Ultraman Towards the Future AKA Ultraman Great part 7

In this part of the story we have various miniature set pieces built to depict the Island home of UMA used across a number of episodes of Ultraman Towards the Future AKA Ultraman Great, Sydney Australia 1989.

 

This was the cliff miniature used to show the Hummer flying vehicles exiting their launch tunnel. Made by Tony Lees.

 

The clouds were lumps of dacron fibrefill perched on some fishing line strung up.

 

A small scale model was built for the wide shots of the island. The sea is some crinkled up clear plastic. In the end I think this was replaced by a digital video composite using a still photo of the real sea in the episodes which frankly in my opinion looked a lot worse.

The photo below shows the first attempt at the sky scenic art which was done by a very junior artist at the time and the cloud perspective is all funky. The photo above shows the second improved version.

 

 The creature Barrangas appears on UMA island in a plume of red smoke.

 

The creature puppet Barrangas, like all the others on the show was fabricated by a team consisting of Steve Roswell, Vicki Kite, Graham Binding, Norman Yeend and Warren Beaton.

 

 

These mountains were shuffled around and re-configured for various shots and re-used in a couple of episodes.

 

Warren Beaton out in the carpark painting the rocks and adding some "growies" for the large close up mountain set pieces. The rock formations were based on the Blue Mountains an area west of Sydney.

 

Tony Lees adding finishing touches to one of his rock creations.

 

Here is the setup for a different episode that features a flying UFO/Crab creature called UF-O. The boom arm used for controlling flying models was a modified television mircophone boom. Martin Williams (left) on the boom with Steve Newman DOP (right) and Jaime Crooks the AD.

 

UF-O had a number of forms, this being the more crab like incarnation.

 

He was also represented in a more flying saucer configuration with this small model.

Flying on wires from the end of the boom.

 

 

 

No sets were immune from the ravages of Pyro.

 

 

 

Some spectacular bangs with some nice tendrils branching off.
Pyro by Alan Maxwell and Judy Dabbs.

 

 

Thanks for looking.

More to come...

 

Ultraman Towards the Future Part 6

For one episode of Ultraman we needed some defensive hidden gun emplacements on UMA island. 

The picture below shows setting up for a shot with one of the gun emplacements. There was a single and a double gun set up that was hidden behind secret panels that opened up in the rock cliffs.

 

All the rock miniature set components for the show were carved by Tony Lees out of big chunks of polystyrene foam.  At the end of a work day he always ended up looking like the abominable snowman.

Fine foliage was shredded foam like that used used in cushions and pillows. It was shredded in old kitchen blenders, then soaked in green water based paint and dried.

  

Here I am working on the off camera side of the double gun section. The guns were made from components originally molded and cast for the aborted Total recall movie in 1987. These urethane resin castings were rocket launchers to go on the radio controlled vehicles they were building for a chase scene on mars. Unfortunately the film was cancelled before the vehicles were completed. 

I think the bases they sat on were also from this source but with extra detailing added.

 

Both guns could elevate and rotate in sync using a rod and tube, all moved by hand using the central wooden handle. The rock wall would hinge back and then slide up by pulling on the cord which goes over a pulley at the top thus revealing the hidden guns .

 

The guns were rigged to fire a tracer squib from each of the eight barrels. Each barrel had a brass tube cast inside it. All the pyro was done by Alan Maxwell and Judy Dabbs.

 

A third location for a gun was a ground based one that rose up through a round trap door that popped up and spread apart into two halves. The gun was mounted on a teeter totter parallelogram rig to raise it up and down by hand. Tony Lees (top right) is adding more foliage to the rock ledges.

 

 

The larger close up trees and bushes used predominantly plastic foliage. We purchased a stack of it choosing the types that had the smallest leaf shape available.

 

 

We also used a wispy natural dried foliage that was dyed green. The dye easily came off on your hands whenever you handled it.

 

 

Tony Lees is adding more foliage to the set. In this case he is more a green fingers than a green thumb. You can see the trap doors for the ground gun not quite in the closed position.

 

Photos are all by the model unit photographer Corrie Ancone.