Coventry on Film or TV

I think this documentary on C5 is new. Coventry cathedrals feature at 18 min in here.

This is only available from within the UK.

Here is an amateur film from 1960. Lots of nostalgia City centre plus

What a lovely film, took me back, I would have been about 12 then

An interesting (but sometimes sad) BBC film that has been added to their Archive YouTube channel - 1961: Coventry - 21 Years After the Blitz | Target City | Voice of the People | BBC Documentary There are some really interesting snippets of film of the damaged City plus it sometimes takes old footage like this to make me realise there is actually a Coventry accent

This is absolutely fascinating from many viewpoints. Not just as a record of what Coventry and its people looked like 64 years ago but social history as a whole (ah, the 'Common Market', even then a contentious subject). I'm so grateful it's been preserved, bearing in mind how many valuable BBC programmes have been lost over the years. Incidentally I have a very interesting article in a Sunday Times magazine commemorating the 25th anniversary of the Blitz and that stated how empty the city centre was after nightfall, it described the Round Restaurant in the Lower Precinct (now a Caffe Nero) as a goldfish bowl. I must dig it out so that I can quote from it more accurately.

For those interested, I have just noticed that 'Talking Pictures TV' has a Film/Programme on Thursday 30th April at 12.35pm entitled 'Pete Murray takes you to Coventry' filmed in 1983, it states, 'See the beautiful sights and fascinating scenes of Coventry as Pete Murray travels through this historical City'. Worth setting up the Planner I think

Here are some more details: https://www.baimfilms.com/the-collection/film-scripts?view=a.... Happy Easter everyone!

A short Blitz film has been recently added to YT featuring Dan Snow. It's not a new film though - the gap on Earl Street where Dan references the Palace Yard............ is still a gap! Interesting nonetheless.

What struck me about it was how little new footage is needed to make a TV prog.

I have just been watching Pete Murray Takes you to Coventry on Talking Pictures, which I had recorded. Thanks to the heads up by Wearethemods and Rocksolid. What a lovely interesting film showing Coventry and some surrounding places in 1983. Some interesting flashes like the giant chess board in the precinct. So sad that so much has changed.

It always irritates me when 'documentaries' show footage of bombing, especially the scenes of fires, that isn't actually related to the subject in hand. In this film there is ample footage of fires started by bombs but all of it shows the London Blitz. To my knowledge there is no footage of the actual 14 November raid as presumably there was nobody present with a film camera. There is also only one photograph taken during the raid and from the outskirts of the city. It was published in the CET (still Midland ET) on 14 November 1941 captioned ''Midnight - The only existing picture of the raid actually in progress.It was taken by the light of the moon and the fires by a Midland Daily Telegraph photographer on the outskirts of the city. The picture is untouched" I realise that showing a blank screen is not going to work but a note of explanation would be helpful to just explain that the footage is purely for illustrative purposes. My other grouse is that documentaries so often feel the need to have 'sad/mournful' two-note piano music in the background, it is so annoying and unnecessary and also often happens during TV news items about illness/tragedy/death, especially when involving children.

My sister has started making small documentaries about our family history and illustrating them is an obvious problem. She's filmed a lot of stock footage to run in the background while she explains about the various people. You'd be surprised how obvious it is that a segment is being reused (there's a field of Herdwick sheep that I've had to tell her appear too many times). TV makes much use of the presenter looking earnest and walking through an appropriate area. Dan doesn't venture far from the bombed cathedral and walks rather aimlessly in and out of the surrounding lanes. I was recently disappointed to see that the renovation of Drapers Hall had replaced the damaged sandstone vents at the front, as they were a left over from the fires and could have been used as an illustration of the ferocity for documentary creators. The bigger the TV company, the more relevant and stock footage they have to hand, whereas independent creators have to make more use of their own or purchased footage. That's part of the reason they start to look the same. Something truly novel would tend to be more expensive to acquire. I bet the costs quickly add up. With a view to maybe illustrating what I've learnt about the old city, I've purchased images and old books because it would be cheaper than renting someone else's pictures. I suspect that I'm not alone in that 'trick' as there has been an uptick on the popularity of old images.

Watched this again to pick up on a couple of details. Re Rocksolid's reasonable gripe about the music in these sorts of documentaries, to be fair to the makers of this programme, the music was The Moonlight Sonata. If I ever make a movie about the city the soundtrack would be The Coventry Carol, so a bit cliché too but fitting. The second detail was a comment about a dairy being hit and molten butter running down the road, knee deep. Someone asked me about this and the suggestion was that it was the Maypole Dairy on Broadgate that was hit. I deemed it unlikely that it was Broadgate/Cross Cheaping that saw the river of butter but more likely the passageway/yard that ran back from the dairy towards the market. Anybody know more about that?