Wednesday 5 June 2013

Lost Documentary News Crew Found In Jungle.

News has just reached us here at the ukcameraman institute of TV news studies, that a new tribe of as yet uncontacted people called the Bolex tribe, have been discovered deep in the Amazon jungle.

The Amazon jungle... Remarkably similar to a hedgerow in Hampshire, UK.

My contact in the United States told me that a documentary crew from CBS news, at the time covering the destruction of the Amazon rain forests, claimed to have found evidence from a previous filming expedition that were lost to the BBC in 1952. It was assumed that the original BBC documentary crew had perished in the jungle after becoming disorientated, and had succumbed to hunger and disease.

Further to this, two further BBC documentary crews were sent into the jungle to find and document what had happened to the original crew, however they too, were never seen again. The then Director General of the BBC was quoted as saying,

"This is a damn poor show. Apart from losing 16 technicians, 4 directors and 3 producers, the BBC has lost 3 Bolex film cameras, sound equipment and a very expensive set of tripods which cannot be easily replaced. As for the film stock... This could have been used on other programmes."

Efforts to reach the tribe have so far been unsuccessful, however rumours abound that small, pale skinned tribesmen have been spotted in the jungle wearing banana fronds fashioned into a rudimentary pith helmet, who apparently tell the time of day in Kelvin measurements. When approached, the tribesmen yelled "Action..!" before disappearing back into the jungle. A female member of the tribe was also said to have the name 'Pippa.'

The CBS crew, having just returned from the Amazon, told me that far from having perished in 1952, the BBC documentary crews may have been captured by unknown tribes and were eventually assimilated into the local way of life. This has since been clarified by a field researcher in the Amazon basin who sent a message confirming the existence of the Bolex Tribe, who speak a rudimentary pidgin English, pray to a glass eyed god and insist on drinking a tea made from dried nut husks with added monkey milk.

Efforts on behalf of the BBC to confirm the discovery are ongoing here at the ukcameraman institute of TV news studies. The current BBC Director General was not available for comment, however the head of the BBC news HR and departmental expenses, has sent me this statement:

"Following the recent news, we are delighted to finally know what happened. We hope that in due course, the BBC can finally recover the film and write off the accrued costs and associated expenses of stock and filming equipment that has been dogging our spreadsheets since 1952. 

We also look forward to the return of our crew members back to the BBC, where form HR249.2 (Pension agreements, 1976.) await their signatures, and expenses forms can be finalised."

Paul Martin is @ukcameraman on Twitter.

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