Soundman Nick Steer joined Granada Television in 1979. He spent a year working on local programmes and was then assigned to work on World In Action. He went on to work ith Tony Wilson on So It Goes and then spent many years working on dramas such as A Tale of Two Cities, Cold Feet…
Read MoreNick Steer talks about his time on World In Action.
So after that first year on local programmes, I then got assigned to World in Action with Alan Bale, who was the recordist and George Turner, who was the cameraman. A few of the other cameraman came in for various things, but it was mostly George. And I had about a year just doing that…
Read MoreNick Steer describes working on drama
Towards the later part of the 70s I started doing drama, mostly with Phil Smith but some with John Muxworthy, who taught me boom swinging, basically. And the sort of drama techniques. So you were an assistant on the dramas that you refer to… My first dramas, I was a boom swinger. Yes, boom operator.…
Read MoreNick Steer talks about the music programme, So It Goes
I’m a bit a little hazy in terms of the timescale, but I think it was probably… there was two series, and I think in the first series I was assisting Phil Smith and we recorded a band called Asleep at the Wheel at the Library theatre, who were sort of western swing. Directed by…
Read MoreNick Steer’s memories of the Manchester City documentary
Well, as I said, I had originally come in and my interest was documentary. But the kind of opportunities for that weren’t as great, I found. As I became more experienced in doing drama, I did really enjoy that. It was more challenging, because there’s documentary and documentary, really. A lot of what was classed…
Read MoreNick Steer on the challenges of filming a drama in two languages.
More drama, a 1988 A Tale of Two Cities, which is another big one. We were in Bordeaux shooting for, oh weeks, must have been nine, 10 weeks or something. Which was another great experience. That was an interesting one, because it was a co-production with a French company and the cost was half, well…
Read MoreNick Steer talks about working practices
When you look at the list of programmes, the perception was that when things started to change… I think when we were doing Tale Of Two Cities… Granada, whether there was money problems or whatever, I don’t know, Granada decided… I think it was Thatcherism as well. There had been the TV-am dispute, and all…
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