BSC Members Roster – Past Full Accredited

Arthur Wooster BSC

Category: Past Full Accredited

Role: 2nd Unit Cinematographer

Website: IMDb


Arthur retired in 2007 and has 'worked' once since then when he took part in an Channel 4 programme about The Queen in 3D in 2009, having pioneered the 3D process in 1953.

Mr Wooster, 80, and his colleague Bob Angell, 87, filmed the Queen using two cameras simultaneously at different angles before blending the footage together into a single picture.

The film covered the procession to and from Westminster Abbey, a trip to the Derby at Epsom, and rare footage of the Queen and Duke of Edinburgh on the Royal Barge on the River Thames shortly after the Coronation.

Ironically, the reason the film, which cost £3,000 to make, was never broadcast in cinemas was because the Coronation caused an explosion in popularity in television. It was the first time cameras were allowed inside Westminster Abbey.

When Buckingham Palace was informed about the film the Queen was so thrilled that she invited Mr Wooster and Mr Angell, who are lifelong friends, to go behind the cameras again to obtain contemporary 3D footage at Buckingham Palace and the Highland Games.

David Glover, Channel 4 specialist factual commissioning editor, said: “The film is amazing. It is decades ahead of their time. It is the nearest thing to time travel that I will ever experience.”

The film reflected the extraordinary outpouring of hope, in the bleak post-war years, generated by the Coronation as three million people surged into the centre of London.

Mr Angell, who lives in Fulham, said: “It was an extraordinary day. There was a wonderful atmosphere. It never occurred to us, as we operated the only equipment of its kind in the world, that we would become part of history.

“We had high hopes for the film but the business of installing 3D equipment in cinemas had begun to take its toll, the 3D bubble burst, and it was shelved.”

The newsreel only came to light when Mr Wooster’s son David, who is also a filmmaker, was planning to do some 3D filming at the last World Cup.

“I thought for once I would be doing something that he had not done. But he said he had sone something in 3D 1953 and he trumped me with the Queen. It is like a little time capsule. You really do feel like you are part of the era,” Mr Wooster said.

Having tracked it down in the British film Institute archive he presented it to his father, who lives in Berkhampsted, at his 80th birthday party, on a laptop.

The two men's company Film Partnership was later taken over by Richard Dimbleby, the doyen of broadcasters, who had provided the commentary for the Coronation. It later procured the first ever television travel programme in which Mr Dimbleby’s sons David and Jonathan had cameo roles.

Go to YouTube - The Queen in 3D to watch