Robin Hood starring Patrick Troughton - Live TV from 1953

About

Robin Hood starring Patrick Troughton (BBC-tv, 1953)

British Television drama.

Extracts from The Abbot of St Marys, episode 2 of a 6-part serial, captured on film during a live transmission in 1953.

A very rare (but incomplete) telerecording from 1953, in which the output from an electronic studio camera was captured on film, in an early BBC experiment with the process of recording a live electronic image on film for re-broadcasting later.

Almost no television studio footage exists from this period. And this is the earliest known television recording of actor Patrick Troughton. It is thought to be the earliest surviving live broadcast footage from the era of live tv.

A BBC technician rescued this film footage from the bin. It is the only surviving video material from this serial.

The experiment was a partial failure on this occasion, as a recording fault caused the middle part of the half-hour programme to be lost, giving an incomplete recording of the episode, so that the resulting film was not suitable for repeating on tv. The few minutes of captured footage, being incomplete, was discarded.

Subsequent experiments eventually led to the successful development of the so-called 'telerecording' process, and by the mid-1950s it was possible, although expensive, to save on film a tv broadcast from the output of a 405-line electronic tv camera, albeit with low definition. The 405-line picture structure is clearly visible on this early test of the process.

The problem of low definition, and the system's other problems, would eventually be fixed by the many technical improvements introduced to the process during the 1960s.

The BBC's system of recording live the electronic signal from a studio camera differed from ITV's usual practice of pre-filming tv drama using a standard motion picture film camera, and then broadcasting the resulting film as if it was an ordinary cinema film.

ITV's process gave better results in the 1950s, since it yielded better picture definition, plus gave the opportunity to do re-takes, and to edit the film footage to remove any mistakes, as the programme was not being transmitted live.

Hence, for example, ITV's 1955 film series The Adventures of Robin Hood has superior picture quality to the recordings the BBC were able to make at that period.

Human-made No record of this work says a model made it. What this means.

Archive

Internet Archive, in Classic TV

Licence or status

The Internet Archive states none for this item.

Language

English

Who can watch

The archive gives no rating. Invisible Network shows it to Teens profiles and older, judged from its collection and subjects. How films are placed