Confessions of a Technophobe, New Series 40
Part 4
1976 and beyond
For some time I had been keen to write a novel. However, the reality was that I spent so much time looking for freelance film work, then doing whatever came up, that I could not find either enough time or have the required dedicated attention to a storyline, including of course the actual writing of a novel. I decided therefore to take a job outside of the mainstream of the movie industry.
Hero and I were friendly with a lady called Eileen Shapiro. She was descended from a Scottish minister, the Reverend Andrew Murray who had been recruited by the Dutch Reform Church in South Africa to join their church (short of well-trained ministers at the time). He and his descendants were assimilated into the Afrikaner community and Eileen was brought up speaking Afrikaans. She was a remarkable person with an incredibly high IQ. She was already in her sixties when we met her. As a young woman, she had met and married her husband who was a communist. It was very fashionable for the intelligentsia of the 1930s and ’40s to embrace the works of Karl Marx, but in later years Eileen realized that his idealistic theories of equality for all were simply not practical. Eileen eventually divorced her husband and explored other political paths and well as religious philosophies. As an extremely able person, she acquired some high-powered jobs.
When we met her, she was the training manager for a major retail group, Greatermans/Checkers with both up-market fashion and home goods stores (Greatermans) as well as the biggest chain of supermarkets in the country (Checkers), with its head office in Johannesburg. She was looking for someone to develop an in-house video production studio and offered me the job. It would be virtually the only time I would work regular office hours and pick up a monthly paycheck since leaving Killarney studios. Hero was ecstatic. My life as a freelance film person had been hazardous, to say the least, and life was tough with four children at private schools.
With the writing of my first novel in mind, I took the job. Not quite sure what to expect, I actually found it fascinating. For years I had been mildly critical of those people that took regular office jobs and believed that they lacked creativity. I quickly discovered that in the retail world, at least, there was a high degree of creativity. I discovered that there were well-thought-out techniques for fashion displays or (in the case of supermarkets) how shelving displays were designed according to established criteria to attract customers to products and encourage impulse buying.
Before I joined, the training department had bought four TV cameras and lights; but with no idea how to edit videos. I put in a request for a small edit suite. The company was reluctant to spend more money on TV equipment, saying that they were perfectly happy with the few videos already filmed by members of the training department. They argued that they didn’t need any real cinematic quality as long as they could see pictures of their products. I told Eileen that this was very short-sighted. Viewers watched enough films (and recently in South Africa, TV) to expect professional visual and sound quality. The fim took great pride in the designs and appearance of all shop floors.
In order to successfully train staff in all aspects of product knowledge, in-store displays and retailing in general with videos, it was necessary to achieve at least some measure of professional picture quality. Eileen got the idea and put forward my proposals. However, they only met me halfway, insisting I use all the existing equipment but they would buy an edit machine. I should point out that in the mid-’70s, in South Africa, broadcast television had just started (1976) and there were only one or two other in-house closed circuit TV studios (CCTV) in the entire country.
In my ignorance of technical matters, I ordered a Sony editing suite. My existing cameras were made by Philips. Video was still in its early days and competitive products were mostly incompatible. My first attempts to edit video shot on the Philips cameras with the Sony editor simply did not work. I was told by technicians from both companies that it was impossible to combine a Sony product with Philips cameras. I felt like a complete idiot. I knew I could produce decent videos from the creative point of view but my lack of knowledge of the technical side had put me in an invidious position. Management was already skeptical of the value of properly edited videos and now I had ordered equipment that didn’t work with my cameras.
In desperation I tried numerous ways to make the two systems work together and finally, quite by accident and against all technical thinking, I managed to edit some videos shot on the Philips cameras. When I told the Sony guy that had sold me the editor that I had managed to edit footage shot on Philips, he didn’t believe me until I showed him the result. He went away shaking his head. I then trained members of the training department in the basics of operating a camera. A couple were very good, but the others were hopeless. The bad ones I put on cameras that had a minimum of movement required. I operated the edit unit and in this primitive fashion we managed to make a number of reasonable videos, mostly on product knowledge for the Greatermans stores.
I also made a few videos for the Checkers supermarkets, on subjects like “sizing” and color combinations on the product shelves. At some point I came up with the idea of making a video newsletter for Checkers giving staff news and developments of stores around the country. This was very popular. One day I was asked to think about how to make a video about a new idea they had tried to implement without much success. This was in the late 1970s when the Apartheid regime had banned all black trade unions for years. The management of the Checkers Supermarkets hit on the bright idea of forming advisory councils in every store. Any member of staff was eligible to be voted onto the council by the rest of the staff. The majority of the staff was black and so it followed that the council would be made up of mostly black members.
The problem was, however, that as black staff had never experienced the idea of actually having a say in the management of their store, the first attempt at implementing this was a failure. Very few of the black staff dared to put themselves forward for becoming a council member; and when voting took place very few people voted.
I was asked to make a video that gave staff an insight into what a council actually could do. The basic idea was for the council to kick around ideas for improving both working conditions as well as increasing turnover. Having already experienced the reactions of black audiences to film or video, I came up with a very simple idea. We asked some staff members of one store to act as a mock council, then created an agenda based on some real current problems in the running of the store. I then filmed the “council” discussing these issues – and after an initial hesitation they entered into lively animated discussions, from which some genuinely useful ideas emerged.
We sent the video around all the stores, and it was followed up by another attempt at voting in councils in each store. Before the video only about 20% of staff had voted. After the video over 75% of staff voted. The council soon became an invaluable tool as workers now felt they had some say in the effective running of the store. Management found that the morale of the workers had soared. It was also an effective blow against the repressive policies of the Nationalist government.
As television was only just beginning to broadcast in South Africa, representatives of the Greatermans/Checkers group had never experienced being interviewed on television before. I was approached by the managing director of the group, Norman Herber, for me to advise on how to behave when in front of the cameras. I mocked up an interview set in our tiny studio and interviewed Mr. Herber himself, using some questions that I thought he may be asked when in the actual broadcast. I then deliberately set out to annoy him by asking him to be more specific and disagreeing with his statements whenever I could. He quickly became flustered and angry, despite his reputation for being an even-tempered and excellent boss. I ended the interview and replayed it to him without any comment. When it finished, he looked at me in discomfort.
“I lost it, didn’t I?”
“Yes, I’m afraid so, sir. So let’s work on it.”
In the event, I was delighted with Mr. Herber’s actual interview on air. The interviewer tried to provoke him, but he remained unruffled and answered concisely. Shortly after both the Checkers Council and the interview successes I was bombarded by other companies asking me about the best way in which to set up an in-house CCTV studio for both promotion and training purposes. What was Greatermans/Checkers reaction? They decided that the in-house CCTV studio was unnecessary and closed me down!
Eileen tried to assimilate me into other aspects of their training department, but I realized that it was time to get back into the mainstream of movies and TV. I had finished writing my first novel entitled Nobody, which was my original reason for taking an 8-to-5 job in the first place. I was lucky to be recommended to a London literary agent, Laurence Pollinger, by Theo Aronson, a successful author whom I met in Swaziland. My novel was well received and sent out to publishers around the UK. The publishers of either Fontana or Penguin, I forget which now, chose my novel as one of six options from which they would publish three books. My book was not chosen but they wrote me a very encouraging letter saying that my “end of the world” theme had been overdone that year and I should re-submit it again in the future. I never got around to it until I came back to the UK in 2013 – but by then the agent, Pollinger, had changed its focus on the kind of books they would publish. My novel Nobody did not fall into that category. Sigh!
However, before I left Greatermans/Checkers I was asked to make a film on the opening of the first supermarket in the country to be located in an African township. The township, Madadeni, was outside of the coalmining town of Newcastle in Natal. In honor of the occasion, the Chief Minister of the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP), Chief Gatsha Buthelezi (a royal prince) was invited to open the store. The IFP was one of the first of the homeland governments that ruled the black districts of the province of Natal. He was fashionably late – Zulus have little sense of time – but gave a rousing speech. He and the IFP were bitterly opposed to the Nationalist (Apartheid) national government. As leader of the largest South African tribe, the Zulus, he was enormously popular. I had asked Sven if he would film the event. He happily agreed and not once in the course of the filming as my former boss did he try to usurp or override any of my decisions. I was very grateful for that.
We arranged with Chief Buthelezi to interview him at Ulundi, his seat of government. This had its farcical moments. We chose a spot outside of the town in a lovely rural setting. I then went into Ulundi to fetch the Chief at 11 am as arranged. He was predicta bly late, arriving at 12:30. He told me that he had to first quickly hold a cabinet meeting. My heart sank. He promised it would be quick and disappeared. Almost an hour later I was summoned up to the cabinet chambers. I arrived fearing that he would postpone the filming but instead he said “Mr. Dresser, this is the only place around here you will get a cup of tea.” I accepted a cuppa, slightly weak at the knees by now. As soon as I finished it, the Chief asked me to leave as they still had some confidential business to attend to but promised they were nearly finished. To my surprise, he appeared a few minutes later saying he was ready to be interviewed.
I rushed him down to our chosen spot, woke Sven who was sleeping under a tree and did a surprisingly good interview with the Chief. Afterwards he invited us to lunch. We returned to the town expecting to find ourselves in a restaurant in the government buildings. But no, he took us to a small grocery store where I suspected we would be given sandwiches. Instead, we were ushered into a small but comfortable private dining room where we were served a very good chicken salad and fruit juice. The Chief was a health fanatic.
We had a really entertaining lunch, discovering that the Chief had a different persona in private from his rather autocratic public appearances. We learned a number of fascinating things about the state of politics both in South Africa and on our borders. I shall always remember the Chief as a special man.
There have been quite a number of special people I have met over my nearly nine decades of life. I have mentioned a number of them in my blogs and, of course, I would not be writing this but for our ExoTech special person, Peter Warren. He ranks right up there with all the special people I have met in various parts of the world. With the impending launch of ExoBrain by his incredible ExoTech team, Peter may well become one of the more important people of our time.