Gerry Anderson commenced a long career in the television and motion picture industry when he went to work as a projectionist for the English Ministry of Information at the age of 17. This job eventually led to a position as an assistant editor with Gainsborough Studios. After a brief period as a radio operator in the Royal Air Force, Gerry took a job with Pinewood Studios as a dubbing editor.
Television had become very popular during mid 1950s and was offering serious competition with the motion picture industry for the very first time. As television seemed to be the thing to get into, Gerry Anderson left Pinewood Studios to go to work for a small company called Polytechnic Studios which had been established to produce television programs. Unfortunately, Polytechnic Studios proved to be a failure and soon went out of business. In the aftermath of this event, Gerry Anderson decided that it was time to strike out in business on his own.
During late 1956 or early 1957, Gerry Anderson and a friend from Polytechnic Studios by the name of Arthur Provis pooled their meager financial resources to form a film production company which they named Anderson Provis Productions or AP Productions for short. AP Productions started on a shoestring. The company set up operations in cheap quarters located in a flood prone converted mansion on the banks of the Thames River in Maidenhead.
The original staff of AP Productions included business manager Gerry Anderson, cameraman Arthur Provis, designer Reg Hill, technician John Read, and secretary Sylvia Thamm. With the exception of Sylvia Thamm, everyone at the company had come from Polytechnic Studios. Arthur Provis, Reg Hill, and John Read had all worked together after the second world war making military training films. As a result, each man possessed considerable experience with miniatures, animation, and trick photography. Although none of them realized it at the time, these special skills would prove to be most valuable to AP Productions as time went on.
Sylvia Thamm grew up in England and moved to the United States after she married an American soldier. This marriage, the first of three, did not work out and she eventually moved back to England. Although Sylvia Thamm was originally hired to be a secretary, she proved to be multi-talented and later assumed many production responsibilities. Eventually she married Gerry Anderson. During the Supermarionation years Sylvia Anderson was co-producer of each television series and feature film. She also designed many of the fashions worn by the puppets and was responsible for character development as well as being a voice artist herself.
Gerry Anderson, Arthur Provis, Reg Hill, John Read, and Sylvia Thamm sat in their offices at Maidenhead and waited for business to come to them. Naturally, nothing happened. After nearly six months of nothing the money began to run out and AP Productions seemed likely to follow Polytechnic Studios into oblivion. Then, just as the end seemed immanent, a children's book author by the name of Roberta Leigh approached the company with a job. Gerry Anderson and Arthur Provis's great relief turned into equally great disappointment after they discovered that Roberta Leigh did not want them to produce a live action television series or film but instead wanted a series of 15 minute puppet shows based upon her popular "Twizzle" book character. Desperate for income and hoping that Roberta Leigh's The Adventures of Twizzle television series would keep the company solvent until something better came along, AP Productions took on the job.
This fateful decision put the Andersons on the path that would lead to Supermarionation. Indeed, the entire Anderson marionette empire of the 1960s grew out of this one "temporary" measure that was only intended to keep AP Productions in business until something better came around. Nobody associated with the company ever thought that The Adventures of Twizzle would ever lead to anything other than a short-term paycheck.
Puppet makers and puppeteers were now required by AP Productions so feelers went out to the British model theater community. The company hired Joy Laurie, who was experienced with children's television puppet programs, to supervise all aspects of puppetry for The Adventures of Twizzle. Joy in turn brought on her good friend Christine Glanville, who was a talented artist, sculptor, and puppeteer.
The Adventures of Twizzle also required miniature sets and props. Designer Reg Hill felt he needed some help so AP Productions approached Les Bowie with an offer. Les Bowie was an established miniature effects technician who had developed a favorable reputation at Anglo-Scottish Pictures for his work on various fantasy pictures. Les Bowie had no interest in doing the unsophisticated class of work presented to him by AP Productions. However, he had a young assistant working for him who had a growing family and a need for a little additional income. This man was Derek Meddings. Derek agreed to work for AP Productions on a part time basis around his normal schedule at Anglo-Scottish Pictures.
The puppet production required a musical score of course, so a man named Barry Gray was brought on for this purpose. Barry Gray composed the music for The Adventures of Twizzle by listening to tunes that had been hummed into a portable tape recorder by Roberta Leigh.
Christine Glanville, Derek Meddings, and Barry Gray would all stay on with Gerry and Sylvia Anderson through the end of the Supermarionation era. These three people became the nucleus of the Supermarionation establishment during the 1960s. Christine Glanville would eventually become puppetry supervisor, Derek Meddings the special effects director, and Barry Gray would go on to compose the musical scores for every Supermarionation television and film production.
One of the most important and fateful business decisions made by AP Productions was to film The Adventures of Twizzle using string marionettes. The marionettes, having "proper" legs and arms, presented a greater degree of sophistication than the glove puppets typically used in other children's television programs of the time. The decision to use string marionettes on The Adventures of Twizzle paved the way for the realistic Supermarionation puppeteering techniques that would be used in the future.
The marionettes used in The Adventures of Twizzle were all made by Christine Glanville with the assistance of her parents. These puppets were actually built in the garage workshop of her parent's home as space was at a premium in the Maidenhead studios. The heads and bodies of these early puppets lacked the sophistication of later Supermarionation characters. They were very simple things with heads made from plastic wood or paper mache and bodies that were sometimes made from wood. These early puppets did not even have movable eyes or mouths. Speaking was indicated by bobbing the "speaking" puppet's head up and down! The puppets were strung with highly visible black carpet thread.
Derek Meddings created the simple sets, backdrops, and props used in The Adventures of Twizzle from painted wood and cardboard cut-outs. Probably the most sophisticated miniature prop built for this series was a crude flat-sided toy tow truck introduced in the fourth episode, "The Breakdown Van". This tow truck was the primitive ancestor of many wonderful model vehicles to come from Derek Meddings in the future.
The budget of The Adventures of Twizzle was so low (about $800 per episode) and the production schedule so tight that the scenery and props often had to be built in the same converted ballroom where the filming took place. As this was only a part time job for Derek Meddings, he usually performed his work at night or on weekends. However, filming often dragged on through the night so Derek frequently had to work on building scenery and props while filming was going on all around him.
Although everyone at AP Productions was concerned that The Adventures of Twizzle would prove to be an embarrassing flop, it actually did pretty well when introduced to British television during November 1957. In large part, this was because AP Productions had elected to use the more realistic marionette puppets instead of the simple glove puppets typically used in competing children's television programs. Another important factor in the commercial success of The Adventures of Twizzle was that overhead bridges were used for the puppeteers to stand on while they manipulated the marionettes. These overhead bridges permitted the sets below to be made fully three dimensional. This of course provided a greater degree of realism than the typical puppet program's plain painted backdrop. These three dimensional sets were able to be illuminated and filmed just like a "real live" film production, further enhancing realism. Viewers had never before seen a children's puppet television program done with such sophistication and they liked it.
The success of The Adventures of Twizzle led to another commission by Roberta Leigh in late 1958. Unfortunately, this commission was for a similar puppet television series called Torchy the Battery Boy. By this time, AP Productions had become resigned to the fact that they were stuck doing puppet work, at least for the near term. However, AP Productions resolved to produce the best children's puppet program possible in the hope that their high quality workmanship would attract "better" classes of work.
Joy Laurie left AP Productions after The Adventures of Twizzle was completed and she elected not to return to work on Torchy the Battery Boy. Her old position as puppetry supervisor was assumed by Christine Glanville.
The marionettes built for Torchy the Battery Boy were more sophisticated and more finely modeled than those used in The Adventures of Twizzle. Although they were still made from the same basic materials, the eyes and mouths were now made movable by means of strings attached to a thumb control on the puppeteer's cross bar. Unfortunately, these puppets were still strung with highly visible carpet thread.
It was during the filming of Torchy the Battery Boy that AP Productions developed a truly revolutionary process which automated the motion of the puppet's mouth. This development was called "lip synch" (for lip synchronization). The lip synch apparatus moved the puppet's hinged lower lip in synchronization with a pre-recorded vocal track. It was actually a fairly simple apparatus. Basically, electrical signals from the vocal track were conveyed through steel control wires to a solenoid located in the puppet head which opened and closed the puppet's lower lip as the amplitude of the electrical signal varied through the course of normal speech.
The lip synch mechanism was a direct descendant of the simple manual mouth apparatus developed for the Torchy the Battery Boy type puppets. The manual apparatus consisted of a hinged lower lip which was secured in the closed position by a spring and opened by means of a string attached to a thumb control on the puppeteer's crossbar. The area on the puppet's face below the movable lower lip was cut out to provide clearance for the motion of the lip and this cut out area was filled with a flexible leather used to make fine women's gloves. Originally, rubber condoms were tried for this purpose but they proved to be too fragile! In a basic sense then, the automatic lip synch mechanism merely replaced the string that had actuated the manual lower lip with an electric solenoid. No other developments were required. Lip synch was an evolutionary and revolutionary process at the same time!
Lip synch presented several great advantages beyond merely making the puppet appear to mime dialog realistically. The thin metal control wires required to conduct the lip synch control signal were very strong. Made from a special high tensile wire coated with the same black substance used in camera housings, these wires proved nearly invisible under most filming conditions. Additionally, by freeing the puppeteers from having to memorize dialog and deal with mouth movements, the puppeteers were now able to devote all of their attention to action and movement. Lip synch promised to increase the realism of marionette puppets way beyond anything that had ever been done before.
Two minor characters were introduced in later episodes of Torchy the Battery Boy to test the Lip Synch process under actual studio conditions. These tests proved to be a great success. The invention of lip synch presented the most important element of what would later become known as Supermarionation.
The sets and props build by Derek Meddings for Torchy the Battery Boy were largely made from painted wood and cardboard cut outs just like the items made for The Adventures of Twizzle. However, Derek incorporated a greater degree of sophistication to the set pieces, introducing an entire miniature town with houses shaped like pieces of fruit and interior sets full of realistic miniature furnishings.
Torchy the Battery Boy was also significant in that it was the first Anderson production to utilize a major pyrotechnic exhibition and a futuristic vehicle. The opening titles of Torchy the Battery Boy featured a rocket launching that used a large number of holiday sparklers to simulate the rocket engine! This crude rocket was the grandfather of all the explosions and futuristic vehicles to come. Another significant milestone in the direction of the science fiction Supermarionation series yet to come was the introduction of an alien character, "Squish the Space Boy".
As with The Adventures of Twizzle a year before, Torchy the Battery Boy was fairly successful on British television. Indeed, Roberta Leigh commissioned a second season of Torchy the Battery Boy. For some unknown reason though, this work went to Associated British Pathe instead of AP Productions.
Unfortunately, the fine work that AP Productions had done for Roberta Leigh and Associated Rediffusion Network on The Adventures of Twizzle and Torchy the Battery Boy did not result in the flood of television and film production work that everyone had anticipated. Gerry Anderson and his associates decided that the time had come for them to take another great gamble and try to produce a television series on their own.
AP Productions had by this time developed a favorable reputation for making children's puppet films. Anderson and Provis decided that the company's best bet would be to leverage this reputation and the revolutionary lip synch process by producing another puppet television series. Musical composer Barry Gray came up with the idea of producing a western, as American westerns were very popular all over the world at that time, and he presented Gerry Anderson with the pilot script for what would be known as Four Feather Falls.
Around this time Gerry Anderson and Arthur Provis parted company. Provis would go on to produce a puppet series called "Space Patrol" with Roberta Leigh. AP Productions underwent a name change to AP Films or APF for short.
Four Feather Falls put nearly all the elements of what would later become known as Supermarionation into practice. The production was much more sophisticated than anything done before and more space was required than that available in the ballroom of the mansion at Maidenhead. APF moved out of the Maidenhead mansion and leased a large warehouse on the Slough Trading Estate a few miles away. This warehouse was about four times larger than the mansion and the spaces proved much more accommodating to the Four Feather Falls production crew as it had been previously occupied by Les Bowie and had been set up as a proper film studio.
The puppets used in Four Feather Falls were an order of magnitude more sophisticated than the ones that came before. They had carefully formed and balanced bodies that were carved from a close grained patternmaker's wood called Juletong. The heads were finely featured and made from fiberglass castings. Wigs were made from human hair and fine mohair. Naturally, each puppet used the new lip-synch mechanisms to simulate speech and they were strung with the nearly invisible black steel wires.
All of the main character heads were carefully sculpted in plasticine clay from which a plaster mold was taken after the character's appearance had been approved. Hollow fiberglass heads were then made from these molds in two parts which were glued together. A removable hatch which was secured by a hidden magnet and a piece of steel was cut into the back of each puppet head to permit access to the eye and lip mechanisms.
Several blank, featureless fiberglass head shells were made up which consisted of a smooth egg shaped head with eyes, mouth, and lip synch mechanism installed. These blank heads were used to make minor "extra" characters who would only be used once or twice. When an extra character was required, a blank head would have temporary plasticine facial features built upon it. These plasticine features, when painted, looked just like any regular member of the puppet cast. Because these features were made of soft plasticine clay, the extra heads could be scraped clean after filming and resculpted for use as a different character later on. Unfortunately, this clever feature made the extra heads rather delicate and great care had to be exercised when filming them. Common problems experienced with these extra heads included clay features which melted under the heat of the bright stage lights and noses or ears which got sliced off by control wires.
By now carpet thread had been replaced by fine black colored steel wires which not only controlled body movement but also carried the electrical lip synch control signals. Strings were always the most critical part of these puppet productions as their appearance automatically destroyed all illusion of reality. Although the blackened steel control wires proved nearly invisible under most filming conditions, under certain circumstances individual wires were actually painted to better blend them into whatever background the puppets were being filmed against. This was done by coating the wires with a clear flat lacquer spray paint and then puffing powdered paint colors on to the wire before the sticky lacquer dried.
Small television cameras were mounted on the film cameras used on the sets. The video output from these television cameras was routed to small television monitors that were placed on the puppeteer's bridges for the puppeteer's to watch while they manipulated their puppets. Among other things, these cameras permitted the puppeteers to get a camera-eye view of the action below and revealed any control wires that needed to be painted out as described above.
Although a few simple fireworks effects had been accomplished in The Adventures of Twizzle and in Torchy the Battery Boy, Four Feather Falls required a much greater sophistication of pyrotechnics. One particular innovation developed for Four Feather Falls that would see greater application in the many Supermarionation television programs to follow were miniature gas guns that would fire by means of a command activated electrical spark.
Four Feather Falls also introduced an extremely high standard of realism in the design and construction of miniature sets and props. No longer mere cut outs, the sets used in Four Feather Falls were truly miniature film stages with realistic buildings, terrain, and foliage. Lumps of coal were used to make rocks, broken glass would be used to make chunks of ice, and real plant cuttings (particularly Juniper) were often used to make miniature trees. Realistic model props were constructed, as in the case of guns, trains, and wagons, or bought from toy stores, as in the case of dollhouse utensils and various furnishings.
A scale of about 1/3rd life size was adopted for the puppets and their puppet sized environment. The scale adopted for Four Feather Falls was retained throughout the Supermarionation years. Although the puppets and their props were built to a common scale, the puppets themselves were caricatured with large heads and undersized bodies. Although this scheme appealed to the cartoonish tastes of children, the real reason for the strange proportions of these puppets was that the larger size of the head was dictated by the size of the lip-synch solenoid that had to fit in the head to actuate the movable lower lip.
A very successful visual trick that was introduced in Four Feather Falls and later carried through all the other Supermarionation programs was the practice of filming actual human hands in close up to represent the puppet character turning a knob or otherwise manipulating objects. Such scenes were called "live inserts". Usually, the hands filmed in a live insert were covered with a tight fitting rubber glove and painted to more closely match the rigid carved appearance of the puppets! Although these live inserts were very effective, the practice caused APF some trouble with the actor's union as the people who's hands were captured on film were ordinary workers available on the set instead of properly accredited actors and actresses.
Four Feather Falls was sold to Granada Television in 1960 and proved to be a great success. As the APF team considered their next move one thing was certain, for better or worse they were now firmly locked into producing children's puppet television programs. Unfortunately, Granada decided that one puppet series was enough for them and they turned down all offers from APF to produce additional programs. Just as APF was about to go out of business again for lack of work, Lord Lew Grade of ITC came to their rescue.
Lord Grade had been most impressed by Four Feather Falls and he wanted to know what APF had in mind for their next series. Gerry Anderson told Grade about a concept he had developed concerning a team of researchers who worked with a prototype flying car called Supercar. Sylvia Thamm was in the process of developing this concept into an illustrated children's book. Lew Grade told Gerry Anderson that he thought the Supercar concept would make an excellent puppet television series. He then promised to arrange full financial backing from ITC under the condition that Supercar be produced with an eye towards the US market. Thus, the new puppet series was set in the American southwest and APF went to work on Supercar.
The new type of marionette puppet with lip synch mechanism in combination with realistic miniature sets and props had proved very successful in Four Feather Falls. Unfortunately, for all the advances that had been made towards making the marionettes more realistic, one serious problem still remained. The puppeteers were unable to make the Four Feather Falls puppets "walk" in a convincing manner. Gerry Anderson attempted to minimize this problem by putting the Four Feather Falls puppet characters on horseback but animating the puppet horses proved as big a technical challenge as animated the puppet humans. The Supercar concept solved this problem very nicely. Gerry decided that the puppet characters would spend most of their time riding on the Supercar vehicle. By scripting most of the action around the vehicle, the puppets would not have to walk around so much and a greater illusion of realism could be maintained. Thus came forth another important element of Supermarionation, the concept of the super vehicle as the true star of the show.
Supercar is widely considered to have been the very first Supermarionation production because it was the first Anderson puppet series to incorporate all the recognized elements of Supermarionation. This is true even though the word Supermarionation was not coined until the next series, Fireball XL5, was produced. What exactly are the elements of Supermarionation? Well, they are:
The first truly realistic miniature vehicles ever made for TV or film were used in Supercar. If you don't believe me, check anything else done before Supercar and compare. Standard miniature model vehicles used in contemporary television programs and films, such as those used in Captain Video and The Conquest of Space, all looked like fakes. In Supercar, various photographic and design tricks were adopted to make things look much larger than they actually were. Tricks like breaking up the otherwise smooth surface of a model with lines, panels, and hatches to eliminate fake looking straight shadows and light reflections. The Supermarionation models were also dirtied up and dented to make them look used. Such attention to detail made these models look real.
The Supercar itself, as the real star of the program, was made in several different sizes as filming requirements dictated. The largest model, which was puppet sized, was made of thin plywood with a molded perspex plastic canopy. Although the large puppet sized Supercar was designed and built by art director Reg Hill, it was damaged at some point during filming and it was repaired under contract by a company called Master Models. This was the Anderson's first contact with this company, which later changed its name to Space Models.
Space models remained associated with the Andersons through the end of the Supermarionation years and they produced many fine models under contract when schedules were tight. Generally, Space Models produced the more complex shapes for the Andersons or basic shapes that the film studio people would later paint and detail. Often, Space Models was called upon to perform "while you wait" repairs to important models which had been damaged during filming. As these repairs were hurriedly conducted, everyone at the studio stood by ready to commence filming once the model returned. This practice resulted in the decision to use cellulose based automobile paints on most studio models. Such paint could be sanded down easily if damaged and it dried to the touch almost immediately.
Supercar introduced many new techniques which were carried forward into following Supermarionation programs. Chief of which were the novel pyrotechnic devices used to create the Supercar's rocket engine effects. Derek Meddings had worked with fireworks and various home-made explosive mixtures in the previous puppet programs. Early on, the Supercar's rocket motors were made from bits of paper that were soaked in a mixture of weed killer and sugar. When the treated paper dried out, it was stuffed into one of Gerry Anderson's discarded metal cigar tubes to make a simulated rocket engine. These home made rocket engines were not entirely successful as they tended to produce a weak flame, spit out bits of flaming paper, and were unreliable. Later on, a pyrotechnic company named Schermuly Pistol Rocket Apparatus Limited was contacted and asked to produce a reliable zero thrust rocket motor that could be command activated by an electrical impulse. The cylindrical compressed gunpowder devices which Schermuly developed for APF would release a vicious tongue of flame and smoke for a somewhat predictable interval of time. Schermuly produced these special rocket motors for the Andersons through the end of the Supermarionation era.
Certain episodes of Supercar required underwater filming. As this proved expensive and technically difficult to do, Derek Meddings came up with an inexpensive and very practical alternative. Meddings had a thin profiled glass tank built which was filled with water and small tropical fish. By placing this thin tank between the camera and the model being filmed, the illusion of the model and set being underwater was achieved. This technique was called "dry filming". Dry filming would of course be carried into the future beyond Supercar and achieve great success with Stingray a few years later.
One common visual effect used in Supercar which was not used much in following Supermarionation programs, for reasons that will be revealed later, was rear screen projection. Rear screen projection of moving cloudscapes and landscapes were used whenever the Supercar miniatures were filmed in flight. Such moving backdrops presented the illusion of motion even though the model remained still. The sweeping landscapes and cloud vistas featured in Supercar were actually filmed by Gerry Anderson during a trip around the UK in a light aircraft.
When Supercar was released in January 1961, it proved to be a much bigger success than Four Feather Falls. More so, it was a truly international success in that it was broadcast all over the world. In was the first Anderson production broadcast in the USA. About this time, Gerry Anderson married Sylvia Thamm. With Supercar such a great success, Lew Grade stepped in with financial backing for another puppet series and Fireball XL5 came about.
Where did the name Fireball XL5 come from? Well, the story is that Gerry Anderson was inspired by the name of a popular brand of motor oil, Castrol XL!
Fireball XL5 built upon the technical experience in dealing with miniatures gained with Supercar. The new puppet cast's features were a bit less exaggerated but other than that, they were constructed essentially the same as they were in Four Feather Falls and Supercar. Indeed, several old Supercar puppets were later recycled in Fireball XL5 as minor "guest" characters. Flexible rubber puppet hands were used for the first time in Fireball XL5. These hands incorporated a stiff wire core in each finger. Such hands could be bent and made to grip small objects like ray pistols.
One innovative Fireball XL5 puppet character deserves special mention. This was "Robert the Robot". What made this character different was that it was constructed out of clear plastic tubes, a clear plastic drinking glass (for its head), and clear plastic sheet. All of these parts were linked together with rubber coated electrical wire and the transparent body was filled with various radio innards. The puppet robot was configured with eyes that would light up in time with the voice track as it was not fitted with a lip synch mouth mechanism. Robert was a visually interesting character but a problem to operate as it weighed only a fraction of what the normal puppets weighed. The voice of this character was Gerry Anderson himself, speaking through a home-made electronic vibrator patterned after the devices used by people who have had their voice-boxes removed because of throat cancer surgery.
As Fireball XL5 was more heavily miniature and effects oriented than Supercar, Derek Meddings was offered a generous salary to quit his job at Anglo-Scottish Pictures and work full time with APF. One of Derek's first jobs as APF's full time effects supervisor was to scour England for talented model makers to build all of Fireball XL5's miniature space vehicles. Many of the model makers that Meddings hired came from the British aircraft industry and they brought with them knowledge of many advanced aircraft and spacecraft prototypes which they incorporated into the miniatures developed for APF. The Fireball XL5 launch ramp, for example, came from someone's knowledge that the Soviet Union originally planned to launch their first rockets into space in this manner. The basic design of the Fireball XL5 rocket, with separate orbital and descent modules, was based upon Reg Hill's knowledge that the United States had decided to go to the moon in a two part spacecraft.
The large number of miniature spaceships required during the production of Fireball XL5 brought about yet another practice that would be used time and time again in the future in other Supermarionation series. As a cost saving measure, Derek Meddings began to construct his miniature spaceships using toys, model kits, and other store bought shapes. Even essentially scratch build models were detailed using model kit parts. Many of these store bought items came from the Woolworth store in Slough. This was a purely time and money saving strategy which proved very successful from a design standpoint. Such miniature vehicles were heavily detailed with striping tape panel lines and dirtied with paint to break up their shapes and present a true scale appearance. This was the beginning of the practice of making super realistic studio miniatures, a practice that was eventually raised to a zenith for 2001: A Space Odyssey and Star Wars.
It is quite ironic to note that as nice as these models may have appeared on the television screen, they often looked much cruder and less finished in real life or in still photos. This was because the APF model makers were true professionals. They knew that truly fine details, such as those that would be incorporated into a display model, would never be seen at typical television set resolution. Thus, the model makers only incorporated the level of detail that would be noticed on the television screen. Sometimes this labor saving practice was carried to an extreme. Some models were only finished on one side, the side that would be filmed! Another factor that governed the often strange "live" appearance of the studio models was the fact that frequently what should have been a subtle detail in a display model had to be overly exaggerated to be resolved by the television camera in a studio model. Because of this, panel lines, wear effects, stripes, and other such details were often dramatically overdone on these models.
The miniature spacecraft in Fireball XL5 were either filmed stationary in front of a moving star background of sequined velvet or they were pulled along a line. For the latter situation, a small tube was attached to the model and the line passed through this tube. One of the more difficult effects in Fireball XL5 was the launching of the spaceship on its long track. This was filmed live with at least two operators, one controlling the spaceship and the other controlling the rocket powered trolley. Both operators had to carefully synchronize their motions for this shot. Fireball XL5 introduced the technique of high speed filming for effects shots. Filming at much higher than normal speeds smoothes out the appearance of the action when the film is run at a normal speed. After a great deal of experimentation, a speed of 120 frames per second was established for most miniature effects shots.
Many new techniques were developed during the filming of Fireball XL5 to enhance the realism of miniature vehicles. Model roadways were covered with a fine granular substance called Fuller's Earth. Model vehicles filmed moving along these roadways were fitted with a downward pointing Jetex Motor which would disturb the Fuller's Earth, simulating a cloud of road dust or exhaust. Another common trick was the use of a chemical called Titanium Tetra Chloride which smoked spontaneously in contact with air. This was often used on model missiles to give the appearance of volatile fuels boiling off prior to launching.
The Fireball XL5 was designed as a two part ship. Separation and docking were always a problem. The Fireball Jr. was secured to the main ship with a magnet. Upon separation, the lighter weight Fireball Jr. would wobble. Even high speed filming did not smooth this sequence out so what the APF people elected to do was utilize the docking footage for both separation and docking. The reason for this was that there was less wobble when the magnet pulled the Fireball Jr. into place on the main ship than there was when the two parts were wrenched apart. For separation scenes, the docking footage was of course reversed!
As has been mentioned before, the word Supermarionation was coined by APF during the production of Fireball XL5. Gerry Anderson had decided that APF had sufficiently advanced the puppetry state of the art to the point where some kind of trade name was needed to differentiate their work from the more mundane children's puppet productions. Thus "Filmed In Supermarionation" was coined as a sort of trademark and affixed to the titles of Fireball XL5 and all the other marionette programs which followed. The word Supermarionation of course stands for "Super", "Marionette", and "Animation". These three words summed up the process that APF had developed. After viewing Fireball XL5, any kid would immediately know that spotting the words Filmed In Supermarionation in the titles of any new TV program meant that he or she was not going to be sitting through something stupid like Kukla, Fran, and Ollie!
Fireball XL5 was a huge success when broadcast in October 1962, in large part, this was because it was purchased by the large American NBC television network. This particular network sale facilitated ITC funding for the next Supermarionation series, Stingray.
Stingray built upon the techniques developed up through Fireball XL5 and introduced several new ones too. However, the chief difference between Stingray and everything that had come before was the fact that Stingray was filmed in color. This fact created a totally new crop of technical problems for the APF people to deal with as they had to learn from the bottom up how to deal with color when filming miniatures. Frequently, colors appear quite different on film or on television than they do in real life. Additionally, the bright lights required for filming miniatures under proper focal conditions tended to contribute to color distortion as well. Quite a bit of testing was required before good results were achieved. Initially, all the colors used on the first Stingray sets proved incorrect for color television and everything had to be repainted. Eventually, APF came up with a standardized color chart which was utilized to ensure that only approved colors would be used behind the cameras.
Stingray was of course a much more elaborate production than Fireball XL5. Thus, APF soon found themselves hunting again for more space. Just before Stingray went into production, Lew Grade offered the Andersons about $5,000,000 to buy APF outright. The deal struck between ITC and the Andersons kept them in charge of the company and provided sufficient funds for larger production quarters. A larger premises was leased in another part of the Slough Industrial Estate not too far from the present APF facility.
Although the basic puppet design used in Stingray was for the most part identical to those used in Four Feather Falls, Supercar, and Fireball XL5, there were some subtle enhancements. For one thing, the puppet character's faces were modeled a bit more realistically. Indeed, the puppet sculptors began to base some of their puppet characters on real live actors. For example, Troy Tempest bears a fairly close resemblance to actor James Garner and X2O looks like Peter Lorre!
Two very important puppet innovations were introduced in Stingray. The first was the use of glass eyes instead of the painted wooden eyeballs used in the earlier puppets. These eyes were actually false human eyes and of course they looked very realistic. The other innovation was the introduction of interchangeable character heads modeled with different expressions. Each main character head was provided with a "normal" head, a "smiling" head, a "frowning" head, and a "blinking" head (with eyelids that could be closed and opened). By using these interchangeable heads, puppet characters could display simulated emotions instead of the same fixed expression.
The Stingray submarine was the first major or "star" craft to be designed by Derek Meddings. Derek Meddings' only direction, from Gerry Anderson, was that the Stingray should be atomic powered, carry a crew of three, and fire torpedoes.
Derek Meddings and his crew had to learn to cope with the problems of filming on and under water as Stingray involved the adventures of a submarine crew. Originally, Gerry Anderson actually planned to film much of the program under water in a custom built glass walled tank. This however, proved to be unfeasible so an alternative had to be found.
It turned out that filming the underwater scenes was fairly easy. Derek Meddings chose to handle them using larger versions of the special thin cross section glass dry filming tank developed for Supercar. For Stingray, small air hoses were added to the bottoms of these tanks to provide the occasional tiny air bubble. Additionally, overhead lights mounted behind revolving filters provided the illusion of sunlight streaming through the depths.
Surface filming took some research until a proper method was perfected. The basic problem was that tanks of water tended to look like tanks of water. Derek Meddings's solution was to build a special shallow water tank which had a long "water fall" at the back. Blue dyed water was circulated in this special tank to create a gentle wave motion and the water streamed out the water fall along the entire back side of the tank to create a convincing horizon line. A different painted background was placed at the back of the tank as filming requirements dictated. Derek Meddings painted a series of different backdrops which depicted a sunny sky, a night sky, a cloudy sky, etc.
Filming the miniature ships and submarines in the special tank and getting waterborne explosions to look correct required filming at very high speeds. Detergent was added to the water to simulate foam and often tiny air lines were fitted to the bows of model ships to create a proper bow wave. Ship models were usually attached to small trolleys running on subsurface tracks and towed across the tank using thin cables.
One particularly clever visual effect done for Stingray was the famous scene that shows the Stingray submarine emerging from the Marineville ocean door in a cloud of bubbles. This effect was accomplished using the standard dry filming method of having a thin fish tank between the camera and the "underwater" set. For this scene, however, it was necessary to have the Stingray submarine emerge from the ocean door in a cloud of bubbles. This was done by running an air line up the side of the fish tank and painting the glass over the air line so that it matched the appearance of the plaster rock face surrounding the ocean door. The aperture of the air line was positioned in the camera's field of view right next to the ocean door so that the burst of bubbles appeared to be coming out of the ocean door well behind the air line.
Another very popular effect sequence in Stingray was the scene of the Stingray submarine being chased up out of the water by a mechanical fish. This scene, which was shot for the second episode, "Plant of Doom", proved so attractive that it was edited into the series titles. Although it looks like it was a very complicated shot, and it probably was, it was done in only one take. Basically, one of the smaller Stingray submarine models and a mechanical fish were attached to wire harnesses and positioned under the water in the positions that they would emerge. When the director called "action", the puppeteer handling the Stingray submarine jerked it out of the water followed by the puppeteer handling the mechanical fish. Derek Meddings reportedly could not believe that the shot went as well as it did and he filmed the sequence several times just to make sure. At the end of the day, much to everyone's surprise, the first shoot proved to be the best take.
Scenes of puppets floating in the water were of course done with the puppets actually in the water, though supported by wires as they were far to heavy to have actually floated. Underwater scenes of the puppets swimming were filmed dry behind a fish tank just like the submarine scenes were filmed. Filming the Marina puppet under water was a chore, as she had long hair which had to stream behind her in a convincing manner. This effect was done by filming the "swimming" puppet with an electric fan or two blowing the hair backwards and upwards.
Stingray was first screened in October of 1964 and it of course lead to Thunderbirds. This program was arguably the best and most successful Supermarionation program of them all. Originally to be called "International Rescue", Gerry Anderson changed the name to Thunderbirds because his older brother Lionel, who had been killed during the second world war flying Mosquito fighter bombers, once mentioned an aerobatic team that flew out of a place called Thunderbird field in the USA.
Thunderbirds of course spawned several technical innovations. Mainly however, Thunderbirds elevated everything that had been developed before to a new level of perfection. In large part, this was because Lew Grade had arranged for much greater funding and a one hour format vs. the half hour format of the previous programs.
The first eight or so Thunderbirds episodes were actually scripted and filmed as half hour episodes. When Lew Grade saw the first Thunderbirds episode, "Trapped in the Sky", he insisted that the program be made into a full hour series. This change forced the APF people to rebuild many destroyed models and add additional scenes to the existing episodes to pad them out to a full hour length.
At some point during the production of Thunderbirds Gerry Anderson changed the name from APF to Century 21 Pictures Limited. This may have been related to the Anderson's move from puppet television programs into motion picture work with their first feature film, Thunderbirds Are Go, in 1966.
The Thunderbirds character puppets were much less caricatured than those used in the previous series although they still maintained the same distorted large head with small body proportions. Few new puppetry innovations were introduced for Thunderbirds, however, one was developed that would greatly influence the way that later Supermarionation programs were shot. This innovation was the "under control" puppet, basically a type of glove puppet that was controlled from beneath the set. These under control puppets dispensed with wires, making it possible to shoot extreme head and shoulders close ups without fear of unsightly wires intruding on the shot. One of the first applications of the under control puppet was the Hood character. The Hood's bald head made it very difficult to hide the control wires for the eyes and lip synch mechanism that emerged from the top of the head. In most other puppets, the anchor points of these wires were hidden by hair. Not so on the bald Hood!
Another less noticed puppetry innovation introduced in Thunderbirds was that each character was provided with a set of miniature teeth. Allegedly, the puppet teeth were made by a dental firm which specialized in making human false teeth.
The format of Thunderbirds required a great deal of fantastic miniature vehicles and sets. The format of the series dictated that all of these miniature vehicles and sets had to be much more grand and realistic than ever before. A great deal of attention was spent on creating various scaled vehicles and sections of vehicles which could be used for filming different camera angles. Miniature road vehicles were fitted with sponge rubber suspension systems so the wheels would track properly when negotiating miniature roadways. Miniature rockets and missiles were often filmed upside down so that the exhaust would appear to go straight "down" towards the tail fins in a visually correct manner and not curl "up" towards the nose as so often happened when filmed in the normal direction as done in Stingray and Fireball XL5.
Thunderbirds was primarily about disasters. Thus, Derek Meddings was frequently called upon to create monumental explosions. Many of these explosions used a gelled gasoline similar to napalm which caused great fireballs. Meddings also got into the habit of packing his explosive charges with all kinds of small kit bits and Fuller's Earth to create incendiary projectiles and showers of dust when the explosives went off! A Meddings trademark perfected in Thunderbirds was the choreographed explosion. Derek Meddings would generally film a sequence of explosions instead of just one explosion. Each one would be more dramatic than the next, building up to a huge detonation at the very end.
Of all the filming innovations that came directly from Thunderbirds, probably the most useful was the so called "rolling road" and "rolling sky". These two devices were developed to meet a requirement in the very first episode of Thunderbirds, "Trapped in the Sky", which called for a scene showing an airliner and several model ground vehicles running down the entire length of a runway. Derek Meddings figured that there was no way this type of shot could be accomplished with a stationary model runway and the models pulled along on wires or by means of a slot in the roadway as was customary. Thus, he came up with a roadway and a sky backdrop that were fashioned as endless belts mounted on a pair of rollers.
Basically, a stationary vehicle could be secured on the rolling road by wires and when the rollers were started up, it would present the illusion of motion as the roadway rolled past the vehicle. The rolling sky provided the same illusion of motion to model aircraft that were filmed in front of it. Derek Meddings actually used three different moving elements on his rolling road to provide the proper illusion of motion and depth. He used a near rolling road for the foreground, a middle rolling road, and a background rolling road. The three rollers moved at slightly different speeds to provide an illusion of depth. One trick often used with aircraft filmed in front of the rolling sky was to blow an occasional puff of smoke between the model and the camera. This not only provided a convincing three dimensional cloud illusion, but if timed correctly, the smoke would hide the join line on the sky backdrop as it passed into view of the camera! The rolling sky basically took the place of front and rear screen projection in Thunderbirds and beyond.
Model road vehicles filmed in motion were either pulled along stationary roadways by wires, moved from below with a stick in a slot, or were held securely in one position by a pair of wires (front and back) on the rolling road. Occasionally, wires would break while a model vehicle was being filmed on the rolling road. Sometimes, the motion of the rolling road would throw the model vehicle violently to the floor. This happened in "Trapped In The Sky" when the radio controlled elevator car crashed during the first Fireflash rescue attempt. Basically, the wires broke while this scene was being filmed and the crew liked the effect so much that they had the script rewritten to include the accident footage!
By the time the Thunderbirds television series had come to a close in early 1967, the Andersons had an unqualified hit on their hands and had expanded into a feature length motion picture version of Thunderbirds called Thunderbirds Are Go. The work of the Andersons came to the attention of director Stanley Kubrick who was at that time working on 2001: A Space Odyssey. Kubrick contacted Century 21 Productions with an offer for them to do the miniature effects for his space epic. The Andersons turned Kubrick down as they were busy on their own projects. Kubrick, however, managed to steal some of the Anderson's model makers and other miniature effects people away to work with him. One of the most important of these was Brian Johnson. If you look very closely at still photographs of the miniature spaceships built for 2001: A Space Odyssey, you can see the Thunderbirds touch. For example, the Moonbus model used several Airfix SRN1 hovercraft duct parts on the side of its landing legs. These same parts are used extensively in Thunderbirds and once you have seen one of them, you see them everywhere.
Captain Scarlet followed Thunderbirds in 1967 and this program provided a definite point of departure between all that came before and what would come in the future. By the time Century 21 began to plan Captain Scarlet, much smaller electrical solenoids were now available. As mentioned before, the size of the puppet heads was primarily dictated by the size of the solenoids that had to be fitted into the heads to actuate the lip-synch mechanism. The new smaller solenoids could be fitted into the puppet's bodies, thus, permitting the use of perfectly proportioned heads for the very first time. It was decided then, that the new Captain Scarlet series would use puppets with true to scale human proportions.
The decision to use accurately proportioned puppets was revolutionary and the entire format of Captain Scarlet was organized to take advantage of the new puppets. For one thing, the new accurate puppets would require a corresponding overall upgrade in the realism of miniature sets and vehicles. A conscious effort would be made to make everything as realistic as possible. The plotlines and screenplays would have to be a bit more serious too. In the main, Captain Scarlet would be played straight, without any of the frequent "cute" hijinks incorporated into the earlier Supermarionation programs.
The realistically proportioned puppets had one major problem. The new proportions tended to restrict their range of movement. Unlike the situation in the past, where the puppets were occasionally seen to walk, no effort would be expended to make the new Captain Scarlet puppets walk. Indeed, in many cases, they would be shown only in head and shoulder shots using the new under control puppets developed for Thunderbirds. Although this decision enhanced the realism of the puppets, it did restrict the action a bit and many complain that the puppet scenes in Captain Scarlet tend to be a bit static and "boring".
Captain Scarlet made extensive use of the new under control puppets. These were actually stringless head and torso puppets that were controlled by an arrangement of levers and wires from beneath the sets. Such puppets could be placed in enclosed aircraft cockpits, such as the Angels in their interceptors, without the wire hole commonly seen in Stingray and Thunderbirds. Such stringless puppets could also be filmed in close-up without any wires showing.
One minor additional advantage of using the wireless under control puppets in Captain Scarlet was that for the first time, a puppet character could be made to appear as if it was walking under a doorway. In the past, shots either ended on one side of a doorway and cut to something else or the tops of doorways were removed as the puppet walked by to clear the wires. In Captain Scarlet, the usual technique was to move the under control puppet's shoulders to simulate walking and either pass it through a full doorway or move a wheeled set incorporating the doorway and a section of wall past the stationary puppet.
The bodies of the Captain Scarlet puppets were constructed from plastic "kits" that were molded by a contractor. The contractor provided parts for large male, large female, small male, and small female puppet bodies. A large "cast" of main character heads and minor character heads were produced. The old method of using temporary clay features to build "guest" characters was scrapped in favor of building a large "library" of minor character heads which could be adapted through new wigs and other minor features to "create" new characters. An interesting idea which was unfortunately never carried out, was to model a different guest star character in each episode on the features of a famous actor, who would also provide the puppet character's voice.
One element of the enhanced realism of the new Captain Scarlet type puppet was the fact that the eyes were produced by a revolutionary new process. As even the smallest artificial human eyes used in the Thunderbirds puppets were far out of scale for the smaller heads of the Captain Scarlet puppets, something new was required. The solution was to build the eyes using clear plastic hemispheres into which was glued a reduced color photograph of an actual human eye's pupil. When the surrounding clear plastic was painted white from behind, the effect was of a perfect glossy human eye.
Although Derek Meddings had essentially perfected miniature vehicle photography by this time, one new innovation was introduced in Captain Scarlet. This was a tiny mechanism which caused the nose of miniature motor vehicles to "dip" when stopped to simulate the application of brakes at high speed.
Captain Scarlet was followed in 1968 by Joe 90, a very similar series which essentially recycled many of the props, puppets, and sets that were built for Captain Scarlet. By this time, Century 21 was thinking in terms of dumping puppets and moving into live action, as Gerry Anderson had always wanted to do. Few if any technical innovations came out of Joe 90.
The final Supermarionation Series, The Secret Service, was introduced in 1969. Basically, the end of Supermarionation was rapidly approaching and The Secret Service provided a transition between the Anderson's puppet and live action eras. The Secret Service used the same type of realistically proportioned puppets that were used in Captain Scarlet and Joe 90. Indeed, once again many members of the puppet cast and props featured in The Secret Service had originally started out in Captain Scarlet and Joe 90!
What made The Secret Service different from all that had come before is that for the first time, the Andersons combined live action and puppets in one program. Although the Andersons had been shooting hands and other minor human body parts for some time, this was the first time that entire human beings (not exactly true as an episode of Fireball XL5 and Stingray each used live actors to portray gigantic characters in conjunction with the puppet characters but this was exceptional) were used as part of a puppet production. This is hard to describe as it really has to be seen to be believed. Basically, in The Secret Service, one character is a spy who can be shrunk down to 1/6th normal size to go on missions. Close-up scenes of the program's characters were all shot using the puppets. Far off scenes, and those scenes featuring the shrunken character, "Matthew", were all shot live on location. It was a very strange concept which did not prove acceptable to Lew Grade of ITC. He ordered production terminated after only 13 episodes had been shot.
This was basically the end of Supermarionation as Century 21 immediately moved into live action with the cinematic feature Doppelganger and the television program UFO in 1969 after The Secret Service was canceled. There was a half-hearted attempt to bring Supermarionation back during the early 1970s with a TV pilot for a series concept called The Investigator which got no further than an unscreened pilot episode and a pair of uncredited Dinky Toys. This strange production used Captain Scarlet human proportioned puppets in conjunction with The Secret Service styled live action scenes on location. The basic concept of The Investigator was very similar to that of The Secret Service in that the main characters could be shrunk down to 1/6th their normal size to go on special covert missions.
The only real innovations introduced in this pilot were the use of radio to control a puppet sized boat and automobile. Although radio control was used to operate a miniature Model T Ford in The Secret Service on full sized roads, this feature was not often used. The radio control apparatus proved equally difficult to operate on location in Malta during the filming of The Investigator pilot. Spurious radio signals from RAF Nimrod ASW aircraft and other sources constantly interfered with the operation of the large scale model vehicles and actually made them dangerous to the crew.
Other than a short commercial made for Jif Dessert Toppings during the mid 1970s, The Investigator was the end of Supermarionation. A subsequent puppet effort by Gerry Anderson and partner Christopher Burr in the early 1980s called Terrahawks discarded all ties to Supermarionation with a totally new "Muppets" like process that Anderson called Supermacromation. Terrahawks was a flop and it is safe to say that there will be no further Supermacromation efforts in the future. Gerry Anderson should have stuck with Supermarionation!
