Ultraman Towards the Future AKA Ultraman Great part 14

 In one episode I made a breakaway miniature agricultural shed for a Locust creature to trash.

The giant Locust critter called Majaba was made as a puppet. It had leds inside its eyes to make them glow as well as a pretty cool translucent paint job.

The puppet crew consisted of Steve Roswell, Vicki Kite, Graham Binding, Norman Yeend and Warren Beaton.

 

The picture below shows the puppet and miniature shed waiting for action to be called. The shed had to match the one filmed at the live action location.

Here, the puppet is in the middle of destroying the miniature shed.

 

The shed was built on a solid chipboard base with a balsa wood timber structure lightly superglued together.

  

Paul Fardouly (left) rigged up a press so we could stamp out corrugated sheets of aluminium fin stock with the correct scale corrugations. On the right you can see the completed balsa timber framing that has been stained a dark colour. I am in the process of attaching the miniature corrugated sheets to the structure using small dots of superglue and zip kicker. This had to be fragile to break apart easily.

 

Here I am just adding the last corrugated sheets to the front of the shed. The corrugated sheets were pre-painted before attaching to the frame work.

The puppet was also used for flying scenes and had a motorised wing mechanism built into it.

 

In the episode the creature meets a fiery demise so the puppet was rigged up with some pyrotechnic material that was electrically ignited during the shot. You can see the ignition wires running down the side of the puppet.

The pyrotechnic material was ignited and the puppet performed as designed.

Ultraman Towards the Future AKA Ultraman Great part 10

In one episode the F18 models again feature flying over a miniature landscape with a volcanic anomaly caused by the Goudis monster.

 

The set was built by Tony Lees, mostly from polyurethane pouring foam with the background rock formations out of polystyrene foam. Once again some very impressive scenic art by Len Armstrong in the painted cloudy sky.

 

 

 The glowing volcanic protrusion was made from heat forming a perspex sheet and backlighting it with orange gels. It was covered with polyurethane foam which was carved into detailed rock shapes. Fine cork chips provide the small crust details.

 

Dry ice was used for the low lying steam and mist.

 

A squadron of FA18 models hung from the overhead wire cable for straight flight. The top most aircraft is in a banking turn which means it was hung from the boom rig.

In the picture below the lead aircraft is again on the boom arm and is swinging in an arc and banking to look like it is peeling off from the formation.

 

 

Boom hung model aircraft over the glowing lava field. You can see the wires that go to the wing tips which go up and over a pulley on a small 12 volt geared motor at the end of the boom. Rotating the motor forward or reverse banks the aircraft left or right. The model is supported by two other wires one at the nose and one at the tail.

 

Here the formation of models are on the cable that goes across the studio and travel in a straight line. No banking is required on this rig.

 

 The UMA Hummers are sent out to deal with the anomaly. Above is one of the hummer models with a blast from either a smoke machine or liquid CO2 aimed at the volcanic centre.

 

A larger scale section of the rock wall was built for some close up pyro action. It was a large perspex sheet, backlit, with vertical rock pieces attached. Paul Fardouly and myself are up top getting ready to pour methocel ( a clear food thickener) and cork chips down the surface for a flowing lava effect. The string across the top has a series of strips of a pyrotechnic material that will ignite and drop down into frame to simulate falling hot rocks from the volcanic activity. Steve Newman Miniatures unit DOP with the camera on a jib (left) and Phillip Hearnshaw 2nd unit director (striped shorts) on the right.

 

 

Paul Fardouly and I are both wearing safety face shields due to the proximity of the pyro explosions as well as the flaming volcanic debris raining down. These shots were from the POV of an attacking aircraft. The Camera is wrapped in thick foil to protect it from the pyro. The lens has a matte box with a clear glass filter installed to protect it.

 

 

 The Goudis monster puppet in his second incarnation. It is a different form from the version in episode one  so a new puppet Goudis was built for this episode.

 

 

Puppeteer Ross Browning operating the Goudis mk2 puppet. Steve Newman operating the Arii SRII 16mm camera.

The picture above shows the new Goudis with a cable controlled Ultraman puppet built by Warren Beaton. The Ultraman puppet although pretty sophisticated was not able to do all the fighting action that eventually it was called upon to do. When we started Ultraman none of us realised the importance of the one on one fighting scenes to the show and the Japanese producers. Most of us had never seen an episode as it was never shown in Australia. As I understand it, eventually this conceptual over-sight lead to a great deal of political upheaval between the main unit in Adelaide South Australia and the miniatures unit in Sydney. The end result was that a series of the monsters was additionally made into men in suits and a new unit was set up in Adelaide to film some fight sequences on a couple of outdoor miniature sets. This all came with an added cost to the South Australian Film Corporation's budget, who were the Australian producers of the show. As I was not involved in this unit I have no photographs or information about its work.

 The picture above shows Adam Newcombe puppeteering the Goudis mk2 and Ultraman puppets locked in a strange embrace with Paul Moyes the model unit Gaffer assisting.

Thanks for looking, more soon.

 

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...