Tom Small":3u2jef19 said:
Hello Everybody,
My name is Thomas Small. I am the only nephew of the Robinson Brothers. My mother, Bridie, was their sister. I live in Belturbet, County Cavan, just four miles from the workshop.
Just to fill you in, all four of the family died within four years, between 2004 and 2008. I myself learned some of the skills of the craft from my uncles in their last number of years. I also have inherited their workshop, and while the place is in poor condition, all their tools and machinery are still there.
I would be delighted to share information with any of you who have an interest in my uncles' work. As has been said here, they were masters of many crafts, and I know that they loved to share their knowledge with all. My cousin sent me the link to this site tonight and I'm am delighted that so many of you are interested. Please don't hesitate to contact me through this forum.
Welcome from me, too. I watched "Hands" a couple of years ago - your uncles were brilliant men.
It might be worth you asking the Shaw Smiths (who made 'Hands') if anyone still has the rushes from the programmes archived - either them or RTE. There are (or were) probably lots of interesting bits in the out-takes that would show a lot more of their skill.
In my experience, the cutting ratio for something like that series would be around 6:1 in other words, for every minute that's in the final programme, six were shot. That doesn't mean all six minutes were of any value, obviously, but there may well be bits that would be.
I visited RTE in the early 1980s as a guest of one of their presenters, and I know that their retention policy for radio wasn't all-embracing (they didn't cut-edit, and thus wiped and re-used tapes that we in the BBC would've kept, at least for a while), but film rushes were often kept anyway as it couldn't be re-used and bits might come in handy one day - library storage space/cost being the limiting factor.
On the sound and interviews: There's a picture on the Shaw Smiths' web site of Sally as recordist. Unless I'm much mistaken, she's got a Uher reel-to-reel (and a 4038 ribbon mic on a pole - never, ever seen that before!!). Pilot tone was necessary for sync sound, but there were hardly any pilot-tone Uhers around (although they were made), as Uhers weren't renown for speed stability - the pros used Nagras (or rarely Stellavoxes). I think her husband has an Aaton (nice!), or possibly an Arri camera - both normally crystal (so capable of sync), but the nub of it is that it's possible that as a team they couldn't do actual sync sound, only what's known as wildtrack. They might have recorded sound-only interviews to either be re-voiced in the commentary, or used as non-sync voiceovers, but these might not have been kept.
These are wild guesses, but it wasn't unusual for whole programmes to be made 'mute' (i.e. non-sync sound only) in the 1970s, because it kept production costs down. A careful film editor could make wild sound effects look like sync, but it was almost impossible to do that with speech. They're really simple final mixes too - three tracks I think, four at the most. This was pretty common too, as dubbing theatre equipment (and time) was very unusual and expensive. I didn't see the RTE film dubbing facilities when I visited, but I found some photos in their stills library, and their kit looks identical to ours in BBC Bristol at the time (they had slightly more than us, but Donnybrook was their posh new national HQ!).
Anyway, it's well worth you getting in touch to ask. For the cost of a stamp, etc...
E.
but the trade lives on 
