, I mean “five or so people wondered about it every so often”.

So let’s take a look at the Series 1 episode “Balance of Power”, broadcast on the 29th February 1988. Specifically, the start of the cinema scene with the skutters.

The question is: what exactly are they watching?

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Better Than Reality

Published 20th January 2021

TV Comedy

“I alter people’s perception of reality.” – Dr. Hypnosis

One recurring theme in Red Dwarf has always been the rather tenuous grip on real life the crew have. Whether it’s the Total Immersion Videogame of “Better Than Life”, the hallucinations suffered in “Back to Reality”, those damn reality pockets in “Out of Time” – to name three of many – people’s perception of reality is something which Grant Naylor return to time and time again.

What’s interesting, however, is that Red Dwarf is far from the first time Grant Naylor have explored this idea. In fact, we can trace their fascination with it right back to their very first solo writing credit: the first episode of Radio 4 sketch show Cliché, broadcast on the 16th March 1981. Though unlike Red Dwarf, it isn’t framed in terms of science fiction.

I present to you the strange adventure of Dr. Hypnosis: his real name… Dr. Hypnosis.

Download “Cliché – Dr. Hypnosis”

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“Broadcast on all known frequencies, and in all known languages…”

Published 8th December 2020

TV Comedy

I really need to get back to watching Orange is the New Black, you know. I got bogged down at the end of Season 4. Is she gonna shoot him? Is she? IS SHE?

So in order to get back on track, recently I… erm, watched an old IBA Engineering Announcement from 1990 instead.

Engineering Announcements title page
Winter Hill transmitter information


I feel I’m supposed to be nostalgic for the Engineering Announcements – those hidden, weekly 10 minute programmes on your local ITV station, giving the trade all the latest news and transmitter information. I’m supposed to say that I watched them through my childhood, that they got me interested in how telly works, and are responsible for me working in the industry today. Truth be told, I don’t think I ever actually saw one as a kid. If I did, it left no impression on me whatsoever. I was rather more interested in Central Television idents instead. (Well, I had to show my TV geek credentials at that age somehow.)

Which means that watching them online now is a faintly bizarre experience. Broadcasting ephemera that I feel I should have seen, but never did. For example, take this one, broadcast on Tuesday 26th April 1990, at 5:45am. I would have been eight years old. Why didn’t I just get up early? I didn’t need sleep at that age, surely?

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A Short Note About Old G&T Articles

Published 18th November 2020

Meta

Least promising headline on Dirty Feed ever, amongst some stiff competition, I know. Dirty Feed editorial policy is an even more niche subject than Hale & Pace fan fiction. But I do know there will be a few people wondering about it. Consider this a boring publishing note that most people can skip, and read something more interesting instead.

So: recently, I’ve started publishing a few posts on here which I originally wrote for Red Dwarf fansite Ganymede & Titan, which I departed from back in January. I thought I’d give a little explanation as to my choices, because republishing my old shit has never been this site’s modus operandi before. (It’s always been about publishing my new shit.) But as I said at the start of the year, I do like the idea of some of my work from G&T having a home here too, especially given that it’s the perfect chance to revise and improve a few things.

Still, some of the stuff I’ve chosen to republish over here so far isn’t exactly the obvious stuff you’d think I might pick. So here’s my thinking behind it all, for those who care.

Obviously, plenty of stuff I wrote over on G&T just isn’t Dirty Feed material. For a start, I published literally hundreds of news articles over the years, which actually consisted of the bulk of my writing – precisely none of which are worth reviving here. Pieces on the imminent transmission of The Crouches aren’t something which need to pop up on Dirty Feed in 2020.1

Then there’s the longer, but still time-sensitive articles, such as my review of The Bodysnatcher Collection DVD back in 2007. I love that they are still available online, and hope they always will be, but I don’t see any point in throwing them across to here. They capture a particular point in time, that a 2020 date attached would entirely destroy.

Finally in terms of stuff that won’t come over here, there’s the old jointly-written articles, like this piece on the climax to Red Dwarf VI. I honestly can’t remember who wrote what in those pieces – in the early days, it was often a Lennon/McCartney situation2 – but that’s all the more reason not to publish them on Dirty Feed.

So, what of stuff that is likely to find its way over here? Currently, it’s the shorter material being revised and republished, especially stuff written over the past couple of years that I still actually like. Pieces about the early satellite repeats of Red Dwarf fit neatly into the kind of thing I already publish over here, for instance.3

Then there’s the bigger pieces. Stuff like my old Hancock’s Half Hour article are thoroughly Dirty Feed material, and you’d think they would be the first things to make their way across over to here. The reason they haven’t so far is simple: I want to do a proper job at revising them to make a little more sense outside a fandom context, and that takes time. Then there’s my analysis of the sets in Series 1 and 2 of Red Dwarf, which I abandoned after three posts. That needs finishing off, but it’s a big project that really needs proper time setting aside for. It’ll happen eventually.

And finally, there are the old articles which are revised so much that I haven’t even bothered acknowledging their roots in old G&T pieces. For instance, the piece I wrote on here last month about a character-defining joke in Red Dwarf was initially inspired by a G&T piece from 2017, on an old Grant Naylor radio sitcom. But there are so many additions and changes in the Dirty Feed article – the first two-thirds are brand new, for instance – that it’s not really a rewrite of an old piece any more, and so doesn’t get labelled as such.

So there you go. Boring, but if you were confused as to the slightly-strange-from-the-outside republishing policy, then there’s your explanation. I’m not interested in porting over every single piece of writing I’ve ever done about Red Dwarf to here – anything I publish I want to reflect what I think about things today. After all, there are plenty of old articles which aren’t time-sensitive, and you’d think would make a decent post on here… but after ten years, I have decided are actually complete and utter bollocks. No point dragging out my ill-thought-through pieces about how whatever the faults of a piece of comedy, “it doesn’t matter as long as its funny”.4

Now, let’s forget about Red Dwarf for a bit. Who fancies something about Doctor on the Go instead?

  1. I do like the headline, though. ↩

  2. Yes, I’m afraid I actually did just make that comparison. ↩

  3. The revising takes two forms, incidentally. The first is to mainly strip the pieces of fandom in-jokes which wouldn’t really work over here. The second is proper improvements to the material. This piece on an old Night Network show adds some research involving TV listings which really should have been part of the original G&T version, but I was lazy. ↩

  4. This is one trap I fell into time and time again in old pieces of writing about comedy: segregating off “comedy” and “everything else”. Which is nonsense. Everything feeds into whether something is funny or not. A lot of my early writing about comedy is me splashing around, desperately trying to come up with something worth putting on the page… and failing. ↩

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