Model-Maker Bill Pearson Talks About His Work on Blake’s 7

This is another video from the film about the work of the talented peeps behind the models and miniatures used in some of the classic SF films and TV shows, A Sense of Scale. In this short video of about 4 mins in length, the late Bill Pearson talks about his work on the Beeb’s cult SF series, Blake’s 7. He describes the series as the Magnificent 7 in space, and says that the heroes were all bad guys, but not as bad as the people they were fighting against. They were anti-heroes. It’s a fair description, as the heroes were nearly all convicted criminals – Vila was a thief, Jenna a smuggler, Avon an embezzler, Gan a murderer, while Blake was a democratic agitator, a political criminal against the totalitarian, fascistic Federation, who were the real bad guys. Cally, a freedom-fighter from the planet Auron, was the only one who hadn’t been arrested, sentenced and convicted by the Federation she was pledged to overthrow.

Pearson says he was persuaded to join the effects team as he was told it was going to be wonderful and big budget, which it never was. He was recruited to the series as he had impressed the Beeb’s head of special effects with what he had been doing at college, and started work at the Corporation with a couple of episodes of Dr. Who. He was on Blake’s 7 from the start and did most of the spaceships in the last series. He says there were very little miniatures. There were a couple of hero ships, but they’d been built by the time he joined the SFX crew. The London, the ship used in the first episode, ‘The Way Back’, to transport Blake and his future crew to the penal colony of Cygnus Alpha, had already been made by an outside company. Other model-makers on the series included Martin Bower, who also worked on Space 1999 and the film Outland, and who worked on a couple of models of the heroes’ ships, the Liberator. There, and I thought the effects were all done by Matt Irvine and Mike Kelt. He only got involved with the miniatures in the final series. Pearson says that he’s notorious on the internet for making the gun that Avon uses to kill Blake in the very last episode. This, he says, is still around and getting more appreciation. I think here he’s referring to the series, rather than the weapon, as it’s just after that he talks of Blake and his crew as being bad guys and anti-heroes.

Pearson states that model-making for the screen isn’t as glamorous people think. One of the downsides is unemployment and there are many special effects firms now going bankrupt. However, it is the closest we’re going to get to immortality at the moment. A century from now someone’s going to pick up a packet of cereal and get a free 4D recording of Alien, put it in their viewer, and see his work and his name on the credits. And that’s pretty cool. The video also includes stills of Pearson working on some of the models used in the series and on Alien along with the interview.

BLAKE´S 7 (TV) miniature effects – YouTube

Pearson gave the interview in 2012, and the state of the effects industry may have changed somewhat since then, but I don’t doubt that CGI has had a devastating effect on the use of practical effects in movies and television, although they’re still used to a certain extent.

Blake’s 7 was made over forty years ago and was low budget SF. Matt Irvine said once that the money spent on one effect in the cinema was far in excess of what they had to spend on the series. But the show had memorable characters, great actors and some excellent stories. The effects work varied in quality, but the main spaceships, the Liberator and the Scorpio, looked good, as did the three sentient computers in the show, Zen, Slave and Orac. Blake’s 7 is, along with Dr. Who, Thunderbirds and Space 1999, a classic of British SF television and still retains a cult following all these decades later.

Couple of Videos on the Model Work on the BBC SF Comedy, Red Dwarf

These are another couple of videos I found on YouTube. In the first, model makers and special effects technicians Bill Pearson and Steve Howarth talk about their work on series 10 of the show. It’s a deleted scene from the film Sense of Scale, which appears to be a movie about the work of model makers like the two. It’s one of a number of videos about the creation of model effects for films and TV series like Red Dwarf, Space: 1999, Alien, Aliens, Outland, Flash Gordon, the 1990’s version of Total Recall, Coneheads, The Fifth Element and The Empire Strikes Back by piercefilm productions.

RED DWARF X miniature effects – YouTube

The second video comes from the channel of someone styling themselves Duane Dibley (the Duke of Dork). As fans of the series will know, this is the stylistically challenged alter ego of the Cat. In it, Bill Pearson talks about his work on series 4 of the show when production was moved to Shepperton. He talks about how some of the props and effects ended up in skips, including one that was damaged by Craig Charles. Money was tight, and so instead of building the scutters from scratch, as they had in the first series, they used parts from radio controlled cars and electric screwdrivers instead. They also recycled props and bits of set from other shows, including a Science Fiction film Ridley Scott had completed filming there. It was only after the series ended that Patterson realised he had never made one of the major vehicles in the show. But his chance finally came when he asked to make one to be given as a prize in a quiz show.

Super Models (Featurette With Red Dwarf Model Maker Bill Pearson) – YouTube

Red Dwarf is one of my favourite SF shows, and one which, in my view, deserves its longevity and cult status. It’s really fascinating to hear from one of the team of talented artists, model makers and technicians which gave this show its great SFX. These still stand up today when miniature work has largely been superseded by CGI. Pearson mentions this in the first video, saying that he’s proud of their work on Red Dwarf, but thinks that he’ll now spend the rest of his life working in low budget projects, because the major films and TV series have gone over to CGI instead. This is a pit, as I’ve a great deal of nostalgia and respect for the practical special effects used in the Science Fiction and Horror movies I grew up with. As spectacular as the CGI graphics can be, there’s still a popular demand for old style practical effects. Harbinger Down, a horror film that came out a couple of years ago, was made using these traditional special effects techniques to cater to audience keen to relive the pleasure of the type of effects they’d enjoyed in Alien and John Carpenter’s The Thing.

Pearson, Howarth and the others, who worked on shows like Red Dwarf are immensely talented artists, and I hope their skills will continue to be in demand by producers and directors, who appreciate the value of good, practical special effects.

Alan Moore on CIA Atrocities in Central America; Brought to Light

Apart from V for Vendetta, Alan Moore has also written a number of other, overtly political comic strips. Unlike V for Vendetta, these were based very much on contemporary events rather than works of fiction set in the future. One of these was the strip, ‘Shadowplay: The Secret Team’, illustrated by another great comics veteran, Bill Sienkiewicz. With two other strips, ‘Flashpoint: The La Penca Bombing’, by Joyce Brabner, Thomas Yeats and Bill Pearson, and ’30 Years of Covert War’ by another major figure in underground comics, Paul Mavrides, this was published in the anthology graphic novel, Brought to Light, edited by Joyce Brabner and published by Eclipse Comics. The graphic novel was published on behalf of the Christic Institute, and exposed the brutality and atrocities committed by the CIA and its allies in South and Central America, such as General Pinochet, Manuel Noriega in El Salvador, and the Contras in Nicaragua. ‘Flashpoint’ is more or less a straightforward narrative retelling of one particular journalist’s discovery and coverage of the massacres and mass mutilations committed by the Contras in Nicaragua. Mavride’s ’30 Years of Covert Action’ is a two-page map showing the areas around the world in which the CIA has engaged in drug trafficking, rigging elections, assassination and other crimes.

Moore’s strip, ‘Shadowplay’ was somewhat different. It was a mordantly funny satire in which the reader also features as a framing character. Leaving a cruise ship, the reader finds a drunken, cynical American Eagle drinking in a low dockside bar. Speaking in a drawl, the Eagle then proceeds to inform the reader about the American Right’s long history of covert political subversion and support for extreme Right-wing regimes. This goes at least as far back as the 1930s, when various politicians, alarmed at Roosevelt’s New Deal, began to plot a military coup. The strip then comes up to date with the CIA Iran-Contra scandal, in which Reagan’s regime supplied arms to Iran through Hisbollah, and shifted cocaine into America to support the Contras. At last the persona of the reader, sickened, leaves the bar, only find that his ship has sailed. The last image of the reader’s upraised hand towards the departing boat.

According to Wikipedia, Brought to Light was made into a spoken word audiobook on CD, narrated by Moore himself in 1998.

Here is the address for the Wikipedia entry on Brought to Light: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brought_to_Light.

Alan Moore also gave an interview about Brought to Light, as well as the Batman graphic novel The Killing Joke, and his contribution to the anti-homophobia anthology, Aawrgh on Blather. Part I is at this address:http://www.blather.net/articles/amoore/brought-to-light1.html.
Part 2 is here: http://www.blather.net/articles/amoore/brought-to-light2.html.