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Kev Franzi's Fragments

The Archaeology of the 20th Century

Memories of 'The Belle'

Sydney had always been regarded as the In the early 1960s I worked at Cambridge Film
production centre for feature films in and TV Productions located on the first floor
Australia. It had the purpose-built studios, of a factory in Pelham Street, Carlton, fitting
large film processing laboratories and the Melbourne criteria perfectly. A first floor
numerous technical support services. film studio, without a lift, was just madness.
Melbourne was definitely the “poor country From time to time we were visited by high
cousin” with a few small studios located in old flying British or Hollywood filmmakers
converted factory buildings and supported by investigating the production facilities available
a couple of good but small scale in Melbourne for their proposed “Australian”
film laboratories. The studios survived by feature film. Following their brief survey, they
making television commercials, documen- all beat a hasty retreat back to Sydney ... with
taries and short animation films. one exception.

Below: Shooting a paint commercial at Cambridge Studios in the early 1960s. Our famous 35 mm Mitchell
camera is inside the sound blimp, with Cameraman John Atkinson awaiting the cue to ‘roll it’ from Director
Dennis Trewin (below). Standing behind John, I wait for my cue to lower the crane for the big close-up. This
was the dolly/crane and camera (less blimp) we used to shoot Konstantin Kaiser's Volkswagen film.

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