THUNDERBIRDS 1965: NEW EPISODES FROM 1960s RECORDINGS

Thunderbirds Are Still Go
about 8 years ago – Sat, Feb 13, 2016 at 11:07:04 PM

Hello everyone!

We're still plugging away here getting your reward packages together. It continues to be a slow and sometimes painful process, but we're getting there. 

Current jobs include the transcoding of all the episodes into the appropriate video formats, sending various items for manufacture, subtitling, rights paperwork and keeping all the internal accounts up to date (people always forget the really boring stuff like that!).

The final discs will contain a slew of extra features in addition to the episodes. This includes:

• A brand-new 30 minute documentary telling the story of bringing back Thunderbirds. Packed with behind the scenes footage, photographs and interviews with the crew.
• Television news items - various bits of coverage we received over the course of the project.
• Outtakes
• Social Media Spots
• Deleted shots / scenes. 

PLUS:

Subtitles for the three episodes in English, Japanese, French, German and Dutch

We're expecting a lot of the rewards to come back from manufacture over the next couple of weeks. The discs themselves will be the final things to go off. The authoring requires a lot of care and each disc will need to be checked throughly. We anticipate that we'll be able to send these for manufacture by the end of the month - subject to everything going well.

The Thunderbirds 1965 studio will be closing at the end of March after 6 months in operation. Stirling Road is being demolished soon - we were very lucky to bring Thunderbirds back home one last time. If the anniversary had been a year later that might not have been the case! We're very grateful to SEGRO and Slough for helping us out.

Before closing the studio we are considering opening it up to the public for a couple of days next month as a chance to celebrate Thunderbirds' heritage before the road disappears completely. We'll keep you posted on what we decide regarding this. We hasten to add that this will be nothing like the studio tours offered to the backers who paid a premium to see the filming in action!

And now, it's back to the tedious jobs. Transcoding, editing, subtitling, accounting. 

More soon!

No news is, er... no news!
about 8 years ago – Sat, Feb 06, 2016 at 09:25:24 PM

Hello everyone!

This is a brief update to assure everyone that work is continuing to tick along on the rewards part of the Thunderbirds project. One by one the reward items are heading off to manufacture and we are currently preparing for the enormous mailing task that lays ahead of us.

We appreciate that so many people are excited to see these new episodes - and after so much work we can't wait to show them to the world. However, we wish to ensure that everything we send out is made to the highest quality and that, unfortunately, requires time.

We haven't posted an update for a couple of weeks simply because there's been no exciting news. Whereas previously we were updating every few days - because we wanted to share the experience of making Thunderbirds with you - we decided against clogging up your inboxes with news about inputting timecodes for subtitles, or details of the many other necessary but tedious tasks that confront the team on a daily basis currently. Those that have backed other Kickstarters will be aware that it is not unusual for there to be months between updates. So in that sense, we're better than most!

Our inboxes have been flooded recently with backers asking for information about the current status of the project. Whenever we have an update we always post it here as we want everyone to be kept informed. Unfortunately, bombarding us with messages makes our task much more difficult. So we respectfully ask backers not to message us with requests for updates - as all it will end up doing is slowing the rewards fulfilment down.

As said before, we hope to send the rewards out within a few weeks. But we will not commit to a time until all rewards have been delivered to us and inspected. For instance, one of our reward items was delivered last week, but it was not produced to the standard we expect and so we returned the item and have had it produced by a different manufacturer. We have only one stab at getting these rewards right - so we're going to take as much care as possible.

In the meantime, we hope you'll enjoy the above behind the scenes video of a mansion being destroyed for The Stately Homes Robberies. We'll bring you some more videos and pictures from the production soon to keep your appetites whetted until the discs finally land on your doormats (though some backers complain that we update too often about the production - it's a difficult balance to strike!).

Best wishes,

Thunderbirds 1965

Rewards: Progress Update
over 8 years ago – Mon, Jan 18, 2016 at 11:46:45 PM

Hello backers!

It's been a while since we updated you on progress, so we thought we'd drop you a line to let you know what's happening behind the scenes at the Thunderbirds 1965 studio.

We appreciate that many of you are eager to get your hands on your reward items. Unfortunately, it is a fairly labour intensive process to prepare everything to the standard that we're happy with. As these rewards are Kickstarter Exclusive and will never be done again, we've only got one shot at making the best quality products possible. Currently, we still expect the rewards to ship within a few weeks. We'll only confirm a date when we're ready to post everything out.

Most of the printed material (scripts, postcards, lobby cards, storyboards etc) is shortly off to manufacture. This will be followed by the two booklets - which we're currently putting the finishing touches too. The Commemorative Photo Album features many pictures found during the production of Thunderbirds 1965 - including a whole series of deleted shots and scenes from Trapped in the Sky. Even the most die-hard fan is guaranteed to find something new here!

The reproduction of the mini-albums are also off to manufacture soon. Each story has been carefully restored by Mark Ayres.

The discs are currently being assembled. As well as featuring the three episodes (the most important element!), there will also be behind the scenes featurettes, news reports, outtakes and other to be confirmed features. Each episode will be subtitled in five languages (English, French, German, Dutch and Japanese). This in itself is a fairly tricky process as we wish to ensure that each translation remains true to the idiosynchracies of the original translations done in the 60s. For example, did you know that in the French version of the TV series the characters don't say, 'Thunderbirds'? Or that in the Japanese version Parker calls Lady Penelope O-jou-sama (お嬢様). We're keen that non-English speaking overseas viewers get to experience these episodes in the best way possible for them.

Finally, there are a number of licences in place that make Thunderbirds 1965 possible. We do not operate unofficially, and the various rights holders do not 'turn a blind eye' to us as has been suggested in some places. So there are a number of stages we have to go through for each phase of production - and that in itself takes a bit of time.

In short - progress is being made! Some backers have pointed out that our original Estimated Shipping Date was December. Whilst we always hoped to have everything ready for Christmas, our original date (which you have to put in for Kickstarter) was based on the fact that we fully expected only to make one episode. Given that we ended up making three, we hope you'll forgive us for the delay! We honestly expect this to take a few more weeks, so we're really not far away from delivering all your rewards. Having worked so hard for the last six months, we're keen to share the fruits of our labours with the world and celebrate the 50th anniversary of the original show!

Thank you again to everyone for their support and patience - we hope it'll be worth the wait!

The Stately Homes Robberies - New Clip Released
over 8 years ago – Wed, Jan 06, 2016 at 07:59:48 PM

Hello Kickstarter backers!

All three episodes were screened for the first time in London on Monday evening. In attendance were crew members and various backers and supporters of the project. The evening went extremely successfully, and now the job of getting everything ready to distribute the three episodes (and associated rewards) begins.

In the meantime, here's a new clip from The Stately Homes Robberies - directed by original series director David Elliott!

Thunderbirds Are Definitely GO!
over 8 years ago – Sun, Jan 03, 2016 at 05:46:52 PM

Happy New Year everyone! 

Today is a momentous one as we're putting the finishing touches to The Stately Homes Robberies which will be screening for the first time - along with the other two episodes - tomorrow at our special preview screening. It's taken six months to get here, but we're finally ready for people outside of the crew to see the fruits of our labours. We look forward to meeting many of you in person tomorrow.

Just a brief reminder that the Preview Screening is invite only - and only available to backers who pledged for the appropriate reward. If you would like to attend then you can contact us via the messaging system to arrange.

After the screening we will be working full time on the production of the rewards. We'll keep you posted with weekly updates about our progress, and will bring you details of what the discs will contain soon. Aside from the episodes, we intend to add extras too!

We'll be back in touch again shortly. In the meantime, here's a gallery of Lady Penelope's new wardrobe. All costumes in Thunderbirds 1965 were designed and created by Liz Comstock-Smith.