Ultraman Towards the Future AKA Ultraman Great part 13

Quite a lot of the miniatures in Ultraman Towards the Future experienced some form of pyrotechnics or other as evidenced by previous posts. This is a selection of other things that went bang.

 

Here I am, hammer in hand, making a modification to a breakaway structure on top of one of the buildings originally made for the aborted 1987 Total Recall movie which the Ultraman production acquired.  Steve Newman the DOP is on the right and Paul Nicola visual effects supervisor looking through the second camera bottom left.

I added the small structure at the very top which was meant to be some sort of service equipment. It had a series of corrugated aluminium panels made from fin stock surrounding a small tank structure and random nurnies all lightly glued together to come apart easily on impact.

 

 

The action was as you see here a glancing blow from a UMA Hummer which was thrown off course due to the extreme halitosis effect of the monster.

On the off camera side of the building was an electronic motion sensor that triggered the pyro as the Hummer sailed past. The Pyro effect was by Alan Maxwell. I believe it was napthalene flakes added to the black powder that provided the red rolling fireball and oily black smoke.

 

In the pictures below you can see the motion sensor and its wiring taped to the right side of the building model. The cameras were placed on the left side of this photo.

 

This sequence featured another Total Recall building that was modified with a ground floor shop. Hanging above the shop-front awning was a large scale monster foot filled with lead weights. The ground floor shop and its contents were built by David Tremont. Scale is 1/24th.

 

The foot was dropped and the pyro ensues. In the rushes the next day, the footage from the Photosonics Actionmaster camera at 500 Frames per second was pretty spectacular. The miniature shop was filled with various tiny model furniture items and a table and chairs could be seen flying out the window towards camera through the fireball. You rarely get to see all that action in the episodes as the pyro shots in the show usually cut away quite quickly. In the shot as it appears in the episode, you do see the table starting to come out of the fireball but it cuts before you see a chair.

 

TThe picture below shows the aftermath. Paul Nicola the visual effects supervisor with yellow face shield is standing behind the Arri SRII along with Joanne Parker the camera assistant. The Photosonics Actionmaster camera is on the right. Alan Maxwell responsible for the pyro effects is behind the scaffold at the back.

Here, I am in the middle of assembling a 1/25 Italeri tanker truck plastic model kit that was later filled with a sequenced pyro effect for a shot of it exploding. It was a one take affair as there was no time for making another one. As it happened the Photosonics Actionmaster camera, which was the hero camera angle, jammed right on the cue to fire the pyro and we only got the shot from the alternative camera angle covered by the ultra reliable Arri SRII at 250 frames per second. A small joke in this photo is the little jimmy figure with his head in the vice. 

 Thanks for looking,

More soon.

Ultraman Towards the Future AKA Ultraman Great part 11

 Martian Landscape

The martian landscape was another set built by Tony Lees.

 

The Martian Lander spacecraft started as another one of my own personal spaceship projects which was donated to the production and completed by David Tremont with the addition of the communications pod and the final paint finish.

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This was my original Lander project in primer before it was modified for the Ultraman production. The engine nozzles were from a Revell 1/72 space shuttle kit. I was inspired by a mushroom shaped ship I saw in a small photo in an issue of Cinefantastique magazine.

 

 

David Tremont on the set with the completed lander- seemingly asleep.

The Goudis puppet in its original form made by the puppet crew Steve Roswell, Vicki Kite, Graham Binding, Norman Yeend and Warren Beaton. It was one of the puppet creatures that eventually got re-made as a man in a suit for a fight sequence with a man in a suit Ultraman.

The cable controlled Ultraman puppet built by Warren Beaton squares off against the puppet Goudis. It was a very hot summer during the shoot and to get the depth of field for the high frame rate shots they needed a lot of light. The sun light was provided by a large Dino light, nine globes in a panel that gave of a massive amount of heat raising the temperature of the sand on the set above 55 degrees celsius (131 farenheit). There were two portable air conditioners running that failed to make any dent in the temperature in the studio. Walking into the studio from the workshop was a real shock to the system.

Goudis and Ultraman with foreground left to right, Jaimie Crooks the First AD, Joanne Parker camera assistant, Paul Nichola Visual Effects supervisor, Steve Roswell and behind him Paul Moyes miniatures unit gaffer. The people in the background I am not sure about.

 

Paul Nichola the Miniature Effects supervisor looking down the eyepiece as Adam Newcombe manipulates the Ultraman puppet.

 

This was the workshop area with the puppet crew occupying the right side corner. Visible in the picture left to right are, actually I'm not sure who that is on the far left, then Vicki Kite, Steve Roswell and Norman Yeend.

 

This was the model makers side of the room. From left to right are David Tremont, Adam Grace and me.

Ultraman Towards the Future AKA Ultraman Great part 4

This is another miniature set that Adam Grace and I put together for an episode of Ultraman Towards the Future in 1989. It was a resort hotel situated by the beach which comes under attack by a creature called Gerukadon. The monster puppet was styled on a frill necked lizard. It was cable controlled and supported on a steel pole which was masked by the creature's tail. It was outfitted with a flame thrower device so it could breath fire which gets quite a work out in the sequence.

 

The two main towers of the building came from the aborted Total Recall movie that was being made in Australia in 1987. That movie was shut down due to the 1987 stock market crash. The surrounding buildings were originally built for a television commercial by David Tremont Adam Grace and me. These buildings along with the aborted Total Recall buildings were purchased by the Ultraman production which helped stretch the miniatures budget considerably.

The picture below shows me painting the edge of the rostrums black to disguise the gap between the buildings and the foreground beach. The beach itself was just fine white sand with a sheet of thin reflective mylar as the water. The mylar was gently rippled by some fans to impart some movement.

Below Adam Grace is airbrushing some silhouettes on the backlit windows to help break up the solid white and make it look like there is an interior. The cars on the set were a pile of 1/32 diecast toys we painted up and weathered. They were used  over and over in various city settings for long shots and in the background. We also made up a number of 1/24 scale plastic model car kits for closer shots. The 24 volt figure 8 lighting can be seen re-used here as street lights mounted on poles as well as the 12 volt Phillips halogen bayonet mount spotlights.

The Palm trees were model rail kits with acid etched brass palm fronds.

This scene also had a very nice scenic art sunset sky backing. Unfortunately I don't know the scenic artist's name.

The tops of the towers were built with sections of breakaway glass. This was a brittle plastic material that came as pellets and was melted in an oven to make flat sheets. We then superglued pre-painted plastic strips on top for all the window mullions. Behind the breakaway facade was a structure already warped, damaged and painted to look burnt which would be revealed through the explosions.

The spectacular pyrotechnic effects were handled by Alan Maxwell and his assistant Judy Dabbs.

 

The amount of black smoke produced from the pyro was pretty severe from a health point of view. The studio roller doors would be opened up and a couple of large air movers employed to try and get rid of all the nasty fine carbon particles hanging in the air.

The picture below shows the back of the tower miniatures with the pre-destroyed structure in place. You can also see the pyro "bombs" rigged in position and all the wiring for the various charges.

The puppets for the show were made by the puppet crew consisting of Steve Roswell, Vicki Kite, Graham Binding, Norman Yeend and Warren Beaton.

Here the puppet is positioned on one of the buildings for a different scene. The sky background here has been painted with dark foreboding clouds.

 

Another building is attacked.

For a few shots a "little Jimmy" figure was mounted to be riding on the creatures back. It was made from a modified bendy toy.

The Gerukadon creature was designed with four limbs in a four arms type of confuguration. The director asked for some back legs to be added so it became a 6 limbed creature.

Thanks for looking.

 

Ultraman Towards the Future AKA Ultraman Great part 3

 Gigasaurus and the grassy plain environment.

 

Adam Grace and myself also built this grassy plain environment for the Gigasaurus episode.

We didn't have much time to build these sets so we needed solutions that were expedient. To get an instant grassy landscape we came up with the idea of using coconut matting used in the garden industry to make hanging basket liners. We managed to obtain a full roll of the stuff and just rolled it out over an array of raised rostra (wooden platforms) we constantly used throughout the show. Because our monsters were puppets we needed space underneath the sets to operate the feet of the creatures.

Shredded foam lumps were painted green and scattered with model railroad ground foam across the landscape for random plants and texture variation.

The coconut matting was brown in colour so it was painted in various shades of green using simple pump action garden sprayers and thinned water based paint. The distant hills were just scrunched up newspaper arranged in a pleasing formation under the matting and sprayed with bluer shades of green to make them appear further away on what was really quite a small set.  The picture below shows me wielding one of these sprayers. 

The road was just a simple piece of painted plywood screwed down over the matting into the baseboards of the platforms. The other notable aspect to this set is the sky backing, it's a really exemplary piece of work. We had two scenic artists on the show, the first was very junior and not quite up to the mark, the second was a more senior artist and was extremely talented. Good scenic art can make all the difference to a miniature.

The puppets were generally cable controlled using levers. The feet were operated with rods up through slots cut into the sets. As the puppet action was shot high speed all the puppeteers had to move pretty fast and be highly co-ordinated. It was sometimes quite comical to watch.

Two of the puppeteers Ross Browning and Ravi Prasad at the control levers with Steve Roswell one of the puppet makers.

The slots in the set had to be invisible to the camera for down shots. In the picture below Adam Grace is  hiding the edges of the slots cut in the matting.

The Gigasaurus puppet was also outfitted with a freezing breath gag which used liquid CO2 vented from its mouth.

 

Gigasaurus destroying an electrical sub-station with its freezing breath.

The puppet was supported by a steel pole which was mostly hidden by its tail. All the control cabling and the hose for the liquid CO2 freezing breath effect came down this pole.

The picture below shows Adam Grace (right) and myself attending to the rigging of the power lines. These were made from stainless steel fishing trace and had a nice weight to them so that they hung down realistically. they were also very strong and could withstand the inevitable entanglements with both puppet and the crew.

Gigasauraus supervising Adam Grace's work.

Two scales of transmission towers were scratch built by David Tremont plus a third smallest scale from plastic model railway kits.

Paul Nichola the visual effects supervisor shooting a POV shot from one of the Hummer flying vehicles with the puppet blasting its freezing breath at the camera.

 

 

The same set was also used for a night scene. We used a string of the 24 volt figure eight lighting on sticks for a perimeter effect with small Phillips 12 volt halogen spotlights mounted on the set pointing at the critter. A dry ice mist added to the cold effect.

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

 

Thanks for looking.