Mike Rathbone - Camera Operator

[Music]

My name is Mike Rathbone and I worked at the National Film Unit from 1975 to 1990 which was 15 years .

I went in there as a camera assist which is the very lowest of the low and gradually I learned new skills there and things like focus pull up, clapper loader and then became an assistant cameraman which I was for a number of years. Because until a cameraman dies or moves on you don't get a space to go to take over their job. So I did work as a camera operator quite often for large jobs but for small jobs , usually I was assisting a camera. At least one camera operator and a director and a sound recorder was our kind of standard crew and then you have other people like grips and gaffers, makeup, wardrobe that sort of thing. Depending on how big the job was. The NFU in Miramar was pretty amazing, it was like a small family. There was probably 90 to 110 people there and we were quite a close-knit group and we had a lot of experienced people there. As beginners we found that as long as we just approached people and said what do you do and tell me about this - we get a lot of information back.

Miramar was quite interesting in that it had a few main buildings but it also had a number of houses. Like the camera house had all the bedrooms that were converted to offices. So that was a camera department there was one house and then you jumped through a hole in the hedge and that was the accounts department and then down so was a whole row of houses which was really neat.

There were no egos in the place, you could learn as much as you could from a grip and a gaffer as you could from one of the directors or producers. It was just the way it worked.

It was pretty amazing to have everything shifted out to a new building and it was quite a different feel. really you didn't have that family feel because most people had their own offices so each director usually had their own office and so on, so there's a lot of corridors and levels. Quite different but purpose built so the camera department was pretty amazing and you could go in there and set up for any number of jobs and not be in anybody else's way.

We're on location a lot. There would be six assistants at the time and we were probably away two weeks out of the month and we'd often be traveling really long hours because as an assistant you'd generally spend another two hours in the evening unloading mags and doing neg reports for the lab. You'd note down anything that you felt was useful for the laboratory to follow up on.

You'd do those reload the banks check and clean the cameras ready for the next day and then you'd often be ready to go an hour before because you had to load the vehicles. We'd often be required to drive so you did everything. So pretty long days but a real challenge and really enjoyed we just loved it. We just loved it. We were down there only six weeks and the crew was the cameraman, a director who was also a cameraman. That's bad . Sound recorders to myself as the assistant. Because the director wanted to shoot as well I was basically assisting for two operators so I was pretty busy.

Antarctica, in summer season, is daylight 24 hours seven days a week. So you go down there to Scott Base which is where we work from and there'll be a scientific team going out so you get out with them film whatever they're doing, come back. Somebody else will be going out so you think "well i can't miss that". So you go out and we do that for about two or three days and often we're out in the helicopters and the Americans provided support, and you'll be flying along and you just fall asleep and then you suddenly wake up and think "oh what an amazing scenery" and then you'd carry on again.

When we went to silent silent cameras we had the 30 hour flex 35 BL. I mentioned that we they were worth over two hundred thousand dollars each and the film unit had the only two in the southern hemisphere for quite some years.

We did a film called Coal Valley and we took one of the BL's down with us and we filmed a number of interviews and we put the camera back in its case. This aluminium case. I was passing it to the sound recordist and as I did one of the pins snapped off the handle and he went to grab it and I did, and we both missed. and it slid down the shingle in its case. We were running after it trying to get it. and then it dropped over this cliff. There was like silence for a few seconds and then bang crash wallop as it hit rocks and trees. We ran all the way down to which took about an hour, not my finest hour, and we found the case. It was all dented, but the lid was still closed which was really important. So I opened it up. and the camera was still where it was because it's all held by foam baffles. But it had a metal mat box on the front which would come off and had been smashing all around the front of the camera. It just totaled both of the pieces. We couldn't fix it. Because we were way up in miles from nowhere in this coal mine. So I had to phone the film unit and say "a couple of things. We have to send the camera back because we've damaged it and we can't fix it . Can you send us the other one?"

I look at some of the earlier stuff and it's a bit cringe-worthy. Then i look at some of the other stuff and I think it's really important that people see it because some of it's as relevant today as it ever was when we filmed it. The water cycle is one film that is still screened in schools today and it's still just as relevant. It's all about the environment. There are some films, I didn't work on it, but they did an underwater one about Pupū springs out of Nelson. and that's just amazing. The water will never be as clear as that anywhere else in the world.

I think it's really important people do need to look back in time as well as looking forward and try and learn from the past. Some of those films a lot of work went into them too, and to preserve them is pretty neat .

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