THE projector had to be sent to Johannesburg to be fitted with a new drive belt, but we were assured that our own machine was on its way back to us and that we were not to worry about the fact that the truck which was transporting it had not been heard of since last Wednesday.
It arrived a week later and worked like a dream, except that it removed another few metres of sound stripe.
This, of course, meant more cutting and splicing. I cut out the damaged section, but when it came to the splicing, I found I couldn’t open the glue pot. I attacked it with a monkey wrench and broke the lid. After a few more minor mishaps, like reassembling part of it in the wrong order, we did eventually get it all put together and ready for recording.
I had only one morning in which to do the job and it happened to be the morning on which the engineer-in-charge-of-making-my-life-a-misery decided that our road needed levelling. The presence of two graders, two water bowsers, one road roller and a foreman with squeaky brakes, did not make me wildly happy, but I did manage to get it finished, right up to the end credits.
At this point the script called for the sound of an elephant breaking wind. Now I have never even heard an elephant break wind, much less managed to record the sound, but Corrie reckoned that, if he drank an ice-cold beer too fast, he might be able to produce a reasonable substitute.
It actually took three ice-cold beers, but the end result was a heart-felt comment on the trials and tribulations of film production. Produced by accident? Never!
I had a nasty taste in my mouth when I dispatched that film across the Atlantic – I had had to lick 73 stamps. And what happened to it? It was delayed in a postal strike and arrived too late for the judging!
But, happily, that was not the end of the story. When it did arrive, it was given an unofficial screening and sent on a six-month tour of Canada with the winning films.
‘Calamity Bug’ made the finals the following year, when ‘But the Wheel Came Off’ performed a similar feat in the United States.
As if this were not enough for 1983, the Botswana Wildlife Department decided that, having made all the mistakes in the book, we had now served our apprenticeship. So with our official Guide Licences in our pockets, and the Koro – the yellow-billed hornbill – as our emblem, we took to the bush again.
As professionals.
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