Undocumented clips in overseas programs

[Jon Preddle]

Oct 12, 2011 23:02:31 GMT Dan Kolb said:

This is probably just desperate fantasy but here it is anyway. Did overseas stations have the rights to use clips of purchased BBC programs in their own output? I can't recall if I've ever read much about BBC documentation of clips being used in non-BBC programming overseas. For example if a station wanted to promote a bbc program in it's schedule and advertised it, perhaps it could still exist (doubtful though) as a part of an old newscast or advert. I realize these would be tough to track down. It would be nice if a foreign version of Blue Peter had a clip or two. Any thoughts on this?

Apparently clips from part one of The Moonbase were used in a New Zealand documentary about the moon, in the days leading up to the first moon-walk.

And yes, we've checked, the documentary isn't held in the TVNZ archives...

[Gids Llewellyn]

I'm curious... how did the clip thing work? Did they (the buyer abroad) simply splice the section of film from the original, or did they make a copy of the section they needed, or copy the whole show and then remove the clip? I know it sounds like a silly question, but I honestly don't have a clue.
Also, for trailers/intros would they have been provided by the BBC and dubbbed, or would they have made their own?

[Richard Marple]

Some footage from The Power Of The Daleks (I think) was used in Australian schools programme "C For Computer".

This has been recovered & is on Lost In Time.

[Gids Llewellyn]

Jan 5, 2012 19:36:18 GMT Richard Marple said:

Some footage from The Power Of The Daleks (I think) was used in Australian schools programme "C For Computer".

This has been recovered & is on Lost In Time.

thanks... but it doesn't really answer the questions asked.

[David Cann]

Jan 5, 2012 19:02:38 GMT Gids Llewellyn said:

I'm curious... how did the clip thing work? Did they (the buyer abroad) simply splice the section of film from the original, or did they make a copy of the section they needed, or copy the whole show and then remove the clip? I know it sounds like a silly question, but I honestly don't have a clue.

I'm no expert, but the fact that clips were used in other programmes didn't always mean that another full copy of the episode in question was made. For example, when a clip from 'Galaxy 4' was used in the Lively Arts' 'Whose Doctor Who' documentary, the team were provided with a 6-minute long film that had been copied from the then-extant 16mm B&W film print. I am not sure if they made the copy themselves or asked the BBC to do it, but they still only were ever in possesion of that six minutes of footage, which they cut to get the clip they wanted, which ran to 30 seconds. I'm not sure if this same principle applied to all other programmes (especially in the case of overseas) that contained clips from 'Doctor Who', but certainly in some cases, only copies of sections of the original print were made available to a programme's production team to use as a clip - it is unlikely that they would have been allowed to splice the film from the 16mm original telerecording, as these were needed for overseas sales.

[Jon Preddle]

Jan 5, 2012 19:02:38 GMT Gids Llewellyn said:

I'm curious... how did the clip thing work? Did they (the buyer abroad) simply splice the section of film from the original, or did they make a copy of the section they needed, or copy the whole show and then remove the clip? I know it sounds like a silly question, but I honestly don't have a clue.

Also, for trailers/intros would they have been provided by the BBC and dubbed, or would they have made their own?

The NZ prints of The Moonbase were censored in May 1969. It wasn't until December 1969 that they were broadcast for the first time; regional screenings meant the last time the serial aired was in July 1970.

The Apollo 11 mission was in July 1969, so the clips of the Doctor and his friends moon-walking would have been used in the documentary before the serial had aired. It's unlikely the NZBC would have chopped bits out and spliced them back in, so a copy would have been made, not necessarily of the whole film, just the segments they wanted. However, had the serial already finished its regional screenings before July 1969, then they might well have chopped the moon-walk segments from the original print, as it was now a 'used' print.

As for trailers, while the BBC screened specially made ones from time to time, these weren't used overseas - at least as far as I am aware. However, according to the Australian censors' logs, a trailer for The Daleks Master Plan was submitted for approval at the same time as the episodes. This is the only time such a trailer for DW is recorded to exist overseas. What's not clear is who made the trailer: the BBC or the ABC...

[John Green]

So when reels were returned to the BBC,they'd often be shorter than they were when they were sent out.
They were returned so that they couldn't be rebroadcast.Isn't that ignoring the ease of duplication?
And just how shortened might returned episodes be before someone at the BBC asked: Where's the rest of It?
Reminds me of the ancient nudie film The Immoral Mister Teas e(Sp.?) where projectionists were said to have clipped so many frames that there wasn't much film left.

[Jon Preddle]

Jan 5, 2012 20:31:07 GMT John Green said:

So when reels were returned to the BBC,they'd often be shorter than they were when they were sent out.

That's right. Australian and New Zealand prints had edits made to them due to censorship. The prints recovered from Nigeria came from New Zealand (via Singapore), and these still had cuts to them. Had the films been sent to the BBC first, chances are they'd have been discarded, and fresh ones supplied. (It makes we wonder whether the prints of the season 3/4 serials that NZ sent to Singapore in 1972 still existed at the BBC; had the BBC still held fresh uncut copies, Singapore would have got those rather than the censored NZ prints... Had the BBC already junked their season 3 negatives by that stage?)

Very little is known about the censorship policies of other countries. Hong Kong TV had a very strict policy of non-violence (which was different to cinema, where violent kung-fu films were very popular!); and Saudi Arabia also had a very strict policies regarding religion and nudity.

If prints were returned to the BBC in London, they would have checked the condition before entering them back into the bicycling system. If there were cuts, the films would be discarded. (This would in part explain why BBC Enterprises holdings in 1978 were of lots of odds and ends, as they'd only keep the uncut prints of any full serials that were returned.)

When the NZBC made cuts, a copy of the censors excision notice was sent to the BBC, so they were well aware of the sort of edits being made. When the BBC received films back from NZ, they'd be able to cross-check them against the notices to see whether or not the films were complete.

The only uncut films known to have been sent directly back to the BBC from NZ in the 1970s were of The Faceless Ones.

[John Wall]

Details of surviving clips can be found here: dwclips.steve-p.org/

[Gids Llewellyn]

Jan 5, 2012 20:23:41 GMT Jon Preddle said:

according to the Australian censors' logs, a trailer for The Daleks Master Plan was submitted for approval at the same time as the episodes. This is the only time such a trailer for DW is recorded to exist overseas. What's not clear is who made the trailer: the BBC or the ABC...

So is this trailer also on the missing list?
And, the edited films... the ones that have been returned from NZ, I was wondering why the Beeb allowed them to make edits to their prints rather than let NZ copy them to edit, especially when the BBC could possibly send them on to other countries. Wouldn't that be an unnecessary expense for them to keep having to make new prints?

[Jon Preddle]

Jan 5, 2012 22:40:11 GMT Gids Llewellyn said:

And, the edited films... the ones that have been returned from NZ, I was wondering why the Beeb allowed them to make edits to their prints rather than let NZ copy them to edit, especially when the BBC could possibly send them on to other countries. Wouldn't that be an unnecessary expense for them to keep having to make new prints?

A good question. Maybe it was down to expense. Buying and importing in a cut set from New Zealand may have been a lot cheaper than importing in a fresh uncut set from London. Bear in mind that in the 1960s, certain foreign broadcasters - particularly those in Africa - probably had very low quality standards, and broadcasting prints that were cut to bits probably didn't really matter one iota to them.