Halfway Across the Galaxy and Turn Left

I was mistaken when I said that Ultraman was the last miniatures show I worked on, I had totally forgotten about Halfway Across the Galaxy and Turn Left which I worked on in late 1991. I went to the Gold Coast in Queensland Australia for six weeks to work on this show for the Model Smiths who were David Tremont and Jim Millet. They had a workshop at Warner Bros Studios and the visual effects were handled by a company that was called Photon Stockmen also on the studio lot.

I worked on Yorp's Station which in the story was half way across the galaxy just before you turn left. It was meant to look like it was peppered with meteor impacts and damage. The support struts and raw platform were already built, and I made the half cylinder nissen hut styled garage at the end and did all the detailing work as well as all the weathering and most of the painting.

 

The garage door was made to open by sliding up using a simple lever. One of the jokes in the show was that every time the Garage door opened all the atmosphere was violently sucked out causing chaos inside.

I sculpted the asteroid surface the station sat on out of paper mache as it was a non toxic material and there was ample time for it to dry out before it needed to be filmed. It was also summer so it just sat outside in the sun for a few days. In the episode a glass painting was used to extend the asteroid surface for a wider view.

The picture below shows a very young me way back in 1991 working on the model.

 I worked on a larger close up model of one of the city blocks. In the show the city buildings stuck out at an angle and were attached to cliffs which surrounded a lava pit. I built a couple of the buildings and detailed up the base the buildings are mounted on. Alan Pilkington, one of the other modelmakers is standing next to the model for scale.

Another small model I made was this stone hut.

In addition I worked on the internal detailing of this tunnel. I also built the doors that close at the end (not shown).

This is the outside of the tunnel set with Alan Pilkington at one end and Yorp's Station behind.

Most of the miniature work appeared in the first episode, which can be found on Youtube.

One of the highlights of the visit was that I got to see the large B17 miniature used in Memphis Belle which was set up at Movie World which was adjacent to the studios. This miniature had working gun turrets that emitted miniature muzzle flashes with a gas powered system. There was also a pile of smaller background B17 miniatures from the movie I got to inspect close up as well.