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REACH FOR THE SKY
REACH FOR THE SKY
An interview with Peter Allwork BSC
W hat’s the connection between a Big Fry
commercial with George Lazenby, a Great War dogfight in Aces High, spectacu- lar Oscar-winning vis-
tas of East African bush and live televi- sion coverage of Premier League soc- cer?
This varied quartet rather conve- niently serves to chart the rise-and- rise - if you’ll pardon the expression - of Peter Allwork from fearless free- lance aerial cameraman to company boss of Shepperton-based Aerial Camera Systems (ACS).
ACS - founded in 1980 by Allwork using a name dreamed up by his wife, and sometime company secretary, Frances - now provides the very latest aerial cinematographic equipment, both near ground and veritably soaring, to both the film and video industries. This covers everything from features and television drama to award-winning com- mercials, not to mention international sporting and music events.
Among ACS’s own innovations are the stabilised tracking system used by Channel 4 for its coverage of horse racing. Then there’s the Lightship Camera Platform, successfully used for Euro 96 and at the last Olympics, as well as a range of miniature air- ships for indoor use which can be utilised both as an airborne camera platform and as a combined advertis-
ing and marketing tool.
All this high-tech, along with a
bewildering array of airborne systems, airheads, cranes, remote heads and specialist vehicles, seems a long way on from Allwork’s rather more modest aerial beginnings at the back end of the Sixties in a BEA helicopter tracking a fledgling James Bond along a wet and windy Welsh hillside.
Not so long after that, and active- ly encouraged by Peter Sellers with whom he’d worked on a number of Boulting Brothers films, Allwork joined up with entrepreneur-farmer Fred Barker to help form BEAS Motion Picture & TV based at Kidlington near Oxford. While in Hollywood to finalise a deal with pioneer American aerial cameraman Nelson Tyler for the sup- ply of mounts, Allwork heard that Barker had wrested the ownership of BEAS from the Pilkington Glass people.
Now suddenly, he and Barker had the use of 15 helicopters and when, a little later, Barker decided he was going into the offshore business he handed over the film side to Allwork. By the early Seventies, Allwork’s company, now called Air Film Services, had re-located to Booker where he and a brilliant young pilot, Andrew Von Preussen, had slimlined down to just one chop- per, the versatile Alouette 2.
At this point in a high-flying career, it’s perhaps worth recalling that Allwork’s film roots were distinct- ly more down-to-earth. His uncle, who worked at Denham labs, provided the entree for the then 15-year-old school leaver to get a job at the studio, which was a trolley bus and bus ride from the family home in Hayes. The war was on and he got a job as office boy with Leslie Howard’s company Misbourne Productions. Every now
and then he’d have to go on to the stages to deliver messages and those visits were his first introduction to the camera department which clearly entranced the wide-eyed teenager. But his subsequent attempts to get a job with Bert Easey’s department proved fruitless despite a once-a-week prod.
Until one day, that is, when a mes- sage finally came through that he should report to Easey who told him he must go to Stage 7 at 2.00 o’clock that afternoon where they were shoot- ing The Gentle Sex and meet up with the camera operator and camera assistant. The assistant, Norman Warwick, who’d later become a very good friend, greeted him warmly and quickly showed him the ropes. “This is what you do: there’s your number board, there are your sheets. Don’t worry, I’ll help you.” The assistant director announced they’d rehearse the scene once then shoot. Suddenly the nervous new clapper boy heard, “Board in!” Allwork recalls: “I raced in and knocked a lamp over. I knew what I then had to say but I just couldn’t get the words out. Norman called it and I clapped the board. I thought I’d failed at the very first hurdle but then Maurice Elvey, who was co-directing the film with Leslie Howard, came over and said, quietly and very com- fortingly, ‘not to worry.’
During Allwork’s next film, The Lamp Still Burns, Howard tragically went missing believed shot down,
Photos main: Peter Allwork during the filming of a Tornado promotion for British Aerospace; top: Allwork the fearless aerial cameraman;
above left to right: the late great Peter Sellers, scenes from High Road To China, a particular Allwork favourite; and Aces High (Courtesy Moviestore Collection).
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