Adjusting the set

Transmission vamp-up

To mark the launch of colour television in Australia on 1 March 1975, the highly anticipated ‘C-Day’, Channel 7 staged a stunt with the Western Australian premier, Charles Court. At the moment when transmission began, he pulled a lever – and lo, there was colour. For the viewer at home, it was as seamless as the transition from Kansas to Oz. But the work building up to that moment had started years before. 

To film and transmit in colour required tectonic changes to production methods. In Melbourne, the transmitter atop Mt Dandenong had to be modified, with a fill-in transmitter taking over while the alterations were made. Television studios had to replace almost all of their technologies, from the cameras up, and construct additional buildings to house the new equipment. Staff were sent overseas, usually to the UK, to learn the ropes from experienced production teams.  

A brighter shade of pale

When BTV 6 sent its production manager Fred Fargher to London in 1973, he was taken on set at the BBC to see the filming of a period drama. He was expecting ‘COLOUR! – you know, [like] an Indian Bollywood film’, and was stunned to see the muted shades of the costumes. When he looked through the monitor, however, a pale-blue dress appeared rich and luscious. 

Wardrobe and set designers had to learn how their work would translate to the new medium. Red and bright green would flare and bleed, and affect skin tones – which the human eye instantly makes a beeline toward to measure the ‘reality’ of the image. Vivid colours looked garish; paler tones rendered well, so studio sets suddenly became awash with pastels. 

Rainbowitis

In a colour television demonstration screened by Channel 7 in the weeks leading up to C-Day, the popular character Percy the Penguin appears with his co-host Sandy in a vibrant outfit he’s specially chosen: a blue hat with a pink plume, and an orange vest with a lively pattern. Sandy isn’t sure about the colour combinations, but Percy assures her with clapping fins that ‘they’re right for colour television’. Not everyone would agree. Nan Musgrove, writing in the Australian Women’s Weekly, decried the ‘surfeit of colour from producers and directors suffering from rainbowitis, a disease that infects TV men with the desire to use as many and as bright colours as possible all at once in the same set.’ In a GTV 9 Melbourne test film screened at the 1968 Royal Melbourne Show, TV presenter Patti Newton (née McGrath) joked that she’d have to stop wearing a blue frock with green shoes. 

I wear my sunglasses on set

In the same test film, among the presenters celebrating the promised delights of colour, there are others that aren’t so sure. The tone is lightly parodic, but there was probably some real feeling behind their whingeing. For on-screen performers, colour did involve filming under more and hotter lights, as the comedian Rosie Sturgess notes. There were also lengthier sessions in make-up. Compere Pete Smith points out that for black-and-white it took only five minutes to put on their ‘slap and tickle’, whereas colour make-ups would take 25 minutes, not counting colour checks. Mike Walsh had the perfect solution: he planned to cover his bloodshot eyes with sunglasses. 

For the studios, colour television’s teething problems were not inconsiderable – and even some viewers struggled to adjust. But once that iridescent genie was out of the bottle, there was no going back. Australians rushed to adopt the new technology: take-up rates soared above those of the UK, the US and Japan, and advertisers were similarly besotted. Scorching lights and pastels seemed a small price to pay.  

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Main image: Stack of vintage television sets, photo by Mustapha Gunnouni. Source: iStock ID 2166459983