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lounge room table, and they’d be borrowed on “appro” from a We could film but it was rather narrow and long being a Little
company to be taken home and taken to pieces and copied Bourke Street building. I’d say the studio was about fifty feet
later on. long and twenty feet wide. There was a sound booth which
was on wheels. A sound-proof box on wheels, where the
How many film labs were then operating in Victoria? commentator sat and you could wheel it away into the corner
I was fairly young but I remember Herschells Film of the studio after you’d finish doing the commentaries.
Laboratories, Victorian Film Laboratories, and Cambridge had
a film laboratories at Box Hill. I don’t think Cinevex were It’s not an unusual design — several sound studios in
going in those days but that’s all a bit before my time but I do Melbourne operating on the same basis.
remember those. You can make plenty of room. And a mixer console was there.
There were editing rooms, major editing rooms and at that
What gauges were being processed about that time? stage the idea was to get everything done in-house so you
Well, Cine Service had 16mm processing and later on Vern could produce it from the square all the way through. You
built a whole lot of automatic processing machines himself. I could shoot it, record it, make optical soundtracks, do the
think the first one was about ten feet high and about twenty- editing, do the prints for work copies if you needed them, but
five feet long, which you had to climb up on a wooden gantry they had a bit of an unusual system where they’d cut the
to get to. But they would doing 16mm. Then he did 8mm original very carefully and then make a work copy second to
processing and he had the ‘Perutz’ contract to do all the home show the client, which was not textbook but, I’m still
movies and if any professional ever shot on it, I suppose, wondering about that, but it seemed to work.
which really he would do that, and the Perutz 16mm
processing and printing, he would print as well. Did you (Cine Service) have any direct association with
any television network in those days?
So, of course, they were 8mm and 9.5, which you didn’t We probably did a bit of production for television networks.
mention, but which presumably were being processed. The major thing that was done was processing for their
They were essentially domestic gauges, weren’t they? newsreel teams, which would fly in the door, their newsreel
They were, yeah. Now 9.5, I can’t quite remember whether 16mm black and white and I think the turn around was pretty
Vern processed that. That came in cassettes, I believe, didn’t quick, nothing like nowadays, but they’d fly back out a few
that? I’m not quite sure if they did 9.5. I think the machines hours later, and put it to air.
were geared for 8mm and 16mm.
How many people did you have on staff here apart from
Yes. I have a feeling that lab at Box Hill was processing 9.5, the freelancers who would drop in from time to time?
for a while anyway. Well I think when Cine Service started there was Vern and Jack
They probably did out at Cambridge labs, yeah. was part-time because he was still moonlighting from a
government department, but there was one employee, it started
We’re talking about some time before the advent of with. Now, Little Bourke Street had probably built up to when.
television, back in the forties. What effect did television Beverly Bull came on the scene in 1956. Now Beverly Bull has
have on Cine Service operations? been with the company until about three years ago, since 1956,
Well, Cine Service in those days were in a basement at Post and she was the woman who ran the business side of things
Office Place, and beside the processing and printing was more while Vern was busily building equipment and using it, and
documentaries, they were called in those days instead of producing. He was having all the good fun while she had all the
corporate videos, which were shot on 16mm film. Mostly Vern headaches. I think she was the one that ended up with the high
would use reversal black and white or colour, where we had a blood pressure. She came in ’56 and she’s been a big part of
sound recording unit in there as well and a theatrette, and the company ever since, and Geoffrey Thomson was working
offices, and as it grew, the first floor of that particular building out of Cine Service out at Post Office Place as a joint venture.
was taken over, then the third floor was taken over where there Geoffrey Thomson stayed right through till the end. He’s still
were bigger studios and stuff. Then along came television alive and in his eighties. We moved from Post Office Place
commercials, so Vern ventured into those in a small way but down here to South Melbourne at Moray Street in 1963. We
his sons, Ray and Keith, wanted to get into those in a bigger bought a couple of old buildings now that were purpose
way. So, when the lab was a bit outgrown, Cambridge Films, designed as a small film company with theatrettes, processing
who were in Pelham Street in Carlton in those days, in a studio labs, offices and the whole lot. So eventually, I suppose what
on the first floor, which meant a hell of a lug up and down, I’m saying is, when the Cambridge Film were taken over and
they weren’t going so well in those days, so Vern bought the we were full blow, we were 38 staff, full time staff.
company, and that was a television production company for
TV commercials, mainly. So then started a serious television What sort of expertise and qualifications did the staff have
commercial production company. to have before you’d take them on?
Well, of course in those days, editors would come along.
But you did have a small studio at the Post Office Place They’d probably have very little because there were a few film
premises? A small studio where you could film? schools around and that was about it. So some of them came

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