THUNDERBIRDS 1965: NEW EPISODES FROM 1960s RECORDINGS

Savers Are GO!
about 7 years ago – Thu, Apr 20, 2017 at 12:24:22 AM

Four months after our last update we're back again with another update - as we know that not all of our backers use social media!

Many of you, especially those in the UK, may have noticed that Thunderbirds is all across the country following the launch of Halifax's ad campaign. And, as you may have guessed, we were heavily involved - using the Supermarionation techniques we picked up during the making of the three new episodes in 2015.

For those of you who haven't seen the main advert, you can see the full length version here:

Just prior to the screening of the episodes at the British Film Institute last year, we were invited by ITV to meet with advertising agency Adam&EveDDB to discuss the possibility of helping them make a Thunderbirds advert that they had written. And so, only a few weeks after we left Stirling Road, Slough... we found ourselves back there working on Thunderbirds again!

We are continuing to investigate the possibilities of keeping Supermarionation / Thunderbirds alive in puppet form and so we immediately recognised the potential of this campaign to elevate the profile of the puppets in the public consciousness. Whilst Thunderbirds 1965 had been a big success - with worldwide coverage - there's nothing quite like an ad campaign to make something inescapable. 

The advert was produced by production company Outsider and our job at Century 21 Films Ltd was to produce and advise on all Supermarionation related elements. We built the puppets, sets and models, as well as advised on how to film the advert correctly. For the parts of the advert that were achieved using CGI, we were on hand to make sure that everything that didn't really exist looked and behaved as though it did (although the credit for the excellent work rests with The Mill). 

Recreation challenges for this advert included rebuilding Lady Penelope's drawing room - something that had proved too complex in the timescale for The Stately Homes Robberies - but thanks to Hilton Fitzsimmons was possible for this project. Complete with many of the correct dressings used on the original set! 

Meanwhile, David Tremont in New Zealand was tasked with the challenge of building the exterior of Penelope's mansion. In less than 3 weeks he produced this exquisite miniature, which is as far as possible, identical to the original model. To aid accuracy we were able to use original 1960s special effects rushes.

Other challenges included the 30 ft deep, forced perspective beach set complete with water tank, devised by Richard Gregory with Hilton Fitzsimmons and Toby Chamberlain, and new female puppets sculpted by Lady Penelope's creator Mary Turner, and Stephen Mansfield (who made Gallup Din, Dawkins and Mr Charles for us previously). The miniature costumes were made for us, once again, by Liz Comstock-Smith and Carl Stirling-Stewart. 

Strangest of all the items we had to produce though was a large scale Lady Penelope hand to enable the character to look into her compact. For this Puppettry Supervisor Géraldine Donaldson took a break from her duties to allow a cast of her hand to be made!

Gèraldine and Elliot Pavelin were responsible for running and maintaining the puppet department, whilst Barry Davies once again produced the characters and refurbished the Thunderbirds 1965 puppets.  Stephen La Rivière and Andrew T. Smith produced as well as puppeteered.

Once everything had been built at Stirling Road it was all shipped off to Black Island Studios to shoot the main advert. This took place over five days in October - after which we brought everything home to begin work on the next stage of the campaign. The following month, we produced 5 short films with Brains entitled Savers Are Go! Unlike the advert, this was produced entirely in-house which meant we were reunited with our cinematographers David Hicks and Boyd Skinner - which was great for us as unlike the main ad crew, we're all used by now to how to film the puppets which meant we were able to shoot everything in a day. 

For these shorts we shot on vintage film equipment using 35mm film - and for extra authenticity - used a very poor quality black and white video assist system! In addition to these Brains segments, we also shot a series of silly Parker-being-interviewed shorts.

The final job for the campaign was the shooting of the elements for the main poster campaign. The ad agency assembled at Stirling Road to take pictures of the main Thunderbird craft, and the puppets. 

We understand that the campaign has been a big success for the Halifax and, in turn, it's done wonders for raising the profile of Thunderbirds as we had hoped it would. Further evidence that Supermarionation has a future.

Sadly, there is no future for the puppets on Stirling Road as the buildings have reached the end of their lives and are set to be demolished. We packed up in December and vacated the premises permanently. But not before we asked David Elliott and Mary Turner if they'd briefly come back to work again on the old series 1 stages... We'll tell you more about that soon.

That's all for now. For those of you who do use social media, you can follow us on Facebook at: https://www.facebook.com/thunderbirds65/, or on Twitter @Thunderbirds65. And, for those of you who don't like social media, you can still follow our progress on our YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCMQv_O7i_iXMFBSbtolnpjA

And finally, we have our own website for our company Century 21 Films Ltd: https://www.century21films.co.uk where you can read about past and present projects.

On a final note, we continue to be asked about the future of the 3 episodes we released last year. Well, lots of work is going on, but we hope these will be more widely available soon. This whole Supermarionation revival lark is a slow business... but bit by bit things are happening :-)

Team Thunderbirds 1965

Thunderbirds 1965: Postscript
over 7 years ago – Sat, Dec 31, 2016 at 09:51:48 PM

It's been six months since our final Thunderbirds 1965 update when we closed the project after almost a year. We had intended to leave the page permanently dormant, but it turned out to be quite an eventful year. Knowing that not everyone is on social media, we thought many of our backers might be interested to know that although Thunderbirds 1965 is over, the quest to keep Supermarionation going isn't.

In August we premiered the three new episodes for the first time to the public at the British Film Institute in London. We had an excellent turn out for the screening and it helped bolster the profile of the project considerably.

This screening was followed up shortly afterwards firstly with a screening at the Starburst Film Festival in Manchester with David Graham in attendance, and then by a special two-day exhibition in Slough.

And then came the big surprise - a chance to push Supermarionation back into action. So, only weeks after we had said good bye to Stirling Road... the crew reassembled and we moved back in (and this time we even had the chance to work in more than one of the old buildings!).

Unfortunately, at this point we can't tell you much about what we've been up to, but we thought you might enjoy some teaser images. We've been fortunate enough to be able to employ our Supermarionation services on a handful of projects this year - all part of our continuing journey to try and revive this once dead art form.

We were even lucky enough to be joined again by some old hands...

 And were able to supplement our working collection of props, puppets and models:

We haven't only spent some time with the Thunderbirds team - but with some other cool characters from the other shows:

Our work at Stirling Road is once again completed - and this time it really will be the last time as the whole road is to be redeveloped. 

Appropriately, the final bit of Thunderbirds to filmed on the street was by David Elliott and Mary Turner. A bittersweet ending.

To cap the year off, after an exhausting few months of work, we hopped on a plane with Thunderbirds 1 and 4, Lady Penelope, Parker, Brains, Jeff and Scott to Denmark! We were invited by Lego to go to their HQ in Billund and give a talk to their design team about making the three new episodes of Thunderbirds last year.

So all in all it's been an eventful year - especially considering the first six months of the year was crammed with our first backer screenings and the design, manufacture and distribution of all the rewards. 

Two years ago, when we were promoting Filmed in Supermarionation (the first step in our current journey) we frequently described Supermarionation as being a dead art-form. Many of the skills - from the camera department through to the puppet department - had been forgotten by the mainstream industry and when Thunderbirds turned up it was increasingly seen as something to laugh at. But with your help we've been able to reverse that trend.

Following the BFI screening earlier in the year, a businessman came up and said, "I went along last night and expected to see all the funny walks etc. But Thunderbirds with puppets isn't that is it? It's just great entertainment."

We hope that 2017 will be another good year for the puppets.

"This Has Got to be the End..."
almost 8 years ago – Wed, Jun 22, 2016 at 12:20:04 AM

Hello backers!

Gosh. That was a long, arduous journey. The distribution of the Kickstarter rewards ended up being almost as difficult as actually making three new episodes of Thunderbirds. Our extremely limited budget was channelled almost entirely into the production of the episodes (and the production of the rewards) - and so something had to give somewhere. And that somewhere was a tiny team (often just two of us - on a lucky day four!) packing each of the several thousand packages we had to despatch. It took longer than we hoped it would - and for that we're sorry. With so many different combinations to pack and limited space to put the rewards (and the already packed packages) it was a logistically very awkward process to carry out. But, the process is at the end - which we're extremely relieved about. It's not a job we'd rush to do again that's for sure! We'd also like to restate how grateful we are to Mr. X - the man who backed us to the tune of £11,000, frequently came over to help us pack the parcels and who took us to a party one evening when we were feeling very tired and demoralised. We're also grateful to everyone else who helped us and made kind offers - it was this community spirit that helped make Thunderbirds Go again! The very best of fandom on show.

We summed up our thoughts on the project a couple of updates ago, and so we won't repeat ourselves here. So, what of the future?

The team would love to see Supermarionation as an art-form preserved and celebrated. We're working to try and preserve our collection of Thunderbirds puppets and models for future display (and maybe even work). Though, this in itself is a challenge. There is so much left over that it's proving extremely expensive to store in suitable conditions. The Tracy Lounge is particularly problematic as it's so big. For the collection to be kept in working order long term we shall have to come up with ways to keep funding it. To that end, in due course, we may consider selling smaller items from the collection in order to retain the more significant items. Those of you who came to our studio tours know that we're rather passionate about keeping the puppets and models working and don't want it all to end up behind glass.

Will there be future Supermarionation shows? We always hoped that by proving it could be done that we could resurrect this unique style of filmmaking. We'd be very sad to think that the puppets might never come out again. But for the moment it seems extremely unlikely. Maybe in another 50 years? Lots of people have suggested adapting the other mini-albums for Stingray and Captain Scarlet, but it really isn't a viable suggestion (even though we'd love to do Stingray!). Firstly, the rights aren't available, and secondly the only way to pay for it would be through crowd-funding. This is not an avenue we could possibly go down again. Thunderbirds 1965 was a unique stars aligning moment - and together all of us (crew and backers) were able to achieve the impossible. But, it put an incredible strain on the crew - and we could never ask them to do that again. We don't want to focus on the negativity - because the truth is that the majority of our backers are amazingly generous and kind people. But we did have a small minority who made our lives a living hell at times. That small minority, combined with the limited fund-raising potential, means that it's not a challenge that we're prepared to undertake again. 

More positively, thank you so much to everyone who has left us lovely messages on receipt of the discs. We haven't been able to respond to each one individually yet, but they do get read and it means a huge amount to us. We're certainly not looking for thanks - but it is nice to know that the hard work was worth it for the audience!

And now, to conclude on some very exciting news...

Our Thunderbirds mini-series will premiere to the public on August 17th in NFT 1 at the British Film Institute in London! All three episodes will be screened, followed by a Q&A with some of the crew. Tickets will go on sale next month.

A few days later the episodes will also be screening in Manchester at the Starburst Film Festival, where there will be a Q&A with voice artist and writer David Graham. More details can be found at the link below:

http://www.starburstfilmfest.co.uk/festival-highlights/thunderbirds-1965-new-episodes

And so the Kickstarter phase of Thunderbirds 1965 comes to its conclusion. Whether the episodes will have a long future ahead remains to be seen - but we hope that many will come to regard these as another 3 episodes to supplement the original series.

We'll still be available via the private messaging system to help out with any order-related queries - so please don't panic. Also, some of our original backers have written to us asking if it's possible to supplement their orders with additional items. For most rewards we have sold out now, but for some of the items we've still got stock left thanks to having to place minimum orders which were in excess of what we needed. So feel free to drop us a line if you'd like to acquire whatever is left over.

Thank you again to everyone who supported and championed us. We've said it before and we'll say it again - Thunderbirds 1965 happened not just because of the crew, but because of those of you who supported us. As Sylvia Anderson once said, "No film or television series can be made by one person." And this project has demonstrated that admirably. 

And now, in the words of Commander Shore...

"Whether you like it or not, this has got to be the end."

Over and out.

Thunderbirds 1965

The end is nigh
almost 8 years ago – Sat, Jun 11, 2016 at 09:34:24 PM

Hello everyone,

The logistical nightmare of processing everyone's orders is slowly coming to an end. We have a handful of parcels to go into the post next week, but the majority of orders are now working their way around the world. The effort of producing all the assorted rewards, maintaining standards, and working though the sometimes counter-intuitive Kickstarter / Backerkit systems made this part of the process almost as challenging as making the episodes.

If you haven't received rewards yet please don't panic. The Royal Mail works in weird ways. We've seen international packages turn up on the other side of the world in two days, and first class UK mail take ten days! We've been keeping track of arrivals though and packages seem to be arriving, even if the timescales are not always to plan.

If you have a query or question about your order, please direct it to the Private Messaging system on Kickstarter. We're here to help and will always do what we can!

For those that have seen the episodes Jack Knoll has been writing pieces for his Security Hazard blog about what we've produced. Jack visited us for one day during The Abominable Snowman - but otherwise his insights are what he's gleaned from watching the episodes. His guides are an interesting deconstruction of our work - especially with regards to how we tried to copy quirks (or faults - depending on your view) of the original show.

The guides (which are very spoilery!) can be read here: https://securityhazard.wordpress.com/2016/05/29/thunderbirds-1965-introducing-thunderbirds/

and here:

https://securityhazard.wordpress.com/2016/06/06/thunderbirds-1965-the-abominable-snowman/

Finally, you may be interested to see this little bit of video taken by artist Lee Sullivan during the course of a day filming Introducing Thunderbirds

We'll be back in touch again soon - and next time, it really will be the last time!

Thunderbirds 1965

Postage Update
almost 8 years ago – Tue, May 24, 2016 at 11:56:41 PM

Hello backers!

I'm Andrew T. Smith the Associate Producer - and also the person responsible for the despatch of your rewards and the general management of orders and enquiries. 

I wanted to give you a quick update on the status of postage. We have approximately 650 of the original Kickstarter / Backerkit orders to fulfil. After which we'll be moving onto the the remaining stock which we sold off through Weebly. Again, we can only apologise for the length of time it's taking - but so many orders are bespoke which makes the task more challenging than if we were just packing 4000 DVDs. International orders are also rather complex to sort out too depending on the method of shipping. 

To clarify about shipping: orders are shipped according to lists generated by Backerkit. So this means that the order of despatch is rather random. Every one will get their order - it just depends on when their name appears!

If you have any issues please contact us via Kickstarter. Please don't send us messages via our social media outlets as we have stopped maintaining these and would like to concentrate the traffic of correspondence into one place.

We're very grateful to everyone who has shown patience and understanding during this project - especially at points where we've made errors. We're a small team with a mountainous job - and every bit of support we've had has helped keep us going.

And now... back to the boxes!

Andrew T. Smith