Part three of this interview. Focuses on television. Part one and two more about his earlier life inc working at Trust and Canberra.
1.35 - 1.50 talks about definition of producer and director.
28 years at ABC including one year on leave at BBC making Ruth Park's Harp of the South. More than 60% of the cast were Australians living in London. Talks about his good friend Eric Tayler. (3.13)
3.43 Being able to select where the audience's eye would go. Something I knew nothing about technically. I had training course at the BBC. Something I found a great joy. Even though largely we were doing adaptations of stage plays the first years of Australian television and.
4.08 "The commercials were not at that stage doing any drama. They made a big thing of the fact they did when they did. It was very interesting, We were doing a play a month from Sydney and I think one a month from Melbourne for many years and when Channel Seven started a Sunday night live, as it all was then, drama series it actually hit the front page of the Sydney Morning Herald which happened to be the appropriate paper for the station as television's first live drama... and a fellow director of mine at the ABC said when the next play went to air at the ABC a week later that he felt like saying on the graphics ABC's 35th live drama or whatever it was."
5.52 "There were a few boo boos inevitably there had to be but you got used ot scenery falling down and that sort of thing... but it didn't last we got fairly expert in it."
Talks about simulcasts and how it was different.
6.21 "These early productions were plotted for studio". Moved from set to set. Compares to Z Cars. A lot of people didn't know that Z Cars as in fact going to air live.
7.35 Three weeks rehearsal for a 90 minute play, two weeks for a 60 minute play. It wasn't regular.
You worked around actor's radio schedule.
7.55 (to around 8.20) "You were working around radio actors mainly. Most of our leading actors were making a living in radio. You worked around available bookings. People didn't give up things to be in a teleplay. They might like it, the novelty, but they were earning their bread and butter from radio and occasionally stage."
Radio people might be available during the day.
If wanted to use a top radio actor eg Neva Carr Glynn was difficult.
10.30 Some television/radio actors didn't have stage experience so you had to be an instructor as well as a director.
Burke enjoyed non-naturalistic works eg Skin of Our Teeth, A Toast of Melba.
19.25 talks about doing Lola Montez for television "get back to what the book was about, why we'd written in certain numbers the management in their wisdom found to be wrong... got far better reception for the worK - restoration of Bavarian ballet, got the age right.21.15 He talks about The Sentimental Bloke, Toast of Melba and operas.
22.40 talks about non naturalism of a toast of Melba... says it had gone out of fashion. Geoffrey Daniel was his boss.
25.05 - talks about achievements early days - a few of the operas plus Norman Lindsay Festival (which grew out of suggestion did Cousin from Fiji... John Cameron suggested they do a whole festival)
29.30 talks about the operas he did including Menotti
29.50 He did eight operas, four Shakespeares. (They would pick what was likely to be the school play that year). Macbeth, Tempest, Shrew, Ve
30.22-20.34 "Kids these days don't know they're alive in television. In one year you might do three operas, a Shakespeare, the news, and kids session once a wek. Really wonderful the days of live television".
Talks about where got actors eg Trust, John Alden Company. Lorenzo in Merchant was Barry Creyton.
When NIDA was formed the ABC was one of three key bodies involved in it (the others being UNSW and Elizabethan Theatre Trust). The ABC would train them in film and television. They had them for a fortnight in their second year (and later the third year) to teach them for television. Burke loved it. The second year it was training. The third year they made a one hour production over a fortnight. It never went to air. But it was played back to them.
Talks about film vs theatre acting.
47.26 moves into film last years of directing career... talks about Essington then in film again in 1982 when produced Kindred Spirits
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