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...