AV News 184 - May 2011
Our very dear friend Peter Coles has died. He was a great inspiration to us
all, known as the Grandfather of AV.
Peter had many talents. He was, most of all, fun to be with, constantly
coming up with ideas for sequences - if you blinked he'd make a sequence
out of it! I wasn't surprised to learn that he was working on a sequence in his
hospital bed the day before he died. It was a passion and he was a genius.
His sequences weren't straightforward, they had messages at many levels.
He was a vicar's son and you would usually find religion intermingled,
often very subtly, with his other thoughts on life. A poet, his scripts would
reflect this, becoming like a melody when he read them with his
unforgettable, expressive voice. He understood words and loved to use them
to full effect. He edited the RPS AVNews and later AVWorld for many years
and published many books.
He had a love of photography from an early age, but the artist in him meant
that even before the days of digital he was altering the elements in his
photographs to enhance them for his AV's. Digital just made it easier to do.
He embraced the new technology and used it to good effect.
He was a teacher, not only a chemistry teacher to school age and later
adults but a teacher of life to those he came in contact with. He was caring
and considerate and helped many through their first steps in AV production,
a true mentor. He enjoyed making sequences with other folk, as he called
them. He was especially deli