Open Microphone

New Zealand Listener, Volume 26, Issue 671, 16 May 1952, Page 24

Open Microphone

ae, eee NEWS OF BROADCASTERS, ON AND OFF THE RECORD,

By

Swarf

HE inert form of a young man sprawled over the studio floor. On his bare chest was a chalked green circle. His heart was beating sluggishly. Suddenly it started to pound, and a comely young woman who had peeped into the studio out of curiosity was hustled out of sight. The heart-beats slowly resumed their apathetic tempo, and someone called out ‘"That’s fine!" It was all part of the business of tadio production. The young man was a co-opted technician with a notoriously slow-beating heart, the green circle was to show where to put the microphone, and the compliment. came from the sound effects expert who, to. give a

highly-dramatic background to a certain part of a play, had asked for a sound approximating the heart murmurs of a dying man. The young woman? Just one of the cast who had wandered in by mistake. The effects man was Roy Melford, who has been O.C. Artificial Noises (once referred to as the linerupper) for the NZBS Productions Department, Wellington, for the last three years or so. It was he who told me the foregoing tale, asd he stands by it. When given a script the first thing he | decides on is the "mood music"; then from special discs he selects sounds. suggested by the plot. Frequently he has to improvise, as in the case of an arrow leaving the bow and hitting the target. Sometimes the real thing is used-genuine soda splashes into a glass, though there’s but a poor substitute for what usually precedes it. The effects section had its biggest héadache when Conan Doyle’s The Lost World was produced; this called for 50ton dinosaurs crashing through jungle 'and pterodactyls beating the air with 22-feet wings. Aged 22, a keen amateur swordsman and a hockey player, Roy | Melfotd was working out sound effects, when I saw him last, for an NZBS._ production of Julius Caesar. »,

BRICKS FOR AN ARTIST

-_, N artist who studied at the Canterbury College School of Art and overPad and who is now back at his old | school teaching practical subjects as well

as lecturing in the History of Art and the History of Painting, John Oakley had some inter-

| esting things to say from 3YA the other evening. With Gordon Troup he traced | the influence of French painters on

British Art, in the penultimate talk in the series Our Debt to France.

"The French are essentially a_ race who kave led the world of, art for many. hundreds of years," he said in summing up... "7 know little of Secon trends in French painting, but in the past we have looked to France for a

lead, and we wili be looking to her in in the future." As an active painter himself, John Oakley’s main interest is in landscape. He is married with a youfig family, and his home is in Fendalton, where the pleasant harmony between house and garden is the result of his keenness on interior decorating and landscape gardeningespecially the latter. He would probably admit, too, that he has a certain regard for old chimneys to supply bricks for landscape work; he bought bricks for the terrace which is a link between house and garden at his own home in this way. Though he has never worked professionally as a landscape gardener he has advised others, much to their benefit, on house-and-garden layout.

HAPPY MEMORIES

\V HEN Paddy Turner, of Masterton, went to Sydney three years ago intent on breaking into Australian radio, she found that producers were having

difficulty in casting children’s parts; and her soft, youthful voice soon brought her engagements.

New Zealand listeners have heard her in several serials. She was Phyllis Lambert in January’s Daughter, and she appeared in numerous episodes of Strange Wills and Dr. Paul. She will be heard again shortly when the Commercial stations broadcast The Harp in the South, by

the New Zealand author Ruth Park, playing the role of Dolour Darcy. Miss Turner says she has happy memories of the making of this serial and of the late Nell Stirling, who produced it. Apert from playing in commercial features in Australia she was cast in some ABC and Macquarie shows, and as a free-lance actress took part in film work and musical comedy, She popes to return to Sydney later. ;

RADIO FARMER

VAN’ TABOR, who. conducts 2ZA’s farm sessions on Mondays and Fri-

days, owns one of the best-known voices behind the Manawatu’ microphone, He

has been broadcasting farm notes from 2ZA _ for nine years, and as he is now only 27, a large part of his life

ha’ been lived in the limelight. Tabor is Dominion Vice-President of the Young

Farmers’ Clubs. He first held club offices at 16, and his farm sessions in particular have helped the Y.F.C., started in 1933 to promote knowledge of. farming, leadership and citizenship. His other microphone work has included talks on farming and Young Farmers’ Clubs for the ‘Scottish Region of the BBC, the Voice of America, and the ABC. He has broadcast over Radio New Zealand and was Question Master for the finals of the Australian and New Zealand Y.F.C. Radio Leadership Contest held this year for the first time in New Zealand, Ivan Tabor still finds time to run a pretty successful dairy farm at Whakarongo, a few. miles out of Palmerston North, and look after a wife and three children. He thinks a lot of the Y.F.C. "I left school to go farming when I was 13, so the Y.F.C. has been my education," he says.