Flash Frames Redux

Having spent an entire year writing about flash frames in The Young Ones, you really would think I was done with the whole damn thing now. And I nearly am, I promise.

However, I have one last thing to talk about. Let’s watch the first couple of minutes of “Boring”, broadcast on the 23rd November 1982.

Here’s a fun fact which I don’t think has ever been mentioned before: the entire house sequence above, up to and including “Morning has broken”, was originally supposed to be placed before the opening titles, according to the camera script. It’s probably a good idea this was changed; Neil’s line is funny as a stupid throwaway, but placing it just before the titles would give it a weight it simply couldn’t support.

Right, enough fun, back to the flash frames. At 1:25 in the above video, something rather odd happens. We get this image, of a flying carpet, for a single frame:¹

What’s going on? Despite this being from Series 1, is this related to the whole Series 2 flash frames business?

In fact, no. This wasn’t deliberate in the slightest. It’s a simple editing error; the scene originally contained a flying carpet as one of the unusual things hanging around the house. When they removed the shot, they just removed it imperfectly.

We don’t have to guess at that either; we can check the original script I mentioned earlier:

SCENE 1D KITCHEN/PUPPET AREA

ON THE DRAINING BOARD IS A GREASY PLATE. A CARROT AND A CHIP, WITH LITTLE ICE SKATES ARE SKATING HAND IN HAND – AS THEY SKATE THEY EMBRACE.

SCENE 1E HALL

IN THE HALL A LARGE RUG² IS HOVERING SIX INCHES FROM THE FLOOR.

SCENE 1F EXT HOUSE O.B.

ALL IS SILENT

WE SEE A BEAUTIFUL RED DAWN – JUST APPEARING AS COCK CROWS.

This carpet is also mentioned twice more in the script, although in both cases they managed to remove any trace of it in the final edit. Shortly afterwards, when the cock crows and all our weird things run off, there was originally this shot:

INSTANTLY THE RUG IN THE HALL DROPS TO THE GROUND

You can see in the final episode that when the Hermit toddles off back to the cupboard, the carpet has already dropped to the ground.

Finally, when the gang all go off to the pub later on, just before the immortal line “Darling carrot, could you ever love a cripple?”:

BACK INSIDE A HUGE SIGH – THE CARPET RISES

I fancy that once you know a shot of the carpet was cut just before this line, you can tell – the edit is very sharp at this point.

Flash frames of this sort – just editing errors, completely unintentional – are more common than you might think, especially with shows which pushed contemporary editing technology to its limits. For instance, the first series of LWT’s Doctor in the House is riddled with them. See the episode “The Students are Revolting!”, broadcast on the 9th August 1969, and the last two shots of the show.

We get the director credit, and then the LWT caption:

But sandwiched in-between, for one single frame, is a random shot of the office door:

And if you’re wondering how the hell I manage to notice such things… it’s a curse. But a very helpful one in my job, at least.

*   *   *

On Saturday 26th April 1986, the No. 4 reactor at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant exploded. There is countless information online about the consequences of this disaster. Here on Dirty Feed, however, we’re only interested in the big questions.

Such as: how did it affect the topical material in that week’s Spitting Image?

The answer is: not at all, at least initially. In the next day’s episode, on Sunday 27th April, there is absolutely no mention of Chernobyl; the closest we get to nuclear-based satire is Reagan installing a weapons test site up his asshole. This is hardly a surprise; not only had the news not even reached the West yet, but it took until Monday 28th April for the Soviet government to officially acknowledge the disaster in even the broadest terms:

The Chernobyl disaster was finally substantially reported by the British press on Tuesday 29th April; The Times lead with the front page story “Huge nuclear leak at Soviet plant”. At this point, it would have been clear that the next episode of Spitting Image, due for broadcast on Sunday 4th May, would need to cover the disaster significantly in its topical material.

Director Graham C Williams talked about the process during his interview on Kellyvision:

“The schedule is really just amazing. It’s like making a newspaper. We can have by Thursday night virtually a complete show, and something will happen on Friday… like Chernobyl broke to us that late in the week, and other big events have happened to us where we have to – if we’re going to be topical – put a lot of that stuff in the show. And suddenly you virtually have to start from scratch. That’s got to go, that’s got to go… very good sketches, that it’s heartbreaking to take them out and say we’ve got to do this, because if we were running a newspaper we’d hold the front page.”

It’s probably worth pointing out that it would have been obvious well before Friday that this was a big news story. But the main point is well taken.

Let’s look at this particular week in a little more detail. We’ve spent a great deal of time talking about how the topical material in Spitting Image was recorded, so let’s apply what we know to this week of production. Friday 2nd May would have been the writing session for the topical Chernobyl sketches, Saturday 3rd May would have been the voice record for this material, with Sunday 4th May spent putting those sketches before the cameras, ready for transmission that evening.

The episode as broadcast does indeed have a fairly hefty chunk of material about the disaster. The whole show is nearly 23 minutes long; out of that runtime, four sketches are Chernobyl-based, totalling 4’20” of material, or nearly 20% of the show. This includes the opening two minutes of the episode, part of which I’ve included below:

And what happens at 0:25 into that video? The following, for one single frame:

Hmmmmmmmmmmmm.

*   *   *

So, I have no answer to exactly what’s going on here. I do, however, have some theories. Gather round, everyone.

Firstly: perhaps this was just a straightforward editing error, much like the “Boring” example which opens this article. This is, frankly, the most likely explanation. Adding credence to this idea is that the flash frame itself is part of a much longer shot… from only three seconds earlier. In most circumstances, I’d say this was case closed.

One thing gives me pause, though: the flash is just after the newsreader says “We interrupt Potato World for an important newsflash”. Plus, the the flash itself is of a newsflash card. This could just be a coincidence… but it’s a rather suspicious one. So: perhaps it’s a deliberate pun? Newsflash, add a flash frame, amuse about five people, four of whom are in the edit suite. Job done.

But I want to throw just one more thing into the mix. Back in the third part of my flash frames articles, I told the story of how Norris McWhirter dragged the IBA through the courts with regards to Spitting Image‘s previous tomfoolery in this area. And I also want to quote the following from the book Tooth and Claw again, regarding the show’s first errant flash frame in 1984:

“On the day after the incident, the IBA sternly reprimanded Central as the responsible company and Central told Lloyd never to do such a thing again, making it an area to which he would irresistibly return.

It was the quality of naughtiness, rather than politically-motivated satire, that was now becoming Spitting Image‘s defining characteristic.”

Or how about:

“When the second series got underway, the problem, from Spitting Image’s point of view, was how to keep stirring without actually landing in the soup.”

Norris McWhirter failed in his court process on the 30th January 1986, and failed in such a way which meant that including silly flash frame jokes in programmes on IBA-licenced stations was deemed not to be illegal. The Chernobyl episode of Spitting Image was broadcast on the 4th May 1986. Sure, the dates don’t coincide exactly, but they’re near enough that if the flash frame was included deliberately, then there surely must have been some awareness of performing one more thumb of the nose to McWhirter. One final piece of “naughtiness”.

I know, I know. It’s probably is just an editing error, right? But I’m going to allow myself a second “Hmmmmmmmmmmmm” regardless.

---

1. Tech note: it’s a single frame in that video, deinterlacing the original material to 50fps. In fact, it was a single field in the original interlaced material. ↩

2. The script “helpfully” refers it as both a rug and a carpet, depending on the line. ↩

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best of, freeze-frame gonna drive you insane, spitting image, the young ones