As a child I lived in Southport and my father, one of the many hobbies he had, was he actually had a cine camera. And I’ve subsequently seen footage that he filmed even before the Second World War. But as a child I was brought up going to the Isle of Man, and I have…
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George Turner on his first job at Mancunian Films
So I left school and went to work for a computer company in Southport called ICT out at Crossens, which bizarrely was where my father worked during the war when it was Brockhouse, making bits of guns, shells and all kind of things. And after about ten months there I got a call from Peter…
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George Turner on getting the call to work on World in Action
So I got a call just towards the end of December in ’68 when I was still operating on Big Breadwinner Hog and saying that the cameraman who had been on World in Action, which was Ray Goode, had had enough. Because I’d been involved in the Grosvenor Square demonstration, one of six crews, and…
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George Turner on his early days at Granada
So we did lots of news stories and it could be everything, you know. Some pretty horrible stories, mine disasters in North Wales. Obviously what we didn’t know was… leading on to things like the ‘Moors murders’, and that was… We did two or three days a week, we’d drive to Leeds on a Wednesday…
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George Turner on the ethics in filming
Did you ever feel that we were exploiting people? Well it depends who they were. Some of them probably deserved to be exploited, I would say! [laughs] No, I mean I think at the end of if you’ve got two ways to look at it. You’ve got obviously the professional people like politicians and things…
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George Turner remembers how a camera crew operated in 1963
In those days you had to load the magazines with film, which would last ten minutes. That would involve putting the magazine which sat on top of the camera into a changing bag, like a portable darkroom, and in the dark, you learned how to put the film that had been exposed carefully into some…
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George Turner reflects on the awards he has received
You’ve been recognised by BAFTA and you’re a fellow of the RTS. I wondered, what does that mean to you, that kind of recognition by your peers? Special. I think, upon reflection some years later, the BAFTA for one of the Up programmes, when it was presented to me, it was presented to me by…
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George Turner on the relationship between camera operator and producer
Tell me about the relationship between the camera person and the producer/director. Very important. Most of the producers I ever worked with I’ve always – again, it’s a story I’ve mentioned a few times, but not today – when you meet a producer at Los Angeles airport, he’s maybe been over there for two weeks,…
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George Turner sums up his work on World In Action
I probably worked on about 800 World in Actions out of the 1500 they made, of which I think I can honestly say I did in excess of 600 of them all myself. That doesn’t sounds much over 30 years but you know, it’s kind of 20 every year out of a run of 40.…
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George Turner on the importance of Granada being in Manchester
I think it’s well-known that the Bernsteins were looking to have a television station in the north of England. I know for a fact they looked in Liverpool as well as in Manchester. And in fact they looked in Manchester out towards the Toast Rack site, but think it’s been documented that they realised, the…
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George Turner talks about how long World In Action filming took
And when you were doing a World in Action programme, how long on average would you film for? About seven days. Certainly the World in Action period for the first four or five years, maybe ten, but say when I started in 1969. The first programme I did was a programme in Northern Ireland called…
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George Turner on some of the memorable World in Action programmes he worked on
There’s no one favourite programme, and that sounds slightly glib because, you know, the variety of the programmes was so varied from, you know, spending time with ministers through to spending it with people who’d got illnesses, thalidomide being one of the cases, but, you know, people that had struggles in life, I’m thinking mainly…
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George Turner on the team work on World In Action
You have to remember that in the World in Action days we always had a director/producer, and there was nearly always a researcher. World in Action of course didn’t have presenters. It was one of the things that we didn’t have, not until much later on, but in the period that I remember with most…
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George Turner on his work on the Up series
We’ve obviously just been talking about the World in Action series, which I’m obviously very proud to have been involved with for as long as I was; ’66 to 1998 was a long time. Alright, there were a few little diversions off it for different programmes, one of which was the Up series. It started…
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George Turner comments on changing technology
I wondered how the changes in technology have affected your role. Has it made it easier? I think it’s a journey that’s taken place over very nearly fifty years. So when I embarked, and talking about cameras that weighed over 42 lbs. and were powered by 12 volt car batteries and things like that, and…
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George Turner on filming distressing scenes
You were talking about filming in war zones and seeing very traumatic events. Did that take an emotional toll on you? Because obviously, it was probably physically tiring during that, but you recover from that, but seeing those kind of things and having to film them? Well I think that it’s interesting now when you…
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George Turner’s memories of Sir Denis Forman and David Plowright
David (Plowright) I got to know moderately well. I mean he knew more of me than I probably did about him. But that’s only because of course in my early days he was actually the editor of World in Action. And like Denis (Forman), these were people at the top of the company that even…
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