I have been a staff member at Granada since 1978, that was when I joined the staff. But I left university in 1973 and was looking for work in television, I worked with Arthur Smith at Rose Productions, he gave me an opportunity, he knew a producer at the university, Vivian Daniels, a BBC Manchester…
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Jon Woods on his ‘apprenticeship’ at Granada
When I first joined Granada in 1978, my first day on film ops was on Coronation Street, doing the location – all the location filming was done on film in those days, before electronics, you know, went lightweight. And Ray Goode was the senior cameraman, and I was his assistant, focus puller, and that was…
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Jon Woods remembers working with cameraman Ray Goode
He was a lighting cameraman on Brideshead, and also a lighting cameraman on Jewel in the Crown, which is where I worked with him for two years, just short of two years. So I was a camera operator on Jewel in the Crown. What was your opinion of Ray Goode? I think Ray had learnt…
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Jon Woods on working on World In Action in Belfast
I assisted on quite a few World In Action’s. It was a very busy weekly show, high turnaround of ideas and projects, and one that I smile at a lot was a World In Action we were shooting with Stuart Prebble, producer, about the IRA, and we were filming in Belfast and Dublin, and it’s…
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Jon Woods on filming the Toxteth riots in 1981
One of the big shocks of my life was having to work on the Toxteth riots for ITN. Shooting on film, spending nearly a week in Toxteth, not getting home for nearly a week, and being close to very serious danger, and being almost injured quite badly a few ties, with petrol bombs and flagstones…
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Jon Woods on the technological challenges in the 70’s and 80’s
There’s a lot of responsibility on the camera operators in those early days before video assist and video record and replay. Literally, it was film… if you imagine, during Jewel in the Crown, we were in India for six months, and I think we were there for nearly three months before we saw one foot…
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Jon Woods on the changes in kit and its impact on quality
We’re going to talk about kit. What was it like in the old days and what’s it like today? It couldn’t be more chalk and cheese – talk about steam-generated television! In the era of film, everything was bigger, heavier, more awkward to use. A typical film cameraman’s kit would be a camera body –…
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Jon Woods on his move to being a director
Did you go back to being a cameraman after that? (after an accident when he broke his neck) I did, for about a month. I went back into work I think in September. it happened in January/February, 1989, so I came back in February, I had February ‘til about September recovering, I had a neck…
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Jon Woods describes his dream job – directing Coronation Street
As a Salfordian, working on Coronation Street, shooting the film inserts, either on the street itself, on the lot, or round and about in Manchester as location work, was great for me. It was like the fulfilment of a boyhood dream. A programme pretty much based in my home town, and being a Salfordian myself,…
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Jon Woods on the importance of unions at Granada
Working at Granada is the only time I have ever been on strike, which was the ACTT strike not long after I joined, I think it was 1978 or 1979. I think we were on strike for 11 weeks, and that to me was a bit of a shocker, because it’s the only time in…
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Jon Woods on Granada’s relationship with the region
What would you say was the relationship between Granada and the rest of Manchester? I think in terms of Greater Manchester, I think it was pretty well-respected as a company, you know, flying the flag for the north west in all its ways. The dilemma that Granada faced was with Liverpool – it was second…
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Jon Woods discusses Granada’s concept of Studio Tours
I remember the old caption From the North on the captions, and that was very much Plowright’s mantra. And the Studio Tour is evidence of how Granada saw its place in the region. I think the Studio Tours was an idea that came out of a will to advertise itself and to let people have…
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Jon Woods’s thoughts on the ethos of Granada
I think a lot of the ethos of the company, Made in the North, was down to the Bernstein family. It was a Bernstein company. I think Sidney obviously had a great insight into the media, and the newly developing television media, he had a great insight. He had cinemas, and saw a great opportunity,…
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Jon Woods’s impressions of Granada as a company
I’d always thought that I would become a cameraman. When I was a youngster, so before I was a teenager, sort of eight, nine, 10, black and white television was just turning into colour television. I had seen a lot of images on television of cameramen working and thought, “That sounds like a great job,…
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Jon Woods on the changes made by Charles Allen and Gerry Robinson
And you say everything changed after Compass. I think in the end, they’d probably had enough and they realised things were changing, that the monopoly – which it was – was going to go. The good times had gone. They were on the cusp. They hadn’t completely gone, but fiscal control was going to be…
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Jon Woods remembers how Granada looked after its staff
Tell me about the care you received when you were sick. They looked after you body and soul, I would say. They were always, always caring about how you were, whether you were well – not many companies had a health centre within the building. Two nurses, a doctor on call, you could go there…
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Jon Woods reflects on the male domination in roles
On the practicalities of working at Granada, and how we all knew each other, and it was a great thing, and people mixed very easily, but you couldn’t call it a diverse set-up, and in our day it was a very male set-up. Would you agree with that? I would totally agree with that. I…
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Jon Woods on the legacy of Granada
I would like to think that one of the major legacies that Granada has left us is a whole load of people who have worked in television and who are now disseminating their knowledge out to other people, training other people to do it, so I think that family approach and a whole raft of…
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Jon Woods on the importance of the Granada canteen
Inside the building, your duty of care almost, the canteen was the fantastic heart of the building, in its very first incarnation the canteen sat as a building that jutted out into the car park at the back of Granada and it was an L-shaped building with sort of banquette type booths that you could…
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