[Bluecortina]

That telecine machine looks archaic, pretty much a projector aimed at a camera! I know that's in essence what a telecine is anyway, but that one really does look almost ramshackle, with the path between camera and projector open to air.

The machine you're referring to was known as a 'camera telecine'. In essence it is as you describe - a film projector pointing down the throat of the camera optics. The one in the film looks like a Marconi model.

The advantage of a camera telecine over a flying spot telecine was that it could handle very variable film stock. A large TV news operation would receive film from around the world shot to very variable technical standards as you might imagine. If the received film was was too dark or dense then you could simply turn up the brightness of the projection lamp to try and 'force' more light through the film. The camera would have the usual iris control but also a set of neutral density filters in the optical path to further try and control the light path. In this way they were much more suited to news use than flying spot telecine machines which gave quality over practical exposure problems. In fact when ITN were tasked to make a documentary of some sort for ITV and they required higher quality pictures they would decamp with their film to a local Itv station equipped with flying spot telecines as they gave a higher quality output. BBC News used camera telecines too so nothing at all unusual about them. They also had the advantage of being instant start and stop.


(PS. Standard interview question - What are the various pros and cons of camera v flying spot telecines, that's why I remember)