This a fantastic tribute to Jan Vermazen. I was recruited from Kodak in Melbourne to join him when Group Colour installed its 16mm colour film processor. I had a solid seven year background in the quality control of all colour film manufactured in Ausralia, and all motion picture film. (Imported in bulk rolls from the USA) Jan was a lovely, polite old school gentleman who welcomed me with open arms. We both shared the duties of running the colour film processor and other spin off duties such as copying 16mm footage, and making 35mm colour slides from carefully selected frames of the 16mm news footage to be used in the chroma key background for the news reader’s intro to each story. I taught Jan the quality control techniques of sensitometry and densitometry to maintain the proper colour balance of the 16mm reveral film (Ektachrome 7240-Tungsten and 7242-Daylight) There is one terribly funny story though. The processor was fitted with a large replaceable blue cannister full of steel wool. This was the silver recovery unit. Silver halides were removed from the film as it passed through the “image fixer” stage and would adhere to the steel wool inside the canister. No-one had told jan that this unit should be replaced every three months…and the old one, now full of solid silver, should be sent to the Perth Mint. The Mint would keep the silver, and send us a cheque for the value of that particular consignment. I was aghast that this hadn’t been done..and got the ball rolling. The first cheque that came back was more than $900. Almost double the usual value in a silver recovery unit. I think the drain pipes between TVW-7 and STW-9 are lined with solid silver…worth digging up one day. About 1977 I was retrenched from Group Colour to save money (they said). But I’d been studying journalism at WAIT, and moved to Sydney where I worked as a news cameraman for about 6 months until I was offered a junior journo role in the same TV newsroom. Stayed in journalism at WIN-TV, Radio 3AW, HSV-7, STW-9 and NEW-10. The in moved across to the “Dark Side” and took on a media related strategic projects role with the WA Police. (Talk about being sidetracked. I started out to become a doctor!)

Marc