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http://www.ex-bbc.net/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.pl >> Notices, obituaries and tributes >> Michael Croucher http://www.ex-bbc.net/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.pl?num=1149889963 Message started by Forum Admin on Jun 9^th, 2006, 9:53pm

Title: Michael Croucher
Post by Forum Admin on Jun 9^th, 2006, 9:53pm

This is taken from The Times. June 10, 2006:

Michael Croucher
January 17, 1930 - May 26, 2006
Documentary film-maker who, with integrity and endless patience, chronicled life as he found it

MICHAEL CROUCHER was at the forefront of documentary making at the BBC at a time that has come to be known as the golden age of television.

In the early 1960s this visionary young producer and his colleague, John Boorman, did away with the established technique of writing a script and then finding the pictures to fit. Instead Croucher and Boorman left the studio to go out and shoot what they found, filming ordinary people telling their extraordinary stories straight to camera. Together they made risk an essential ingredient in film-making.

Michael Croucher arrived at BBC Plymouth in 1954 after studying at the Royal College of Music. Rejecting the life of a professional musician, he turned instead to broadcasting where he used his National Service RAF training in wireless telegraphy as a “gram swinger and balancer”.

Recording was then done on wax discs, and Croucher had to mix between discs — up to six of them at once on live broadcasts. He would experiment with sound for plays and later referred to the period as a “self-designed apprenticeship”. His principal and mentor was Brandon Acton Bond, a radio editor of genius who operated on location from a shooting brake.

At that time it was easy to move between television and radio and, in 1958 when Croucher moved to BBC Bristol, he took his editing skills to the film cutting rooms. His first 30-minute documentary film in 1962, The Bashers, focused on a gang of teenage boys preparing for bonfire night in Barton Hill, a tough Bristol district.

Croucher’s patience and forbearance was invaluable as a means of persuading his subjects to speak straight to camera, and many other films followed. Croucher himself had a wry memory of those early documentary years, recalling: “I had just seen Eisenstein, so everything was underlit, with stark shadows.”

Boorman arrived at BBC Bristol in 1961 and remembered: “I had come from ITV, so I got a frosty reception. It was like entering a conclave of university dons. I was a barbarian at the gate, a pariah.

“Michael was assigned to me as assistant producer, and he was immensely valuable to me because he already knew how to manipulate the system, getting crews and resources, maximising expenses. For the four years we worked together he always remained rather mysterious to me. He drove an old Citroën, like Maigret, and that’s what he was like: a smooth suspension. Never intrusive. I think he was fundamentally shy.

“He had the ability to fade in and out. I’d say, ‘Where’s Michael? Oh — he’s already here’. He had faded in again. He was a skilful documentary maker, and he handled people well.”

The breakthrough series for their now burgeoning documentary unit was Citizen 63, which was followed in 1964 by The Newcomers, the first big series on the new BBC2. The first of six parts traced a Dante-esque descent from the heights of Clifton to dropouts in a squat. Theirs was the only BBC unit making such documentaries at the time. The series established both Boorman and Croucher’s reputations as talented film-makers with a fully realised sense of place and time.

When Boorman moved away to Hollywood, where he would later make films such as Deliverance and Point Blank, Croucher chose to stay in Bristol to head the documentary unit.

Apart from scores of one-off films, Croucher will be remembered for series such as The Curious Character of Britain, Summer 67, the highly popular martial arts series The Way of the Warrior, The Healing Arts and Leap in the Dark, a ghost story drama that used Colin Wilson, Alan Garner, Peter Redgrove and Russell Hoban as writers. In programmes written by John Hale (The Bristol Entertainment, Ego Hugo) Croucher pioneered the technique of colour separation in studio programmes.

He was proud of The Diary of Anne Hughes, a chocolate-boxy reconstruction of the life of an 18th-century dairy maid in Herefordshire. When the source diary was proved to be a 1930s pastiche, Croucher freely acknowledged it: “It was not presented as a deep documentary, but as a drama, based on a dubious text,” he said.

In the late 1970s, his documentary series The French Way depicted vanishing or threatened ways of life in small French villages and towns. The programme’s poignancy made it a great success and he followed it with The Italian Way and The Yugoslavian Way.

Carefully researched and always seeking to surprise, Croucher’s films focused on widening the viewer’s horizon, and their thoughtful, gentle nature reflected that of their maker. Croucher’s patience was legendary: when his PA led everyone up the wrong mountain during a shoot in Italy he did not shout; when a French rainstorm washed out a planned shoot, he managed to use the storm instead. As a director he placed emphasis on allowing a storyline to develop naturally and put great trust in his crew and film editor.

In later years Croucher became a visiting lecturer at the University of Bristol drama department, where his astute reflections on the ways in which language, image and sound come together in film influenced future generations of film-makers. Students and colleagues alike sought his advice, which he always gave generously, and with the selfeffacing modesty that comes from real talent and intellect.

His first marriage to actress Rosalind Gee produced three children. With his second wife, artist, dancer and director, Anne Adamson, he had two daughters.

Michael Croucher, documentary film-maker, was born on January 17, 1930. He died on May 26, 2006, aged 76.

Title: Re: Michael Croucher
Post by Forum Admin on Jun 12^th, 2006, 6:26am

This is taken from the Daily Telegraph:

Michael Croucher
(Filed: 12/06/2006)

Michael Croucher, who has died aged 76, had a long and distinguished career as a television documentary maker with the BBC; in the 1960s, he travelled across Europe from his base in Bristol making quirky films that, for many British viewers, opened a window on continental life for the first time.

Croucher was that rare television creature, a director who always kept his cool. Even when his PA led his film crew to the top of the wrong Italian mountain, he remained calm. No one ever heard him raise his voice.

The film director John Boorman, who worked with him very successfully for four years, always found him rather mysterious. "He drove an old Citroën, like Maigret, and that's just how he worked: a smooth suspension. Never intrusive. He could fade in and fade out."

Michael Croucher's shyness concealed a tough mind that understood the inner workings of the BBC. Boorman went to Bristol in 1961 from ITV, "so I got a frosty reception. I was a barbarian at the gates." Croucher was Boorman's assistant producer, immensely valuable: "because he knew how to manipulate the system, getting crews and resources."

Television, still in its infancy, often looked like print journalism with moving pictures. Croucher and Boorman took the camera into the lives of ordinary people and made extraordinary documentaries, starting with Citizen 63.

This was the series that coined the expression télévérité for the first time.

"We did it better than we knew," Croucher said, "off the cuff, off script."

It was not without hazards. The landlord of a very tough pub warned that his customers disliked being filmed. "They're liquid people in here," he said. "They flow away." The solution was scaffolding outside the pub window, containing a hide for the cameraman, who got good footage of a fight, and escaped intact.

Croucher's Citizen 63 led to The Newcomers, BBC2's first big series, a cross-section of Bristol life from Clifton gentility to drop-outs in squats. It prompted an invitation to transfer to London. Croucher declined: Bristol was his "lifestyle choice". It was there that he made his best work, often with a rural setting.

Europe was still a foreign land to most Britons; Croucher filmed the everyday, surprising ways of life in France, Italy, Yugoslavia. The French Way took him (and his family, under canvas) to the village fête at Carennac, in the Dordogne. Biblical amounts of rain washed away the tents, the crew, the fête, almost the village itself. "Cataclysme désastreux apocalyptique," lamented the mayor. Croucher, tranquil as ever, agreed and used his words for the programme title.

Michael John Croucher was born on January 17 1930 in Maidstone. He was educated at local primary schools before sailing for Canada on the last wartime evacuation ship (the next was torpedoed) where he had "a hard time" on a Saskatchewan farm. After the war he attended Cranbrook School, and spent two years in the early Fifties at the Royal College of Music.

National Service training in the RAF, where he lectured on radar, led to him joining BBC Plymouth as a radio trainee in 1953, recording outside broadcasts on wax discs in the back of a shooting-brake. At BBC Bristol, his talent and his quiet confidence in both crew and editor created many outstanding series, from The Way of the Warrior (on martial arts) to Seven Ages of Man. He retired as a senior producer in 1988.

Michael Croucher married twice; with his first wife, Rosalind Gee, he had three children, and with his second, Anne Adamson, he had two more. He died on May 26.

Title: Re: Michael Croucher
Post by Forum Admin on Jul 20^th, 2006, 5:34am

This is taken from The Guardian:

Michael Croucher
Pioneering and patient BBC documentary film-maker
by ACH Smith
Thursday July 20, 2006

In his distinctive career as a documentary film-maker for BBC Bristol, Michael Croucher, who has died aged 76, worked with such flamboyant talents as John Betjeman and John Boorman - but remained cool and unflappable amid the rampant egos of others.

His lifelong commitment to broadcasting began in 1954, though things could have turned out very differently. He was born in Maidstone, Kent, and his education at Cranbrook school was interrupted when he was taken to Canada in 1940 on the last wartime evacuation boat to cross the Atlantic (the next one was sunk, and the scheme was stopped). However, he did not enjoy his five years on a Saskatchewan farm, and had no desire to settle in Canada in later life. After RAF national service (1949-50) he studied at the Royal College of Music, but realised that his French horn playing was never going to carry him far.

Croucher was then taken on as a trainee at BBC Plymouth. His experience in wireless telegraphy served him as a "gram swinger", mixing between as many as six discs at once, on live broadcasts. Newly married to Rosalind Gee, an actor, he moved to BBC Bristol in 1958, at a time when it was easy to switch between radio and television. In radio he could experiment with soundtracks for plays. He thought that drama was what he did best, and his editing skills were, he found, transferable to film cutting. When a directing slot on a weekly television magazine came up, he got it.

Croucher's first 30-minute film was The Bashers, about a gang of boys in Lawrence Hill, a tough Bristol district. Many more followed, mostly quiet, gentle films. He was, recalls co-director Colin Godman, patient at getting people to talk to camera: "He didn't mind how long it took."

Croucher and Jonathan Stedall both worked on John Betjeman's early films. Betjeman encouraged them "to stick our necks out, foster eccentricity". When Boorman arrived at BBC Bristol in 1961, Croucher was assigned to him as assistant producer. The breakthrough series for their burgeoning documentary unit was Citizen 63, an argument for making films about ordinary people. It was followed in 1964 by The Newcomers, the first documentary series on the new BBC2. Croucher told me shortly before he died: "We did it better than we knew, off the cuff, off script." Theirs was the only unit making such films, and the feeling was that it must be preserved. Huw Wheldon wanted Boorman and Croucher to set up in London; they preferred what they were doing.

When Boorman moved into cinema films, Croucher became, in effect, head of Bristol documentaries. Apart from one-off films, there were series, many with rural settings, like The Curious Character of Britain, Summer 67, The Way of the Warrior, The Healing Arts, Seven Ages of Man, and Leap in the Dark. In programmes written by John Hale, Croucher also pioneered the technique of colour separation. He was proud of The Diary of Anne Hughes (1978), a chocolate-boxy life of an 18th-century dairymaid, which Nancy Banks-Smith said was the only programme for her shown that Christmas.

The rural documentary series continued with The French Way, The Italian Way and The Yugoslavian Way. It skidded off the tracks when it came to The Irish Way. In 1978 Croucher sent three directors, Colin Rose, Colin Thomas and Philip Donnellan, to film with the loyalists, the provos and the British army, recording what happened during one week. "A week in the life of Derry turned out like Kerrygold commercials with slaughter on the streets," Rose recalled. Croucher's intention was to cut the films quickly and transmit them a week later. It turned out to take a year, by which time Thomas had resigned in a row over changes to the film.

Croucher left the BBC in 1989. In his later years he was a visiting lecturer at Bristol University's drama department. He is survived by his second wife, the artist Anne Adamson, their two daughters, and two sons and a daughter from his first marriage.

· Michael John Croucher, film-maker, born January 17 1930; died May 26 2006.