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Barry Pyatt ... The Story So Far ...

Barry Pyatt has been, indeed, a man of many faces!

The picture shows "Old Faithfull" ...
Barry with Beaulieu R16E 16mm with
rare motorised 12-160 Angenieux Lens,
on location, circa 1982
 
 
(for additional information, please click on the YELLOW items in this text
 
After leaving Bromley Grammar School, in Kent, England, in the mid 1960s, he started his working life with the Ministry of Aviation, at their testing establishment "Aquila" (also in Kent), as an electronic engineering apprentice.
 
In the evenings, he sung, and played guitar or piano in several local bands, or "groups" as they were called then ... the Ministry paid the princely sum of £3 10s 6d a week (before tax !!) ... the bands paid about £15 a week !!
 
Barry started a love affair with a cheap Russian "Quarz" standard 8mm movie camera, that he took everywhere, together with mountains of out-dated Ferrania colour film bought very cheaply at "Grahams Camera Store" in Lewisham.
 
Working with his old school buddy, Steve Acworth, several experimental films were made, some by employing Mr Acworth's extraordinary artistry DIRECT onto film frames with microscopic pens., and sound synchronicity was obtained by physically glueing a magnetic stripe along the edge of the film, and then recording onto this using a specially constructed tape recorder.
Every "performance" was a "by the Grace of God" affair !!
 
Barry's romance with film, or at least, moving pictures, had truly begun.
 
The strict regimen of the Ministry, however, did not sit easily upon his shoulders, and he soon changed direction, getting closer to his love of entertainment, by joining the BBC in London.
Barry worked for "The Corporation" for several years, slowly clawing his way up the ladder, but, in 1972, the opportunity to tour Europe as a professional musician presented itself.
To the complete amazement of his family and friends, he had no hesitation in throwing away a stable and secure career, and left the BBC to live, and play rock music in Switzerland, then France, Ireland, and finally Italy.
 
During this time, Barry was fortunate enough to taste the fruits and enjoy the riches of being at the top, rapidly followed by the trauma of being almost penniless, and at the bottom, with a consequent, and sudden, debilitating health problem.
This forced another change of direction, and he found a more tranquil occupation as a senior design engineer with the, then giant, Rediffusion electronics group.
He rapidly rose through the ranks, as far as he could go ... achieving some notoriety once more, this time in several ground-breaking technologies allied to health and safety in the industrial environment, and his contemporary technical papers later became "de facto" reference works for others.
 
His pioneering spirit soon meant, however, that Barry was waiting to "fill dead men's shoes" ... sadly for him, the engineering directorate of Rediffusion was, then, young and fit, and not about to leave promotional spaces!
So, the move to Yorkshire came.
For a short while, Barry was General Manager of a branch of Smiths Industries in Leeds, then General Manager of Associated Systems in Shipley, both companies dealing with audio-visual equipment and systems.
The challenge was still not enough, and in 1978, he finally became independent, and floated his own business, "Pyatt Design" in Bradford, with the aid of a small, but crucial, investment from his family.
 
By 1980, his invention of two electronic communications devices had driven Pyatt Design into the top league of local small businesses, being, according to his Bradford city bank, one of just twelve whose accounts were actually "in the black" in the city!
This sudden affluence enabled Barry, at last, to set up his dream ... a film, video, and recording studio, located in a beautiful, 200 year old farmhouse, in his beloved Yorkshire Dales.
Thus, STUDIO 21 was born.
 
The studio produced many industrial promotions and training films, pop videos for record companies, fashion show videos for the city's woollen goods manufacturers, and it also became a favourite recording venue for many bands, having, possibly, the largest floor area available, outside of the area's national television companies' studios.
 
Alongside all of this STUDIO 21 activity, Pyatt Design was also creating innovative products, and Barry, himself, had become the "non-resident electronics consultant" for several local companies, whilst also developing several products to improve the facilities at STUDIO 21, most notably the QUALIKIT software.
Barry dearly wanted to make a couple of programmes specifically for television, but the, then, staunch and dictatorial rule of the broadcasting and film unions absolutely prevented "independents" from making such contributions.
 
It was the resolve to give the "Bowman's salute" in the direction of his previous broadcasting employers, and their competitors, that led STUDIO 21 to make its long-lasting name with the launch of the VIDEOBOOK films in 1982
 
These were, it is believed, the first, "sell-thru" travel videos in the UK, and they were immediately adopted by the, then powerful, International Video Network in California, USA, as part of their own initiative in that rapidly expanding market.
The title that achieved the largest sales over the next 20 odd years was "The Yorkshire Dales", followed by "The Lake District of England".
Both of these films were a reflection of Barry's own love of the two areas; so much so, that he insisted on being the sole creator.
He wrote the scripts, shot the films, edited the results, wrote and played the music, and did the voice-overs.
 
These films represented the culmination of a dream that started with that Russian movie camera.
 
(A strange quirk of circumstances was that, during the early days of the VideoBook enterprise, Barry had wanted to return to using film rather than video ... he acquired another Russian camera ... this time a 16 mm Krasnagorsk ... it was, apart from the film gauge, exactly the same as that first Quarz cine camera!
Sadly, it also had all the same problems ... which is why it was quickly replaced with the camera shown above ... a 16 mm electric Beaulieu R16 with monstrous, and hugely expensive, Angenieux lens!! )
 
Studio 21 ceased operations in 1999, when Barry "retired" to Spain ..... Retirement proved to be too stressful though ....
hence the subsequent birth of AngelFilms !!