Making movies - stories for my grandchildren

When I was a really, really young guy I made movies. Not quite Hollywood, but the movies I worked on did get a lot of TV air time. I worked for the company that produced the Herald of Truth Radio and Television programs, and later for a splinter company that produced TV commercials and sponsored films.

Back in the '60s the Herald of Truth ministry produced half-hour radio broadcasts and television films and made them available to stations across the country. At one point, as many as 500 radio stations and 120 TV stations carried the program. The Herald of Truth still exists as an organization, but now features shorter messages, Internet downloads and printed materials. The old 30-minute programs lie mouldering in the Millikin Special Collection archives at ACU.

We filmed the television programs in studio sets, built to resemble an office setting, first on a sound stage in Dallas, and later in Abilene. Everything was shot on 16mm film, and mostly in black and white. As I recall, the last set of 30 minute films were shot in color, but I had moved on by then.

Studio work was a long, drawn-out process, with interminable waits. Either the crew was waiting on the "talent" or the talent was waiting on the crew, or everyone was waiting on the writers, or for the train to pass (yes, they did build the Abilene sound stage less than a hundred yards from the train tracks). Progress was measured in feet of film; and some days the footage was short.

The fun part of filming was on location; a certain percentage of every program had "wild" footage, usually outdoorsy, scenic stuff - sunrises, sunsets, rivers, forests, etc. Sometimes it was used for background with scripture verses superimposed over it, sometimes it more closely fit the narration, or served as illustrations of the story being told. We did a lot of dusty roads and marketplaces, and more than a few crosses. For one series, we filmed in Nashville at the Hillsboro church. In a few instances, we filmed actors in various settings; I once glued on hair and a beard (before I grew my own) and delivered Peter's sermon at Pentecost for a film. Barb had a role as the victim of an auto accident in another.

And sometimes, the film was made for other customers. We spent a week on the Texas A&M campus, shooting an undergraduate recruiting film; we were hired by the Canadian Broadcasting Company to film an interview with Melvin Beli, the attorney that represented Jack Ruby after Ruby shot Lee Harvey Oswald. And in the Dallas studio we filmed "The Dan Smoot Report." Smoot was an ex-FBI agent turned political activist and chronicled alleged communist infiltration in various sectors of American government and society. I wonder if anyone recognized that Batsell Barrett Baxter, spokesman for the Herald of Truth, and Dan Smoot, spokesman for the John Birch Society were filmed in the same office set?

For some reason, we did a lot of filming of and in aircraft. Sometimes the results were mixed; we rented a helicopter for part of the A&M shoot and the pilot had to make an emergency landing. On another occasion we were shooting aerial footage of the ACU campus from a helicopter and the pilot got in trouble with the FAA while doing it. It wasn't just helicopters - we made a movie for the Mooney Aircraft Corporation, featuring a sweet little turboprop airplane they were trying to get off the ground (sales-wise, that is). The filming was fun but the client went broke before we got paid in full.

We were hired by the US Air Force to make a classified training film and a lot of the footage was shot from a little jet trainer. After our cameraman got in the second seat, a bar was bolted across his lap as a camera mount. The pilot emphasized that pulling the ejection lever would be a very bad idea. After that film was finished and paid for, the FBI came around checking security clearances; turns out several had none, and one of the crew was even a Canadian citizen!

We spent two weeks at the New York World's Fair, filming mostly at night, because we were totally non-union and the Fair was totally unionized. One night a Teamster stopped us at the vehicle entrance and asked what we were bringing in. When we told him "materials for the Church of Christ exhibit," which was partially true, he went in the trailer parked at the gate to check with his boss and almost immediately was thrown back out the door. A big, burly Union Steward stood in the door yelling, "I told you, don't %$# with no &($#% churches!"

We made a lot of commercials, as well. I built a kitchen set in Abilene and it was the background for numerous cooking and homemaking spots for West Texas Utilities. And somewhere, at the base of one of the bluffs overlooking the highway to San Angelo, there is the wreckage of a car that we sent hurtling over the bluff for a bank commercial.At least they didn't want us to crash an airplane into Lake Phantom Hill!