The next guest talk at the Flights of
Fantasy was the pairing of director Alan Perry and focus puller Robin McDonald.
Alan Perry became one
of Century 21’s regular stable of directors working on Captain Scarlet and The
Mysterons, Joe 90, The Secret Service and UFO.
He also worked as a camera operator on the feature film, Thunderbirds
are Go.
Robin McDonald worked on many of the Gerry Anderson
productions including UFO and the Protectors. His skill as a focus puller (working
with the camera operator to maintain image sharpness on whatever is being
filmed) has meant he’s worked on many films and TV series over the years, including Special
Branch, where he was reacquainted with George Sewell, and The Professionals,
where, in separate episodes he met up with Mike Billington and Ed Bishop.
Again, this talk was very entertaining with these two old mates recounting several funny stories together much to everyone’s amusement.
Alan retold the story of how he and the crew, while trying to achieve
a spiralling shot for the end of Alan Tracy’s dream sequence in T.A.G. went up in a helicopter to an altitude of
5000 ft, over an island just off the coast of Portugal . The helicopter then spiralled
down with Perry filming.
However the shot was deemed unusable, so it was left to special
effects maestro Derek Meddings to solve the problem.
He just had a small model of Tracy Island made in the Slough
studio and filmed that!
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