THUNDERBIRDS 1965: NEW EPISODES FROM 1960s RECORDINGS
Created by Thunderbirds 1965
Resurrecting Gerry and Sylvia Anderson's Classic 'Thunderbirds' using original voice tracks and retro filmmaking techniques
Latest Updates from Our Project:
21st Century Century 21
over 3 years ago
– Thu, Jun 03, 2021 at 03:41:06 AM
Dear all,
Despite the upheavals of the last year (or maybe because of it with nostalgia being a source of comfort), interest in Supermarionation - and its revival - has continued to grow. Last year Thunderbirds: The Anniversary Episodes finally made their public debut with their release on UK streaming service Britbox. Now, following on from that, it was announced in Japanese media last month that the three episodes would be released there as part of the country's 55th anniversary celebrations.
Full details regarding the release have yet to be given, but there will certainly be a flurry of activity to coincide with the release.
Meanwhile, Century 21 Films has entered into an agreement for a Japanese release of our short film Century 21, Slough. In a sign of the continued love for all things Supermarionation in Japan, the film was just trailing Pulp Fiction in the Amazon charts on the day of the announcement!
Century 21, Slough will be released in Japan as a standalone and as part of a boxset accompanying the 2 Thunderbirds feature films. In addition to Century 21, Slough the release will also include Designing the Future - an interview with Mike Trim, and a short entitled Excitement is Go which we produced in 2015.
Sales such as these help us to continue our efforts to bring Supermarionation back into the mainstream conciousness. In addition to our Thunderbirds related-work, we've also been very busy on Nebula-75 which has continued to grow since its launch a year ago on YouTube. What was intended to be a short one-off has taken us by surprise and the series is going from strength to strength. We've just released our eighth episode - The Incredible Voyage of Nebula-75 - which was a tribute to our friend David Elliott, who not only directed the original Thunderbirds, but as you will recall returned to the chair to helm The Stately Homes Robberies in 2015. We made the puppet and the film to celebrate his 90th birthday - and presented it to him at a surprise screening.
To mark the event, we were also privileged to be able to welcome David Graham back into the studio to play "Dave the Director". Now in his 96th year, David showed no signs of slowing in an extremely energetic performance with lots of comedic touches.
The "Dave" puppet was sculpted by Stephen Mansfield - the third puppet we've made based on a real person following Sanjeev Bhaskar and Samira Ahmed. Here's some shots of the puppet in progress:
You can see and hear the two Daves in the trailer for The Incredible Voyage of Nebula-75 here:
We also received some welcome mainstream media coverage when Samira Ahmed appeared on Countdown discussing Nebula-75 and her character "Juliette Destiny" in May.
May turned out to be quite a busy month for Nebula-75 as we were also invited to give a talk and live filming demonstration at The University of Hull. This was part of their strand Arts in Isolation and we discussed the challenges of making Supermarionation films in lockdown conditions.
Furthermore, we've on the verge of releasing our DVD and Blu-Ray of the first 7 episodes of Nebula-75. Despite many requests to release the series on home video, we were very cautious about proceeding due to the enormous cost commitment. However, the pre-orders showed that we really needn't have worried with the outlay covered by sales in just a couple of days. As always, we're very grateful to everyone who has supported this Supermarionation revival. It's an expensive business to maintain - and without the core audience's help we wouldn't be reaching wider ones.
Nebula-75 can be pre-ordered on DVD and Blu-Ray at: www.nebula-75.com
You can also find the series on Amazon Prime in the UK and US.
Last, but by no means least, we come to our most significant news of the last few years. The release of the first episode of Nebula-75 brought more attention than we could ever have dreamt of. The pandemic seemed to sweep away our plans for a new Supermarionation series - at least in the short term - and so we felt very pessimistic about how it might all continue. However, within 10 days of launching, we already had enquiries from broadcasters about acquiring the show. Television moves at a glacial pace, but after exactly one year, we have just signed on our first television deal for Nebula-75. This makes the show our first original Supermarionation production to sell to television, our second Supermarionation show to sell to TV following Thunderbirds: The Anniversary Episodes, and, perhaps most notably, the first new Supermarionation show to sell to TV since 1969.
We hope to bring you more news soon.
As ever, thanks to everyone for their support.
FAB / 7-5
Century 21 Films
A Supermarionation Christmas
almost 4 years ago
– Sat, Dec 26, 2020 at 05:15:32 PM
Samira Ahmed meets her Supermarionation counterpart, Juliette Destiny
Hello everyone!
Remarkably, it's five years ago this month since we wrapped on 'The Stately Homes Robberies' - the third, 50th anniversary episode of Thunderbirds. The three episodes are now on Britbox UK - with further releases to be announced soon.
Since 2015, as all you know, we've continued on with the art of Supermarionation. Towards the end of last year, following a slew of other successful Supermarionation mini-projects, we were working towards our ultimate goal - a Supermarionation television series. Our plans for this were grand in scale... until Coronavirus came along that is. At which point, everything shut down and we found ourselves stuck in a flat with a collection of puppets and models sat in cupboards. So we did the opposite of our original plan and made a series decidedly small in scale - that called back to the earlier days of Supermarionation. This series, Nebula-75, began life as a one-off free 10 minute film on YouTube designed purely as a distraction from the difficulties of the world in which we presently live. Now - months and an unexpected international following later - we've made 7 episodes, 2 adverts and a spoof talk show.
For Christmas, we wanted to build on that old Supermarionation tradition of a Christmas instalment - and wrote our latest episode, "The Grift of the Magi" that went onto YouTube on Christmas Eve (view here: Nebula-75 Christmas Special). Back in May, broadcaster Samira Ahmed covered the series in an edition of the BBC's Front Row programme. After being struck by her enthusiasm for all things Supermarionation, we asked her if she'd like to be in the show. She agreed, and we wrote in a puppet avatar of her: reporter, Juliette Destiny. The puppet was voiced by Samira herself, and the sculpt was done by Stephen Mansfield - who has created the majority of the puppets used in the series.
Juliette Destiny - posing with a previous Supermarionation star.
The small success of Nebula-75 - made in sub-optimal conditions during a sub-optimal year - has been a continued surprise to us. We were particularly amused to discover that in addition to our English and Japanese Wikipedia pages ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nebula-75) that the show was also being deconstructed on the TV Tropes website. It delights us that Supermarionation clearly still has much appeal to a new audience. And we hope to be able to build on that success over the next year.
In addition to the Christmas special, we also found time to do a Halloween episode too, which premiered on the 31st October. You can see the episode here: Nebula-75 Halloween Special
Aside from Nebula-75, back in the Thunderbirds world, we've been advising the Japanese on new pieces of merchandise currently in production - including these two models of the monsters from TV21:
Who knows what the next year will bring? But we remain hopeful there'll be better news on all fronts in the new year. Whether our original Supermarionation plans will come to fruition remains to be seen. But whatever happens, we hope we'll be able to adapt our projects to suit and keep the revived Supermarionation going for a new audience.
Wishing all of you a Happy Christmas, and hoping that you will all find 2021 to be a good year.
Thunderbirds on Britbox
about 4 years ago
– Thu, Aug 27, 2020 at 03:23:18 PM
Dear all,
A brief update from us today to bring the news that finally, the 3 new episodes of Thunderbirds are available to be widely seen in the UK on the streaming platform Britbox. This is a huge step in our work to keep Supermarionation alive, as a general audience will have the chance to watch at home the first new major Supermarionation production since the original studios closed, and this is something important for us when pitching to broadcasters future projects. The 3 new episodes have taken their place alongside the original 32 episodes and are an official part of the ITC catalogue.
This is also important, as it finally paves the road for releases to happen in other territories, and for these new, old episodes to be seen across the globe.
Once again, thank you to everyone who was part of this and helped us get Supermarionation back in front of the cameras. Filmed in Supermarionation, Thunderbirds: The Anniversary Episodes, the Halifax advert, Century 21 Slough, Endeavour, Thunderbirds Day episodes and Nebula-75. And hopefully more to come.
FAB
Century 21 FIlms
www.century21films.co.uk
www.filmedinsupermarionation.com
www.nebula-75.com
NEBULA-75: Supermarionation Marches On
over 4 years ago
– Sun, Jul 19, 2020 at 09:54:04 PM
Nebula-75 – our lockdown inspired Supermarionation series – continues to grow and develop. Since our last update, a further two episodes have been released – “No One I Think Is In My Tree” and “Heist Society” – and across various platforms the series has gathered well over half a million views and a vocal audience keen to share their passion for the show. Just take a look at some of this amazing fan art!
We’re sure that our Kickstarter backers would agree that Supermarionation has never lost its appeal. The response to Nebula-75 has helped to demonstrate this fact not just to the wider world, but also to broadcasters. We’ve already had some interest on this front, but if you’d like to embrace this opportunity to get Supermarionation back on television screens then please share the show online wherever you can – it really does make a difference.
With lockdown easing, we felt that episode five was a good point to pause and consider the future of the series. Given the support Nebula-75 has received to date, we’re now keen to take the series beyond its lockdown imposed origins and into a bright new future. If you’d like to keep up to date with how that future is shaping up, you can follow us on Youtube, Twitter, Instagram and Facebook.
As part of the ongoing growth of Nebula-75, we’ve recently set up an official website for the series. Here you will find character profiles, behind the scenes information, and all of the episodes released so far. We’ve also added an online store. Since the show’s premiere, we’ve had many requests for merchandise and we've cautiously decided to produce items a bit at a time to help develop the series. Every purchase will help to support Nebula-75’s future and go some way towards spreading the word about the show.
Until next time – Seven-Five
The Century 21 Films Crew
Supermarionation is still GO!
over 4 years ago
– Wed, May 27, 2020 at 03:25:12 AM
Quite a lot has happened since we launched our first episode of Nebula-75 a month ago - and right now we have high hopes for the immediate future of Supermarionation.
Since the end of April, we have completed three episodes of Nebula-75, and made two spoof adverts for 'Solar Smacks'. Our latest episode, 'Short Circuit', can be seen here: https://youtu.be/dpv9RmE-Xsw and we are currently producing episode 4. All made in a very small living room in a very small flat! Across different platforms we've had nearly 200,000 views of the first episode with YouTube likes reaching nearly 6,000.
As we progress we're receiving a little outside help to improve the scale and polish of the production - including this lovely new sculpt coming together from Stephen Mansfield for episode 5.
We've also received some media attention - including a spot on the BBC's Front Row programme last week which can be heard here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000j818
Most amazingly of all though we have received thousands of comments and e-mails with lovely messages, and have been bombarded with fan art - everything from comic strips and annual stories to models of the Nebula-75 itself.
A Nebula-75 comic strip by Mister Brownart.
We've had some interest from broadcasters, and whilst it's still very much early days, we hope we may be ever nearer to the Supermarionation revival we've long dreamt of!
We're also very pleased to see that our 2014 film, Filmed in Supermarionation, has gained a new audience through Amazon Prime where it's proving to be popular.
Finally, and perhaps most excitingly, after nearly five years it looks like the Thunderbirds anniversary specials look set to get a wider release. We can't give any further details yet - but we're very nearly there. And - we hope - that a public release will help grow appreciation for Supermarionation and bring a new audience to the original shows whose appeal we seek to continue.
