News on Screen

Nick Lera was assistant cameraman at Movietone for some years before being promoted to cameraman in the early 1960s. His first surviving credit is for ‘THE GREAT JOURNEY BEGINS’ in British Movietone News No.1757 of February 1963, but after that he is regularly credited for domestic events. Lera appears as a staff cameraman in the Movietone staff list for January 1964. He was one of Movietone’s cinemascope cameramen, his assignments beginning with ‘THE GRAND NATIONAL - In Cinemascope’ in British Movietone News No.1816 of March 1964, and ‘NEWS IN CINEMASCOPE - CRICKET’ in No.1822 of May 1964. In January 1965 he filmed Winston Churchill’s coffin for ‘LYING IN STATE (in Colour)' in No.1860A, and in August 1965 Lera was credited for providing material for ‘HOVERCRAFT SERVICE AND COWES REGATTA’ in British Movietone News No.1888. In July 1967 Lera provided film from Morocco for ‘NEWS IN COLOUR - SWIMWEAR FASHIONS’ in No.1989A, but he afterwards joined the BBC as a cameraman. In 1969 and 1970 he won the News Cameraman of the Year Award. For the BBC he filmed in the Middle East and Vietnam, 1972-73, the revolution in Portugal (1974) and the US evacuation from Saigon (1975), and filmed for ‘Newsnight’ in China and in Eastern Europe during the collapse of Communism. He produces video railway histories and television programmes on railway journeys.

Sources

Movietone archive, cameraman’s report by N. H. Lera, July 1967: BUFVC, T. M. Gallacher, ‘Additional Notes,' October 1998; information from Nick Lera, February 2002.