NZVN December 2016

DECEMBER 2016

Vol 231

There’s got to be a Light in this Tunnel Somewhere?

T’was a day in Spring on the job site in St Heliers when I met with the “hammer hand” – after I woke him from a little nap shaded by his favourite read. Fred Goldring has been in these pages before but when he announced his retirement from our trade by advertising his precious tools for sale, I thought I would capture a final flicker from the lantern.

Ed: You seem to be very capable as a hammer hand building a deck here, but you had a former life didn’t you Fred?

Fred: Yes I was in film production and now I’m in “post” productions!

Ed: That is going back quite a few decades, and your company was Magic Lantern I remember?

Fred: Yes that’s right, but I started in television in the Art Department, so I was making sets and doing a lot of construction work there.

Ed: Fred: Ed:

And then the cameraman didn’t turn up one day?

Well I had made an amateur movie.

Aha … consenting adults?

Fred: Yeah … and I’d taken it into the NZBC in Christchurch where I was working because it was in 16mm and I didn’t have a projector to show it, but I knew some guys who would put it on the chain for me.

Unbeknownst to me, Ken White, who was the head of all Film Services and had been looking for recruits in Christchurch, was told by someone about my film.

Although my film was only about 300ft long the only reel I could get really cheap was a 1200ft reel and it wouldn’t fit in my locker, so it was sitting on top. He grabbed it, had a look at it and I got a note that said “Ken White wants to see you on Monday.” I thought “who the hell’s Ken White and why does he want to see me” and he said “bring some material about your film.” So I went in and I

would have to say I was totally casual about it and totally laid back – as I found out afterwards when I saw the notes he made of the interview when I retired from TVNZ. He offered me a job there, but I thought at the time “do I really want to be a cameraman, oh yeah, okay why not give it a go.”

This was 1967 and I shot film right up to the end when I left TVNZ in 1988.

Ed: And when you moved into television did you actually miss the film days – in that transition period from film to early television, there are obviously differences?

Fred: In 1982 I was the first cameraman to grab a field video camera and operate it.

Then we did trials with the camera and then set out a training “Yes children, that’s how you needed to dress in those days.” programme – a familiarpurple characters. To me, I was able to shoot day for isation programme of how to transfer, because there night and different things, and I started experimenting. were different techniques involved.

In fact, my boss told me off, he said “Fred you’ve got to Ed: Obviously you could see that there was a stop shooting these bloody things. Somebody comes technical quality difference, so run us through the up to me and says ‘I want to shoot day for night’ and I positive aspects of that move in those days. say it can’t be done on video, and they say ‘well Fred Fred: Well I embraced video straightaway. A lot can do it’.” So next minute there was a note saying of my colleagues didn’t want to touch video, they “stop shooting day for night.” wanted to stick with 16mm. For me, I was working on Ed: Okay, so apart from the fact that they couldn’t a broad range of programmes and they were all on film. tinker with your work, what were the other benefits you Video only came out for News. On the weekends, it was saw in the video in those days? allowed out to do programmes.

Fred: One of the things about it is that you could The last film I did for TVNZ was a drama documentary actually film in natural light. Prior to that, if there and that was on film. I was lucky because it was a rare wasn’t enough light, you had to light it. chance to actually shoot negative and have a positive print on it. The film was then transferred to videotape for broadcast and I should have been in the telecine chain keeping an eye on the film as it was being dubbed off. I didn’t, I left it to the techs.

I had a sequence where I had a cast of 2 people moving in and out of light, walking down a corridor moving through pools of light.

Yeah, I know what you’re thinking … the techs saw darkness and wound up the gain ( Ed chortles in the background ) and then the guys came into full light and they wound it down again.

Of course it happened 3 or 4 times, so there was this yo -yo effect of the lighting and I thought “dear God, what have they done.” When video came along, whatever you did with video in those early days was locked in.

Nobody could tinker with it in post and to me that was wonderful. If I wanted to have purple characters, I had

Ed: So in those days there wasn’t a high ISO film stock?

Fred: Ed:

64 ASA was our standard.

Wow.

Fred: And the fast film was, if I remember correctly, 400 ASA but you avoided it because of the grain, so most of the time you shot 64. And it was reversal – when colour came in you shot reversal and what you shot went to air, that was it. Unless you were on drama, very rarely did you get a neg with an intercopy for edit and then a final print. In the black and white days we had a 2½ stop latitude between the high and the low points, so you had to work within that.

Ed: Fred:

So 2½ stops latitude?

Yes between the highlight and low.

Go to https://sites.google.com/site/nzvideonews/ for more news.

P15 Christmas messages.

P16 Made in the USA – a tour of the Matthews factory.

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Ed:

So nowadays when they talk about 11 stops …

Fred: Yeah, it’s so easy innit. But having said that, looking back on it, I’m glad it was like that because you had to light …

Ed:

You mean you had to get it right first time?

Fred: Oh yes, that’s another aspect of it. The discipline was so great such that, when you put in a film and you’d shot, the first thing the editor did was take out all the crap. The next day, there’d be my roll of film sitting on my boss’ desk and he would say “well okay, did you have any problems with the film you shot yesterday” and you immediately started thinking “God, what did I do wrong …?”

Ed: Because it was expensive, he was looking at it from a cost point of view?

Fred: No, he was looking for a standard, and what would happen is that you’d go into the telecine chain and, by that stage, he would have dragged in 3 or 4 other head technicians and editing people … they’d set up the telecine chain for a perfect picture.

I remember it, there was a BBC test slide there with a couple on a riverbank, and they would set that up for a perfect picture, leave the controls on the telecine chain and play my film. Now if my film was a quarter of a stop over or under or a half stop over or under, you could actually control that on the telecine chain, but they wouldn’t say. So at the end of it they said “well okay Fred, you shot it and you overexposed it by half a stop, don’t do it again.” Jeez you learn. That was a huge learning curve.

Ed: But in those tests, television was black and white, you were only playing black and white …

Fred:

It went to air, you shot in negative film.

Ed: So your first News video camera was black and white?

Fred: colour.

No, no it wasn’t – by ’82 we’d gone to

Ed: So what sort of recorder were you using back then?

Fred: Ed: Fred:

A Sony 110 Hi Band.

I’ve got one.

Have you? They’re good doorstops.

Ed: It still works. It’s a ballet the way the tape threads up. I could watch it all day.

Fred: Yeah, the soundies hated it because they had to carry this great huge thing around on their shoulders and they monitored the audio on that. The

battery life was very short; we used to put a battery on the camera and a battery in the video recorder, and the cable in those days – the cable was about as thick as your thumb and it came either in I think a 4 foot length or a 9 foot length. We always had the 9 foot length and, of course, the soundie had to carry the extra roll of cable. A few of the crafty ones would slowly, while you were filming with a camera on your shoulder, start looping it over the battery case on the back of the camera, and as the time progressed you thought “God this camera’s getting heavier and heavier” and you’d put it down and there’d be about 6 loops of cable on the back of it.

Ed: So this transition from film to video, the resolution wasn’t an issue. I mean people talk about film being such higher resolution than video, but when you look at your pictures in those early days, we were talking 260 lines of resolution for Hi Band?

Fred: Don’t get me going on the technical side!

What you’ve got to realise is that the telecine chains weren’t up to scratch for showing the film in the best possible way. There was a flying spot projector that was in Wellington and that was the only one, and that was used for Country Calendar. It analysed every frame electronically and produced the best images for that. The telecine chains in Auckland – I mean they’re all video tubes, right …

Ed: So basically they consisted of a camera shooting a projected film?

Fred: Yes. Even the colour tubes in the telecine chain were, in many cases, secondhand, because they’d been used on the cameras in the studio and then when they got too bad for the studio cameras, they shoved them into the telecine chain.

Ed: So what you’re saying is that the reality of the workflow was as important then as it is today? You could shoot the best stuff you could at the start, but if your process isn’t right through to the end delivery, you can make it look awful.

Fred: Well, it still looked good – it’s a bit hard to explain. You had limitations, you knew that you worked at 5.6-11 out in the field in film and inside at 2.8 apertures most of the time. Occasionally, if you were filming on water, it would creep up to about 14, perhaps 16, hardly ever higher than that. The film was always tungsten, and you had an 85 filter on the front, which reduced the amount of light coming in but, of course, if you were lighting inside, you took the filter off and you were okay. But then of course, one of the big changes

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when we went from black and white to colour, was we had to start gelling windows, or gelling the lamps. Our first gels that we had were glass gels, they were as thick as hell, they virtually took a stop of light, they were not exactly accurate and if you wanted to remove them after being on a lamp for a while, they were red hot and you were burning yourself.

Anyway, then the gels came along and they said “well look okay, the other way to do it is we can gel the windows.” So they got this rather thick 85 filter gel which was self-adhesive to the window, which was okay, but every now and then it would unstick itself and would peel down. You might have a nice shot out over someone’s shoulder, interviewing with a window out there, and slowly in the background you see the window transform from nice balanced light to a blue light coming down. But that was all part of the fun.

Ed: Fred: Ed: Fred:

Right, let’s move on to the Magic Lantern days.

I went to SP and to CCD straight off.

But initially you were shooting 4x3?

Yes.

Ed: Was that a great transition to move from 4x3 to 16x9?

Fred: It was, but we weren’t allowed to use it fully in those days. They had different setups … it was the same thinking when colour came in, “keep the contrast as for B & W because not everyone has a colour TV yet” but when we went to 16x9, the powers that be said “well not everybody’s on 16x9 so you’ve got to actually frame up everybody within the 4x3 aspect” and then some of the more adventurous said “well okay, we’ll change the ratio, instead of 16 we’ll make it 14 or perhaps 13”. So before starting to shoot you’d say “well what are you projecting?” But in the end, you used the 16x9 to advantage and it was wonderful. If you were shooting stage or something like that, you suddenly could actually get some wonderful shots and some wonderful framing. But I had SP and I think I was the first to have field SP in New Zealand; TVNZ and Vidcom could handle it, but we were ahead of the BBC in its use at that time.

saw these ghostly images in postproduction. And there was nothing you could do about it.

Fred: Ed:

That’s true.

Except make your images black and white?

Fred: Well one of the things of course was that we’d set up the tube cameras every day on a chart before going out. We had warnings that said if you’ve got a bumpy road trip or something like that, you’d better check your camera again before you start filming.

Ed: Fred:

Right, so after CCD then came high definition?

I never went to high definition.

Ed: And yet you were still working up until a few years ago … please explain?

Fred: Ummm … a lot of people were asking for high definition at the end, but I think that was almost an automatic reaction because TVNZ was demanding that the production houses shot in high definition – but immediately when it went to TVNZ, they’d put it on to standard definition and put it to air that way.

Ed: So you weren’t still shooting SP, what were you shooting – Digibeta?

Fred:

XDCAM. I never went to Digibeta either.

Ed: Okay, so this is stand def, XDCAM disc, 3CCD and this work was for …?

Fred: Overseas production mostly.

I had the BBC, ITV, I shot for the Italian television for the Louis Vuitton Cup 1999. I shot for American networks, CBS, NBC, the PBS all on standard. In a lot of the cases for the Americans, I was shooting on PAL and getting it transferred to NTSC here in New Zealand because it was cheaper for them to get a transfer done here. I did 10 years with Xena and Hercules doing the promotional videos and behind the scenes and working for E! Television and Entertainment Tonight.

One of the things I made sure about doing before going in to record those promos of getting the crews working and everything like that, was to have a look and see how they lit for that particular scene and I’d replicate that in

In those days, the first camera that I had, shot both standard and SP video, so I actually had to carry 2 stocks. So if I was filming for whomever, I’d say “what are you going to show?” When I was looking to get my own gear, I went and spoke to all the technicians and the engineers at TVNZ. One of the engineers said to me “Fred, don’t go to this CCD stuff, stick with video tubes because you get the best pictures” and technically that was right, but I thought hang on a minute, why are Sony spending so many millions of dollars developing CCD. Of course, CCD was very economical on batteries – suddenly your batteries weren’t fading.

Ed: But there were issues with CCD. I know with tubes, if you changed a battery, suddenly they’d go out of alignment or you’d actually forget to align the tubes when you first started, and if you didn’t have a decent monitor you might not always notice it until you

Television replaced film for News. On the ground is the Sony U-matic recorder.

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Ed: Fred: 4K. Ed:

And that’s become worse with 4K? Probably, I’ve never touched Well now they’re talking 8K Fred.

Fred: Well, if you’re listening to the hype of the people who are manufacturing all these things you know.

You could get 24K, but are they shooting anything better?

Ed: That begs the question makes a good picture?”

Fred:

“what

A good cameraman.

Ed: ( pause for effect ) So Fred, you say you’re never looking at the technical aspect of the image – what are you looking at?

Fred: I’m looking at the image in the way of what I want to portray.

I never like to go out and do a recce a week before and then say “okay, yeah, walk into the shoot, I’ve done the recce, You may recognise the young lass with the boom pole I know what we want” because you can if you have visited Sound Techniques in recent years. guarantee that things are going to change. Suddenly there’s a jackhammer down the road my interviews so it had the same look as the or something like that, or the lighting’s changed. I look production. So when they cut from the interview to the at the person and I think “how does that person look, production there’s wasn’t a huge leap there. what do I want to convey, where do I put the camera, Ed: And none of these people ever asked you to shoot is it above their eyeline, below their eyeline? How do I high definition? change the background, does the background Fred: No. complement what they’re saying?”

When you’re Ed: What do you think that tells my readers about the shooting, you should think of elements, and the value of high definition – in your own words Fred? It elements are like a club sandwich or a hamburger in might be a learning experience for them. that everything is layered, and when people make those things they make the layers so the whole idea is that, Fred: Well you could ask a lot of cameramen who when you take a bite through it, you get all those went and bought high definition cameras and ended up flavours at once, you don’t get those separate things. with them sitting on the shelf and have them sitting in their boxes still, hardly used, and still going out and Filming, for me, has to be exactly the same. Every shooting standard def. aspect has to be complementary – the sound, the pictures, the lighting, the way the people are – are they Ed: Because? seated, are they standing, are they walking round.

Fred: I heard various stories about high definition They all are necessary to combine the picture. I’ll give cameras … you an example … I did a half hour documentary for the Ed: Not necessarily stories, but you must have old NZBC, it must have been in the early ‘80s. It was experienced, you must have seen the results, about a young girl of about 12 or so confined to a somebody shooting with a high definition camera wheelchair. I was working with a young director and I compared to what you’re shooting standard definition? said to the director – I’d never seen her before and just You don’t have to mention names Fred. walked in and we’re just sitting there while we were Fred: ( a long pause ) If you shoot it in a certain talking to the family and watching her.

She was way, if you’re careful with your framing, if you’re careful independent, but she was in a wheelchair, and before with your lighting and you’re shooting within the we started filming I said to the director “every aspect parameters of the camera you’re using, then those that we film is going to be at her eyelevel,” which was pictures can be just as good as high definition. So you about waist high. Any sequences we film, we’re not don’t have to do that, and most of the punters wouldn’t going to have any cutaways, any cut-ins or anything. If have a clue if it was high definition or not, and a lot of she’s doing something and it takes her 40 seconds to the production people wouldn’t know if it was high do, I’ll do it with one take of 40 seconds just to show definition or not. how frustrating her situation is. And we did that and it told the story very simply, it wasn’t fancy lighting, it Ed: Because they’re not counting the pixels? wasn’t anything at all, but it just reinforced the Fred: No. It’s that technical thing as opposed to pictures, and that was on film and it was colour, it was the artistic thing and a lot of young people nowadays go all balanced – the daylight and the interior lights were “oh look at this camera, it shoots 4K and everything” all balanced and everything, the framing was there, the and go and shoot crap on it. Sorry, but it’s all about contrast ratio was there, the depth of field – everything “what is your end product?” I know some front people was balanced technically. But if I had shot exactly that that went up and they did tests with high definition on video, it wouldn’t have made any difference. cameras and when they looked at the pictures said “oh I couldn’t tell you how many pixels we were in, or how my God, you can see every pimple and every mark – many scan lines or anything like that. To me that didn’t take it away.”

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matter, to me it was the image. If I was recording on a piece of string, I would still have that and people would say are you using twine or nylon or anything … it doesn’t matter.

Ed: So, and I might be going out on a limb here … content is important?

Fred: thing.

Oh God yes, it’s every-

Ed: And was it a breath of fresh air to have a director that listened to you?

Fred: Yes, I have worked with very good directors.

Ed: Did you work with not good directors?

Fred: I would have to say that in my whole career I’ve only made 2 directors cry!

Ed: So what happens when a director says “oh no, I want it this way” and you disagree? Have your thoughts on this changed over the years?

Fred:

No.

Ed: You’ve always told them to “sod off” have you?

Fred: No, there are subtle ways of doing it. In most cases, they were silly directions. “Look, I’d like to get this guy doing a stand up against the sky and he’s back lit.” I said “well, the sky’s too hot, you’re going to get a silhouette.”

“Well, can you put a grad filter on it to filter out the sky,” and I said “yes, absolutely, but I’ll filter out his top half” … couldn’t bloody well understand it, and what do you do, because if you shoot it and it goes back in the lab, the editor’s going to look at it and say “who shot this crap?”

And that’s it, because when you’re filming you’re actually filming for the editor, you’re not filming for the director, and a lot of people these days – for a start they’re filming too much and that’s one of the things with video that has happened, especially now you’ve gone into solid state and you can actually record 3 hours and everything.

I’ve spoken to directors who’ve told cameramen “stop filming!” The thing is, if you’ve got 3 hours to film an event, then don’t shoot everything that moves and every angle, concentrate on the shots you want that are necessary. Spend the time filming the good shots and don’t just shoot and shoot and shoot and shoot and hope to hell something is going to go to air, because if you’re doing that, you can’t concentrate on the framing, you can’t concentrate on the composition, you can’t concentrate on the lighting or anything like that.

Rehearse the shot, rehearse it 6 times, film it once.

Everybody’s fresh then, but if you’re going to say “role rehearse, role rehearse, role rehearse”, by the time the guy’s done 10 takes, he’s buggered.

Ed: And it’s not fresh anymore. Are you glad that 3D television never took off?

Fred: Yes, I spoke to a couple of colleagues of mine who were shooting on 3D. They said that the

most interesting thing about it was that they had to hold the shots for at least 20-30 seconds to get people used to having the idea that “oh, hang on, that person walking across actually looks like he’s in front of that other person in the background.”

I think the advances that we’ve had in recording images, whether it’s video, disc or film, with lenses and lighting and everything like that, have been great, but I think people get carried away with the advances.

“Oh God, I’ve got the latest camera, what am I going to do … I’m going to film my dog scratching itself.”

Ed: You mean like cine cameras with the depth of field – have you ever thought on that Fred?

Fred: We used to bung on bloody filters to reduce our depth of field.

The early video cameras had a huge amount of depth of field and that’s one of the first problems with film cameramen – we said “how the hell do you reduce that?” You’ve got 4 stops of depth of field in there, great for sport, absolutely wonderful for sport because otherwise you shot 16mm, you shot rugby, you had to worry – I mean you zoomed into a tight shot of a guy about to score a try and oops he’s out of focus. And so

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you learnt every technique … sorry, I could rabbit on for ages.

Ed: Silly things directors have said to you?

Fred: Well, several times directors have come up to me ready to do an interview and they’ve said “look, this is going to be pretty boring, can you move the camera round, put it on your shoulder and just shake it around a wee bit and everything” and I said “yeah, sure we can do that, we can make the viewers bored and seasick at the same time, why not.”

Ed: And did you say “do you want me to do it with a candle up my arse?”

Fred: No, I was never rude! Do you remember Dylan Taite? Now Dylan was always looking to stretch the parameters of his items, not necessarily turning the camera upside down or anything like that but one of the things that Dylan said once was “I want the camera to be flowing, but I don’t want it to be too obvious.”

Ed:

I’m sure Fred’s skills in pointing are better than demonstrated in this wall.

Was this for his music shows or serious stuff?

Fred: Well I always thought all his stuff was serious. He went right far out at the end, and I loved him for it, because he was really pushing. But I said to him “okay, I’ll move the camera; I won’t use the zoom, but I’ll move the camera. I’ll put it on a wide angle and I’ll have enough depth of field so when it comes to going in on a close-up I’ll move the camera in on a close-up.” It was like having a tripod with a boom or a Steadicam. And that’s what we did and we kept it going, but you had to be very careful, are you going to use all the questions, are you going to use all the interview, because you can’t cut in and out of it and you’ve got to keep it going.

Ed:

It’s all about planning?

Fred: Yes, yes. I used to do a kids’ show for TV3 and one of the things we had was an opening sequence which was a piece to camera by a junior reporter and it used to go for at least 30-40 seconds, perhaps longer.

But the whole thing was moving and I remember one occasion we had the reporter starting off on the footpath, coming down some steps, going through a corridor, coming into a room where there was an exhibition, coming into the room and then showing the exhibition. Now the young lady who was doing that was absolutely excellent, she never fluffed her lines, she was good on camera and everything. For me as a cameraman, that meant I had to do for that one shot probably about 6 different things. I had to do aperture changes, focus pulls, reframes, pans, tilts with different backgrounds and everything, and finally going from daylight outside to tungsten inside straight into an interview.

With 2 colour balances set up on the camera, so that when the presenter came through the shot at a certain point, flick the switch and the colour doesn’t change. Very satisfying doing that, because it was a challenge.

Ed:

The viewer mightn’t have noticed, but you knew?

Fred: Well the important thing is that the viewer shouldn’t notice. The viewer should not be aware of the camera or the microphone.

Ed: Are you concerned that all these skills that you’ve learnt over all these years are just going to go with you out of the industry – that you don’t have the opportunity to pass them on? Take your son here, he’s the head chippie and you’re the hammer hand; he’s obviously not getting into the game. Is it all lost Fred?

Fred: I think there are certain aspects that are lost, but in the end it doesn’t really matter.

Ed: You’ve touched a few people over the years have you – they might have picked up a thing or two? A few directors might now know a few things that they should have known at the start.

Fred: I once had the facilities manager at TVNZ come to me and say “Fred can I have a wee word.” I said “sure Bill, what’s up?” and he said “you’re intimidating our directors.” I thought, oh back to that thing again – I thought God I haven’t made a director cry for a few years, what have I done now … so it’s like “why, what’s happening, who have I upset now?” And he said “no, they haven’t worked with you before and they want to know your background and when I tell them, they back off because you know too much!” To me, that is rather sad, that is bloody tragic. I can tell you a story about a director where we had to do 4 interviews at 4 different locations for a programme and these people were poets, and I won’t say who the director was, I won’t even say what the programme was, but the first position we went into was in a highrise office building, the director was going to call the talent to come downstairs and present the poem inside the entrance foyer.

My soundie looked at me and said “we can’t have it near the doors, there’s street noise coming through there with an automatic door opening and closing all the time behind the camera – we can’t do that.”

So I said “well okay, look there’s a nice bit of sculpture in the end there, let’s do it over there.”

“Oh it’s too dark Fred, it’s too dark.”

“I’ve got 6 lights onboard, I can make it a bit brighter than it is now.”

“Oh I haven’t got time.”

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And I said “well have you got the talent, does the talent know what they’re saying? I can guarantee that I’ll be lit ready to go by the time the talent comes down at the bottom of the stairs.” Fifteen minutes later we were ready to go, I had colour gels there, the talent had dark hair, I put a purple gel on there and everything was lit and I had a happy soundie. We then waited 20 minutes for the talent to work out what they were going to say.

That followed through for 3 locations, exactly that all the time. In the end, for the last location, the director wasn’t even next to the camera looking at it, and to me I didn’t give a stuff about what the director thought … to me the most important people were the people in front of the camera, because we were putting them on film for the first time and showing them. You’ve got to be true to them, you’ve got to be honest with them, you don’t put them down. That’s the fashion these days I think, but anyway I digress … I went back into work and I had a call from the facilities manager, the same person who asked me about making directors cry, and he said “Fred did you have any problems on the shoot?”

And I thought oh God and I said “ah, no, no as far as I’m concerned the camera went alright and we were all happy with the audio and everything … why?”

“Oh I’ve had a complaint from the director.”

“I said oh, okay, right, that’s a bit sad … what was the complaint?”

“Oh just a general complaint about the way you filmed.”

I said “alright, fine.” So I was off, I was through the bloody building at TVNZ looking for this director and I

actually found her and she had my videotape under her arm and I said “hey how’s it going?”

“Good, good.”

“Have you seen my pictures?”

“I’ve just looked at them.”

I said “they alright?”

“Oh they’re beautiful Fred.”

“Oh great, I’m glad you’re happy.” I called up the manager and I said “I just happened to run into the director and she’s quite happy with the pictures, she hadn’t seen them before she made the complaint, but she’s quite ecstatic.” And he said “you didn’t just run into that director, you chased round the building to find her.”

That’s it, you shoot something and you put everything into it and you give the product to that person, whether it’s in a form of videotape or disc or hard drive, and that person takes it away and does whatever they like with it. You don’t know what they say about you, how it’s gone. The editor could be looking at it and saying “oh this isn’t going to work” and I’ve had a few of those – this isn’t going to work, who shot this? The director’s not going to say “look it was me telling them to turn the camera upside down and film with it that way.” They’re going to blast the cameraman for it.

Ed: It’s a team isn’t it Fred. You were saying in that example that you’ve got to trust the soundie who tells you “no, opening doors, traffic, that won’t work,” and that’s something that’s outside your realms of interest – you’re there for the picture, and the components that

Page 12

make up the picture; the director is there for the story and when you all work together and you all listen to each other’s expertise, then it should turn out alright.

Fred: Yes and I’ve always listened to the soundie.

I know some guys say “this is a great picture” and the soundie says “I can’t mic that”. These days, you’ve got radio mics and it makes it easier, but “I can’t boom that, I can’t do that.” I know some cameramen have insisted on it and ended up with sound that’s not usable, so immediately that shot is dumped. So what’s the point of insisting on getting that shot? So I always say to the soundie how do you want to do it – do you want to boom, you’re going to come above, or you can’t come below.

Ed: Somebody once told me that if you turn the picture off and listen to the sound, you’ll still get the gist of the story, but if you do it the other way round, quite often you don’t quite know what’s going it. It might look pretty, but what’s actually happening, what’s the content?

Fred: Yes, exactly.

I’ve worked with some brilliant soundies, both guys who have been in the business for years, guys who were radio technicians and trained as radio technicians and came on in the early days of television, and some young people today who are absolutely brilliant who, if they’re booming, they’re out of your frame and everything, without even talking about it.

Ed: Fred: Ed:

So I should be talking to a soundie and not you?

Yeah, absolutely.

pictures ) in a gluey mess blocking the machine and holding up the works.

Film cameras were clockwork mute with 100ft loads ( 2 mins 40secs ) with a run of 23-26 sec per wind. Try filming an aircraft crash-landing in 23 sec.

Sound cameras held 10 minutes of film per magazine and were initially heavy, bulky and ran on lead acid batteries via inverters or a transformer if they were US models ( Cinevoice and Pro600 ). The early models were also noisy, meaning that the camera and operator were covered with blankets, coats etc if filming inside. If you were shooting Comag ( mag stripe for audio ) you couldn't film music because of flutter and wow problems The advantage when video arrived was then, music recording okay, no need to change stock from poor light to bright, silent running, more light sensitivity, longer recording time ( 20 mins ), switching lenses easy with back focusing function as opposed to film cameras which had to be adjusted by a tech using shims and a light bench. B & W film processed to negative, straight cuts in editing, dissolves could be done using A & B rolls on two projectors. No waiting for processing. Up until 1988 when I went freelance, I was shooting both film and video. With Magic Lantern, I went exclusively over to video shooting both News and programs, TV & nonTV items, for New Zealand and overseas clients.

Did we moan about all those hang-ups with film? No, we just got on with shooting the pictures, aiming to get the very best within those limitations and in the process acquiring skills that were an asset when transgressing NZVN to better and better equipment and media – Fred

Okay, next month.

Now, we don’t end there. Fred must have had a good think over his morning tea and sent me this.

On reflection, here are some notes to clarify a few points we raised.

Up to 1982, all field filming was on 16mm B & W stock, chemically hardened so that it could be processed on the corporation's Viscomat machines which were faster than the standard film processors. Grain was quite large on the faster film stock and we tended to avoid using it if possible. It was very difficult to identify difference between Viscomat and standard film stock, so if you got it wrong and put standard stock through the machine, the result was nice clear celluloid with all the emulsion ( and the

For Sale Field production equipment for sale.

Tripod, microphones, boom, lights, matte boxes, French flag etc. Used but not abused.

Email Fred Goldring at magiclantern@xtra.co.nz for details, photos & prices.

Inspection welcome, North Shore Auckland.

Page 14

Made in the USA I took the opportunity after NAB to visit the Matthews Studio Equipment offices and factory in Burbank, California. Linda Swope is taking us through to show us what goes on here. We’re starting off in the showroom where there are just a small number of the items that Matthews has for sale.

Ed: How do you pick which products go into the showroom Linda?

Linda: Mostly new products and a little smattering of the bread and the butter.

Ed: And what’s good is that you show them with the items that they’re meant to hold on them. I can see all sorts of things hanging from the ceiling and on stands?

Linda: Exactly. Our equipment is camera and light support, so we’ve got lights supported, we’ve got right control which is what you see the scrims and the flags hanging from the grid. So yes, this what we do.

Ed: How many people have you got working here?

Linda: I believe now we have 84 in production and in support.

Ed: Right, let’s go and look at the process starting with Research & Development, so take us to the laboratory where all the new product from Matthews gets designed and developed?

Linda: We don’t really have a laboratory. The new product designs come from the President of our company, they come from the marketing department, they come from end users, they come from grips out in the field … that’s how we get our new products.

Everybody brings us ideas.

Ed: And how quickly can you get those to market?

Linda: It depends on the complexity of the product. We debuted 4 at NAB and 2 of those 4 are already available; the other 2 are within 30 days of being available – so relatively quickly depending on what it is.

Ed: But if it’s something as simple as a clamp that might have a slight change to it because of a customer’s suggestion, that I imagine could be quite a quick turnaround?

Linda: It can be a quick turnaround if it’s just an improvement, and then we remarket it as “new and improved” because it now swivels this way, or it drops that way or whatever it does.

Ed: Have you ever designed a product yourself and had it called “the Linda”?

Linda: I have not. One Linda is enough!

Ed: Mmmmm … I don’t know. So from Research & Development, I guess it’s got to be costed … you’ve got to work out how it’s going to be made and how much it’s going to cost and is it actually worth making?

The showroom with a fine selection of Matthews product.

product it’s a crystal ball – you have to kinda go “okay, let’s try” and that goes back to the marketing team to say “alright, I think that we’ll sell this many of those”, and you make them and you hope that you’ll sell them.

Then, over the next year, you go into history, you go into trends, you go into that kind of stuff to figure out how many they’re going to put on the shelf.

Ed: I would say that your big advantage in this market is that you can be almost “just in time”, because you’ve got everything here in the factory. You do buy

Linda: Yes exactly.

If it’s too expensive and the market can’t bear the price, then that’s a decision we make at that time. Having said that, we do have a lot of resources and most times we can get it in within a reasonable cost so that we’re able to share it with our end users.

Ed: I guess you’ve also got to work out how big that market is, that you don’t make too many of them or too few?

Linda: That’s true.

That’s where forecasting comes in and, with a new

Linda at her very active desk.

Page 16

in a few items, but most of it is actually made right here in Burbank?

Linda: 99% of Matthews equipment is made right here in Burbank.

Ed: Right, let’s go and see the process, starting with the loading bay where the raw material comes in. What does your raw material consist of Linda?

Linda: Well raw material pretty much consists of tubing that we cut to various sizes, whether it be stand risers, track tubes, stand legs.

Ed: So you’ve a number of different diameters, but is it all aluminium or do you use steel as well?

Linda: Aluminium and steel in standard lengths and we cut it here.

Ed: And there are boxes here with labels on – obviously these have come in?

Linda: These are component parts, castings, Thandles, brass breaks, O rings – all of the component parts that go into most of our finished goods; wheels that go onto our stands; it could be a suction cup that we add our camera mount to – we don’t of course make suction cups. So there are things that we bring in that complement our product, our finished item.

Ed: Are most of these American products or do you get them from everywhere?

Linda: Most of them are American made. There are some castings that we get offshore, it just doesn’t make sense to go to a foundry here when it’s so crazy expensive, but that’s a small percentage.

Ed: But your castors and your wheels?

Linda: All American made. I don’t think they’re from California, but anything within the 50 States, you’re looking at next day delivery. It’s very quick.

Ed: Now the machine shop itself, which is a little bit noisy and very long?

Linda: Yes. It starts here with the length of tube cut on the saw to whatever length we need.

Preparing tube sections.

Ed: So how is that decided? Is it computer operated or what?

Ed: Now there’s one simple process where a flare is put on the end of an aluminium tube but there is also this CNC machine which looks to be the highest tech machine in the shop?

Linda: Work orders are generated for product that’s needed and work orders are based on what we want to put in inventory, or what’s committed. If I’ve got 500 of one item committed, they’ve got to put a plan through to make 500 without disrupting everything else they’re making. So that’s where planning comes in – I don’t even pretend to know how they do it.

Ed: Do you know how many days or weeks ahead a plan is put into place?

Linda: Our work orders are opened every single day. One work order because of all of the small things that are involved with it, may take 4 weeks to complete; another one may take 7 days. Normally, if it’s not on the shelf and it’s for inventory purposes, it’s about 3 weeks. If it’s something that’s urgently needed that we don’t have on the shelf, we do have it in the process where we can interrupt something or run a parallel with something, so we can get that urgent order out quickly within hopefully a few days to a week.

Ed: That is the flexibility of this operation – you don’t have huge computer controlled everything; you’ve got a very skilled workforce so they’re able to adjust what they are making to the needs of the customer?

Linda: Exactly, because we’re here in Hollywood, California – the grip capital of the world. Grips come in here, and if a grip needs something, we’re going to make it for him, because he’s the one who’s out there using the product on set, on location, and his grip friends see it and they ask for it. So they’re very important clients.

Linda: It is. This is the machine that we use when we’re machining products out of a solid piece of aluminium or steel.

It’s basically computer generated, the programme gets programmed into the computer; it will make 10 of them or it will make 10,000 of them – exactly the same. He’s making collars now for one of the stands that we make.

Ed: So the machine is actually milling a side groove or slot in the side of the collar and then it moves along and drills 3 holes for the bolts to go into the side – so 2 operations in one.

And now there’s another man with a drill and what’s he doing Linda?

Linda: He’s actually tapping holes in the receivers so we can connect them to the stand itself.

Ed: This is a very solid piece of steel that he’s drilling into.

Linda:

That was probably made on the CNC.

Ed: And further into the production process is a large welding area where at the moment they seem to be making frames for flags?

Linda: Here what they’re doing is they are making frames – they’re bending the tubing for the frames which then go to the sewing department for the fabric to be sewn on. The smallest is 12 inches by 18 inches all the way up to 48x48.

Page 18

The fabrication team.

Ed: But before the material goes on, it’s got to be welded together and a support stand put onto it, so that’s the welding process?

Linda: Yes it sure is.

We’ve got 6 individual welding bays where one welding bay specifies on one product only – say it be frames or C-Stand legs, so the

Page 19

consistency is the same every single time. It doesn’t bounce around to different welders with different styles; it’s one welder that does a handful of product consistently.

Ed: Is this piece of paper important?

rush order most certainly. You know there really isn’t an average; or it could be one item that we sell consistently 100 a month, so there’s constantly work orders for 50 going all the time. It could be something that doesn’t sell as often, but we still have to plan for it, so it could be 5.

Ed: Now I notice there’s orange painted product here, there’s black painted product, there’s anodised and there’s chrome. You don’t do that in-house?

Linda: We have a paint house, a chrome house and an anodising house that we work with – just because the EPA laws ( the environmental laws in California ) are so strict. We’re sticking to what we do the best and we’re letting them do that, because they do it the best.

Ed: Now of course in the old days, I guess there was just paint?

Linda: There probably was paint, yes. When I say “paint” now, it’s all powder coated; it’s actually baked on; the process is they cook it on.

Ed: So it’s a lot more durable and it’s not liable to scratch?

Linda: No, over time it will scratch. The majority of the black powder coated items go to end users, they

A work order follows the product.

Linda: Very much so. This is a work order that follows it from raw material all the way through the finished assembly process.

Ed: It gets a bit grubby?

Linda: Yes, it’s grubby, because it goes all over – it literally follows this.

Ed: And individual workers sign off each part to say they’ve completed it?

Linda: Yes they sure do. They record the time that it took to complete their process and that’s a lot of what goes into our costing.

Ed: Now of course the flags get sent off to the fabric part, but other parts such as the tubing that’s cut to length and the collar we saw being made before – they come to the assembly area?

Linda: Yes. All the components for the finished goods come to this assembly department. One work order will be brought complete. For example, this one for a stand – legs, feet, caps, castings, handles, tubes – everything comes together and then the shipping supervisor assembles that product.

Ed: How many would they do at a time … is there a minimum number or they could do one for a rush order?

Linda: It could be one for a rush order. Typically we like to do economical runs, but it could be one for a Page 20

Assembly of a stand.

go into still photo facilities, videographers, wedding shooters, a lot of people who are doing their own thing.

Or if you’re hanging them from the studio up in the ceiling, you don’t want to see them, they go black. It just really depends.

Ed: And this is where they put those little “Matthews” stickers on?

Linda: Yes, the stickers and the header cards and the Matthews bags – any kind of packaging also happens here. Where it gets packed for shipment, that’s a different department – this is just store packaging. They’re going to put it in a store or in their showroom, there’s Matthews branded packaging that gets put on the product.

Ed: We’re now in a little spot here where it looks like a craftsman is at work assembling this particular item?

Cutting the fabric.

from silks to nets to reflectors to green screens and beyond, in various different sizes for use in film and TV. Ed: Do they tend to specialise in what they do or can one lady do anything?

Linda: I think most of them can do anything. We do specialise with the cutters – like the lady behind us, she is the one who cuts most of the material.

Ed: Because that’s where the biggest mistakes can happen?

Linda: It’s definitely got to be right. She seems to get it right. But all the girls can do a number of jobs.

These girls here are doing overheads, they’re doing big 20x20s. But then behind us, Anna is pinning material to frames to go over to the sewing machine. So it depends, it’s a process.

MT1 tripod assembly.

Linda: He’s assembling our MT1 tripod.

He assembles it and then he tests every component to make sure it works, to make sure a camera mounts on it, to make sure the legs lock and extend, and to make sure it works before it goes into stock.

Ed: So something like this really does take a bit of extra time to make sure everything is working well because of the tight tolerances?

Linda: Yes this does take a little extra time.

Everything that gets assembled in here is tested before it goes on the shelf – everything, even a simple CStand. The legs have to be tested to make sure they’re going to open and close, to make sure the brakes are going to lock.

So they’re testing them as they’re assembled to make sure it’s coming together correctly and it’s going to work when the end user gets it.

Ed: I see some bins around the place Linda – is this an eco-factory?

Ed: I notice the flags have different colours on their edges – I see a yellow one, a red one. Is there a reason for that?

Linda: Yes there is a reason. In the industry, red means double, which means it’s a double net; green means single, which means it’s a single net; the gold that you see on the silks means it’s an artificial silk.

Whatever the colour the webbing is, end users don’t have to think “is that a single or double” they know it’s a double and they pull it. Or they know it’s an artificial silk. The webbing colour specifies what type of net it is.

Ed:

You learn something every day.

Linda: Ed:

Yes, I know.

Now the important part of the process?

Linda: It snaps manually which probably isn’t a lot of fun, but it’s an important process for that particular product.

Linda: We try our best, we recycle all the cardboard, some of the fabric we can recycle, some of it we can’t … some of the fabrics have fire retardant chemicals on them, so those we can’t, we have to dispose of them another way. But we definitely try to lower our global footprint where we can.

Ed: And all your metal offcuts?

Linda: They either get reused or scrapped and recycled, yes.

Now we move to a quieter and more refined area, the fabric section.

Ed: There’s quite a bit of fabric of different colours and textures being operated on here Linda?

Linda: Yes there sure is.

This is our sewing department where the ladies and gentleman here put together all of our light control products, which range

Page 21

Putting on fasteners.

Ed: And again, this is something that that little bit of extra care taken in putting it in the right place and making sure it’s at the right pressure to assemble it, means that it’s not going to fall apart when somebody uses it?

Linda: Exactly. This is for the Matthews RoadRags kits. We’re the only one who makes them and they’ve got to be made right.

Now we are in a very much quieter part of the Matthews organisation – the warehouse.

Ed: Linda, you were saying you had around 1500 product lines, but 100 of them are your most important in that they’re the ones everybody wants and they’re the ones that are moving through the fastest. But you still have to keep a couple of pretty well everything you’ve ever made?

Linda: We try to keep a couple of everything we’ve ever made. We’re not always successful with this, but we try our best to forecast what our customers are going to need.

Forecasting is a mixture of different things, but we do a lot of our stocking built on history and trends, so we do know that there are about 100 products that consistently are top selling, and those are in stock all the time.

Linda: Yes, we do have a lot of dolly track right there. Normally, you probably wouldn’t see that much on the floor, but we have an order that’s going out next month that’s pretty large, so we’re staging for it and that’s got a lot of the track on it.

Ed: So that’s in the planning?

Linda: It’s in planning, yes, it sure is.

Ed: I see over here some flag frames.

You’re obviously keeping a bit of backup stock of the frames so

Ed: And over here you’ve got rather a lot of dolly track, because I guess, that’s an item that takes up a lot of space?

Dolly track in stock.

Page 22

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that you could sew on the fabric in the layers and colour that is needed at the time?

Linda: Yes we do that, but also customers order frames only, because some customers do their own sewing. So we also have a separate inventory of just frames that are a catalogue item.

Ed: Let’s move on to Shipping.

This is a very important part of the process, especially for us way down in New Zealand – this product has to be packaged and shipped so that it’s not damaged along the way.

Now Matthews has got some very odd shaped products so I guess you have to be quite creative in your packaging?

Linda: Yes. What we’re looking at here are pallets that are staged to go out. And yes, we do have a lot of different products, a lot of different sized boxes, specialty boxes that are made for that product. That’s why you see a lot of weird strangely shaped pallets here. Normally we don’t like to kind of stagger so much, but because I know this shipment is going in a container, it’s okay. Usually they’re more square, more rectangular, not so many jagged pieces on the pallets.

Betsy: I quote with different shipping companies, different forwarders. I try to establish relationships with forwarders to see if we can get better pricing. I’m kinda just starting out doing it now, where I’m quoting 3 shipping companies for every load of freight.

Ed: Can you consolidate orders?

Betsy: It depends. Some of our dealers like to keep the orders separate, because maybe they’re ordering for a group of different people and they don’t necessarily want to have to unpack everything and then repack to send out to their customers.

We do consolidate shipments when a big customer orders a lot so we gather shipments until we have a truckload and then the whole truckload goes all at once.

Ed: Do you have eco ideas with your packing materials?

Betsy: We’re trying to stay as eco-friendly as we can. Unfortunately, we’re kinda stuck with cardboard and plastic, but our peanuts are soluble …

Ed: Your “peanuts”?

Betsy: Yes our peanuts, I’ll show you. They’re made of corn starch so they dissolve in water or you can eat them too. In the old building, the rats used to eat them!

Ed: Well that is very eco-friendly.

Betsy: It’s just corn starch puffed up. We do try to stay away from the really heavy plastics.

Ed: I do see some polystyrene here, but I guess you have to …?

Betsy: I think we use the styrene for the reflectors because there’s no way to get those through UPS or Fed-Ex without them getting damaged. So we use inserts that hold them in the box.

Ed:

Assembling an ergonomic pallet for shipping.

Ed: I guess the hardest part is actually to arrange it in a form that minimises the cost of shipping, but that also keeps the product safe?

Linda: It’s like a puzzle, because on one of these pallets you might have 14 differently shaped boxes.

They fit it all in and put the most delicate thing right in the middle, although all of our boxes are high grade cardboard, specifically designed for that product. It’s interesting how they do it. I wouldn’t want to do what my shipping guys do.

Ed: And I guess you ship to all parts of the world?

Linda: year.

So how many employees?

Betsy: We have 5 fulltime employees right now. I think they have 100 years with the company collectively.

Reggie has 31 years this year; Efrian next week will be 27 years; Antonio’s got another 20 years – so they’ve all been with us for a long, long time.

Ed: So they should know what they’re doing?

Betsy: Yes they do, they do. There’s some weird stuff to pack – it’s not like packing hammers or packing

A hundred different countries this past

Ed: Wow. At this point, I spoke with Betsy, the shipping department team leader.

Ed: Betsy, your reputation precedes you. Linda says you’re the guru of shipping.

Betsy: I don’t know about that.

Ed: You’ve got quite a team here and, for your customers internationally, shipping is really important because firstly, you’ve got to make sure the product gets there undamaged, and secondly, they don’t want to spend too much on shipping so you’ve got to keep the packed volume down. How do you do all that?

Page 24

Not Betsy’s everyday lunch!

your things that come in boxes. We have to build a lot of our packaging because some of our items are just too strangely shaped.

We left Betsy to her snack and moved on through the warehouse.

Ed: Linda, if we look back to the early years, what are some of the products that you’re still making?

Linda: That would be the Doorway Dolly and the 40 inch C-Stand. We’ve got 5 or 6 versions of C-stands now and all of them are in the Top 10; and dollies are probably in the Top 15. It’s crazy.

Ed: Why do you think that is?

Linda: Just because they’re great items. There are Doorway Dollies out there that are 20 years old that are still working and we still sell up to 10-15 a month.

It’s quite amazing actually.

Ed: And your C-Stands don’t buckle?

Linda: Our C-Stands don’t buckle, they don’t break … you may have to replace a T-handle now and then. People are buying ‘em like crazy. We sell more every year.

Ed: And we come back to the architecture inside the office there where you’re using your own C-Stands as part of the architecture?

Linda: In the office, we’re using MatthPoles which are a grip item and just some panels that are like privacy dividers, but it’s all Matthews’ gear in there as well.

Lastly, I spoke with Alfredo, a supervisor in many departments.

Ed: Alfredo, you’re a supervisor for 3 areas aren’t you?

Alfredo: Yes, machine shop, sewing and assembly departments. The machine shop is the whole operation from raw materials, through the various departments, which is machines, millings, CNC and welding, and then getting it ready for the outside processes – chrome or powder coat. Then when it comes back in, it goes back into the assembly department which I also supervise, making sure that everything’s put together all in one unit – all the components go into one complete assembly and then out to the warehouse for shipping.

Ed: And where fabric’s involved?

Alfredo: That’s part of what the welding department does. It makes the frames that are used in the sewing department where they put the fabric on the different frames which become diffusers or flags that we sell.

Also, in the sewing department, we make all the bigger scrims which is what we call “overheads” – big 12x12’s, 20x20’s, reflectors or diffusers for varying different densities.

MatthPoles in the office.

Ed: How did you get the job of looking after all 3 departments – nobody else put their hand up?

Alfredo: I guess little by little. I’ve been with the company close to 11 years now. When I began, I started as a planner, planning all the work, and eventually I took over one department and then the next, and then the next. Most of my time is working in the machine shop which is where the majority of our personnel are.

Ed: Do you think it’s important to have that overview of the process because, I guess, if the flag hasn’t been welded correctly, it’s not quite rectangular, then the fabric people are going to have a hard job fitting the fabric to it?

Page 25

Alfredo with his sewing team.

Alfredo: Yes, it puts all the heat on one person really. Before I used to try to get my job done in my area the best way possible; now I have to make sure that no one makes mistakes, because then I can’t say “well you’ve got to talk to the other supervisor” – it’s just me now.

bring the material in when it’s needed, not when the suppliers have it available.

So I’ve got to make sure I talk to the guys and let them know what we need from beginning to end – what we expect.

That also gives me an opportunity to do everything just on time, meaning that I don’t let the finished materials sit on the shelves for too long … I schedule the back end, which is the machine shop, making what we’re going to need almost immediately in all the departments, so we don’t have the cash sitting on the shelves for too long.

Alfredo: The problems that used to exist have diminished a lot. We see a lot less problems, a lot less hiccups than we used to have. I let people do what they need to do.

Ed: Because that could be very easily done with equipment like this – you could have a lot of inventory sitting there – basically dollars wasted?

If there’s something they need help with, then they come to me and we do it the best way that can be done.

Alfredo: Oh yes, it’s been done in the past where, if you’re not careful, you can bring a lot of raw materials in that you don’t need yet. I’ve got to make sure I

Ed:

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Ed: Now you were saying that you’re the one “throat to choke” when it comes to any problems, but I’m sure there aren’t many problems, because just walking around the factory, I see very happy people.

Ed:

You give them some responsibility?

Alfredo: That’s exactly right.

Give them the responsibility and the freedom to do it the best way possible.

They all seem to get on well with each other too?

Alfredo: The majority of the personnel here have been here for a long time, and one of the things I talk

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Pay by cheque or direct credit to ANZ # 010242-0160111-00 Page 26

The assembly team.

about when we’re meeting is that we’ve got to get along because we spend more time with the “family” here than we do with our actual blood family. We spend the majority of the day here, then we go home, spend 2-3 hours and then we go to sleep. Then we come back here again and see the faces here … so we actually spend more time here dealing with each other, so let’s get along. Everybody seems to agree and we do get along. There’s little hiccups here and there but, for the most part, everyone likes to come to work.

Ed:

But then that’s what “father’s” for isn’t he?

Alfredo: That’s correct.

A young man comes in and asks Alfredo about a couple of things.

Ed: What was that about Alfredo?

so not only is what you’re going to make in the future corrected, but also what you’ve got in stock is fixed too?

Alfredo:

That is correct.

And that was it. The Matthews factory is certainly not a complicated nor a high tech production line but it is one where I believe its customers can have the confidence that, if the product they use carries the Matthews brand, it is going to perform above and beyond its call to duty. I witnessed all the elements that go into the manufacture of quality products – a spacious environment, quality raw materials and a dedicated and happy staff who put together with pride everything they make.

There is a lesson for many others there in Burbank. NZVN

Alfredo: There were a couple of issues – one where there was paint build-up on one of the products and we just needed to make sure that everything else left on the stock shelf was corrected.

Ed: This had come from a customer?

Alfredo: Yes a customer at NAB noticed something was not exactly the way we want it to be. We want it to be perfect and so we got the product that we had on the shelf and reviewed everything 100%.

Ed: And there was another one with a crank?

Alfredo: Some of the screws were a little bit loose, lack of thread lock and we actually went back and checked everything again and reinforced that thread lock to more density on the thread lock, so we can have it tightened.

Ed: Again, this taking customer feedback and bringing it back onto a production line, Page 27