Vision On
 Vision On was started in 1964 and was originally designed as an
educational program for deaf children - hence the hand signals and the
distinct absence of talking.
It replaced the patronising For Deaf
Children and was hosted throughout by Pat Keysall, joined early on by
artist Tony Hart and later on by Sylvester McCoy.
Patrick Darling and Ursula Eason created Vision On, with the idea
that it was to be a very fast program so that everyone would realise
the deaf were quick off the mark, and very observant.
Using a mixture
of artwork, mime, live action, sign language, animation and trick
photography, everything on the show was done in a highly visual way.
All the early episodes went to air live, as recording a program was
cumbersome and expensive in the dim, dark days of 1964.
Regular items included;
• The Gallery - a display of viewers' art works and sketches
shown to the fantastic xylophone/vibraphone accompaniment of a piece
of music called Left Bank Two. The concept of The Gallery was adopted
from an earlier program called Sketch Club (presented by Adrian Hill)
where children would send their work in to the studio.
By the early 70s, Vision On's Gallery attracted 12,000 pictures a
week and the BBC hired grandparents to sort through all the paintings
and drawings for the program. "Unfortunately we can't return any
paintings, but a prize is given for each one shown".
• The Burbles talked to each other philosophically using large
speech bubbles. We never actually saw the Burbles themselves, just the
bubbles. Originally they lived inside a grandfather clock.
• The Prof (the man in a white coat who would be blown up
regularly a la Tom and Jerry) was filmed in stop-motion by three
Russian camera operators at the BBC, including David Cleveland (who
also played the Prof).
• Humphrey the tortoise.
• The Woofenpuss - A red feather boa that ran around the studio.
• Pipe-men Phil O'Pat and Pat O'Phil.
And in each show, Tony Hart would produce a creative piece of art,
despite all the chaos and mayhem around him. He was the first TV
artist to do truly massive drawings, trotting off (in his pale blue
short-sleeved shirt) to a disused airfield with a film crew and a
roadworker's white-line painting machine, and creating something
wonderful.
The show lasted 12 years but had started to look a little tired and
old. The surreal element was re-launched as Jigsaw but sadly, deaf
children had no show of their own anymore.
With the end of Vision On,
Hart moved on to the general kiddie art programs Take Hart - which in
1977 introduced the world to animated plasticine creature Morph - and Hartbeat.
The odd little animated figure on springy legs that bounced around
the screen to introduce the show was called 'Grog' (because he seemed
to be half grasshopper and half frog). Tony Hart says; "we were
all writing our names in pencil on a piece of paper, folding it,
rubbing it and opening it up . . . and somebody said "let's do
Vision On, so I wrote 'Vision On', opened it up, and there was this
Grog".
The team who produced Vision On actually helped pioneer some of the
visual techniques such as chromakey and colour separation effects.
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