When George first said he was starting a ukulele orchestra I didn’t really believe anything would come of it. But nevertheless I was at the Roebuck on 6th October 1986, for their first concert. A few minutes before they were due to start playing, George thrust a small audio cassette recorder into my hand and asked me to record it. Afterwards I gave the recorder back to George. I don’t know what happened to the tape.
The following year I acquired a JVC GR-C9 camcorder. It was one of the first truly portable camcorders, but was extremely primitive. The viewfinder was optical, it had a fixed focus lens, and there was no way to monitor what you were shooting. Everything was automatic. If you didn’t like what it was doing, there was no way to change it. In addition to all this, the resolution was very limited. A normal high definition TV today has over thirteen times as many pixels.
Over the period from June 1987 to November 1990 I filmed the Ukulele Orchestra about ten times, in concert, in rehearsal, and on the road. At the time I was just shooting these things to amuse myself and George. Seeing yourself on TV in those days was quite a novelty.
Recently I digitised the tapes through a time-base corrector, to stabilise them, and also applied a small amount of noise reduction. However I have not made any radical changes to the video or audio, in order to keep the authentic feel of this archive material.
Recently I digitised the tapes through a time-base corrector, to stabilise them, and also applied a small amount of noise reduction. However I have not made any radical changes to the video or audio, in order to keep the authentic feel of this archive material.
