Tim Staffell Newsletter
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Re: Tim Staffell Newsletter
1982: Cool Clear Water...
All day I faced the barren waste.....
Tim Staffell
Oct 13
Liberation Days…
Once I had truly settled into my new career as a Film & TV Modelmaker and Artist, I began to relish the work. It was everything that the music business wasn’t. I’d always felt, privately that the fundamental criteria of producing saleable music had been not that the music was particularly good, but that you could persuade someone with resources that it was; PR and promotion would do the rest. (It’s still a prevalence in my view - presentation is everything). What distinguished my new career was that the created product could not, generally be defined as a matter of opinion. It was always, initially the subject of a brief, and as such could only be right or wrong within the context it was intended for. It was a fantastically liberating feeling. During the first workshop I had a space in, I absorbed an awful lot of new techniques, I learned better how to sculpt, mould and cast in different materials, use bench machinery which I had never dealt with previously - brushed up on (and in many cases, realised) how to measure accurately, finish and refine surfaces, polish, groove, slot, cut, turn on a lathe, use a milling machine, a spray gun - apply paint and texture effects to surfaces.. it was a mind-bogglingly creative time of experimentation and revelation..
What was particularly stimulating about the experience is that it was feeding a commercial industry that was increasingly hungry for visual novelty. In that respect we were being asked to simulate and create all kinds of cinematic legerdemain in the service of retail branding and movie fantasy. The UK SFX Industry had been cutting its teeth on shows like Thunderbirds for a decade or more, and there was a wealth of experience and techniques that had developed from sources such as the studios of Gerry Anderson and Ray Harryhausen. I’d been working on ‘jobbing’ projects for a couple of years when the opportunity came to work on a project at Clearwater Films, a three-studio complex with their own workshops, camera equipment, and lighting gear over the river at Battersea. They were, at that time, the premier stop-motion animation house in the UK, with a team of superb animator/modelmakers - and their reputation was growing such that they needed to recruit to keep up with the increasing workload.
The Best Job in The World…?
My time at Clearwater constituted a rich and varied experience that further cemented my skills as a modelmaker, and intriduced me to the art of stop-motion animation. Although Clearwater primarily had a reputation based on its amazing stop-motion output, the core of the production team had come from the studios of Gerry Anderson, and their work with miniatures and effects was of the highest standard. For a couple of years the team of in-house modelmakers worked full-on, on a series of innivatively written commercial films; there were (eventually), three studios working flat out. The list of ‘Above The Line’ (Top Brands) commercials read like a catalogue of household-name products - Lego, Cadburys, BirdsEye, Hersheys, London Docklands, Hartleys Jam, Armstrong Floors, Presto Supermarkets.. etc etc. The one common factor to all of these was that the scripts all required some spectacular use of effects, (filmed and post-produced) to achieve stunning results. We pulled off some pretty astonishing feats in those days, establishing the reputation of the the studios in the process..
The Trainset generation…
All through the fifties, when Christmas rolled around, and my folks would face the annual dilemma of what to buy the pre-teen boys, there was a reasonable possibility that a toy would be railway-related. Consequently I became the recipient of tin trains, later, small electric sets, maybe a train guard’s uniform… you get the picture. I’m pretty sure that on several occasions I found a little book from Awdry’s original railway series, and I had grown up with the vaguely nostalgic memory of the little steam-engines with their silly faces and petty operational problems. And now I suddenly found myself elected to be supervising modelmaker on the development of the stories for TV. It didn’t, of course indicate that I was a particularly skilled modlemaker - in fact, I’d say that 75% of the team were far more skilled than I - but I must have been seen as a decent co-ordinator, and I WAS a fair sculptor, so I got to make a lot of the original faces, the small (and large-scale) human figures, and engage with research, procurement of rolling stock, landscaping, backgrounds, and peripheral things like smoke effects. I suppose for the first series, it was about eighteen months in the making, from initial pilot episode to completion. I wasn’t party to the logistics of the actual filming, but we had a tight schedule to build all of the set-pieces that would furnish the model locations for the storyboarded episodes.
Out of all proportions….
I’m not sure that any of us involved in the actual build, had an inkling of how significant ‘Thomas And Friends’ would become; but on reflection I think it does have something to do with the care that went into its development and construction. In the event, Clearwater Films would not have a particularly extended life as a company - I was remote from management, so didn’t have much of an idea of how it was being run. In retrospect, any revenue generated by the series seems not to have found its way back as working capital. There were political struggles, jealousies, recriminations that I was on the sidelines of, such that an offer I had once filming had started - to join Red Baloon Films in Central London as Art Director, came as a blessed, and welcome relief. By this time, I had begun to dabble in animating simple scenes, and I would soon become much more closely involved in the filming process…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V2nL5sSSvd0
Gordon & Thomas from the first series of Thomas The Tank Engine
Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz… The Vogon Captain -BBC Hitchhiker’s Guide….
All day I faced the barren waste.....
Tim Staffell
Oct 13
Liberation Days…
Once I had truly settled into my new career as a Film & TV Modelmaker and Artist, I began to relish the work. It was everything that the music business wasn’t. I’d always felt, privately that the fundamental criteria of producing saleable music had been not that the music was particularly good, but that you could persuade someone with resources that it was; PR and promotion would do the rest. (It’s still a prevalence in my view - presentation is everything). What distinguished my new career was that the created product could not, generally be defined as a matter of opinion. It was always, initially the subject of a brief, and as such could only be right or wrong within the context it was intended for. It was a fantastically liberating feeling. During the first workshop I had a space in, I absorbed an awful lot of new techniques, I learned better how to sculpt, mould and cast in different materials, use bench machinery which I had never dealt with previously - brushed up on (and in many cases, realised) how to measure accurately, finish and refine surfaces, polish, groove, slot, cut, turn on a lathe, use a milling machine, a spray gun - apply paint and texture effects to surfaces.. it was a mind-bogglingly creative time of experimentation and revelation..
What was particularly stimulating about the experience is that it was feeding a commercial industry that was increasingly hungry for visual novelty. In that respect we were being asked to simulate and create all kinds of cinematic legerdemain in the service of retail branding and movie fantasy. The UK SFX Industry had been cutting its teeth on shows like Thunderbirds for a decade or more, and there was a wealth of experience and techniques that had developed from sources such as the studios of Gerry Anderson and Ray Harryhausen. I’d been working on ‘jobbing’ projects for a couple of years when the opportunity came to work on a project at Clearwater Films, a three-studio complex with their own workshops, camera equipment, and lighting gear over the river at Battersea. They were, at that time, the premier stop-motion animation house in the UK, with a team of superb animator/modelmakers - and their reputation was growing such that they needed to recruit to keep up with the increasing workload.
The Best Job in The World…?
My time at Clearwater constituted a rich and varied experience that further cemented my skills as a modelmaker, and intriduced me to the art of stop-motion animation. Although Clearwater primarily had a reputation based on its amazing stop-motion output, the core of the production team had come from the studios of Gerry Anderson, and their work with miniatures and effects was of the highest standard. For a couple of years the team of in-house modelmakers worked full-on, on a series of innivatively written commercial films; there were (eventually), three studios working flat out. The list of ‘Above The Line’ (Top Brands) commercials read like a catalogue of household-name products - Lego, Cadburys, BirdsEye, Hersheys, London Docklands, Hartleys Jam, Armstrong Floors, Presto Supermarkets.. etc etc. The one common factor to all of these was that the scripts all required some spectacular use of effects, (filmed and post-produced) to achieve stunning results. We pulled off some pretty astonishing feats in those days, establishing the reputation of the the studios in the process..
The Trainset generation…
All through the fifties, when Christmas rolled around, and my folks would face the annual dilemma of what to buy the pre-teen boys, there was a reasonable possibility that a toy would be railway-related. Consequently I became the recipient of tin trains, later, small electric sets, maybe a train guard’s uniform… you get the picture. I’m pretty sure that on several occasions I found a little book from Awdry’s original railway series, and I had grown up with the vaguely nostalgic memory of the little steam-engines with their silly faces and petty operational problems. And now I suddenly found myself elected to be supervising modelmaker on the development of the stories for TV. It didn’t, of course indicate that I was a particularly skilled modlemaker - in fact, I’d say that 75% of the team were far more skilled than I - but I must have been seen as a decent co-ordinator, and I WAS a fair sculptor, so I got to make a lot of the original faces, the small (and large-scale) human figures, and engage with research, procurement of rolling stock, landscaping, backgrounds, and peripheral things like smoke effects. I suppose for the first series, it was about eighteen months in the making, from initial pilot episode to completion. I wasn’t party to the logistics of the actual filming, but we had a tight schedule to build all of the set-pieces that would furnish the model locations for the storyboarded episodes.
Out of all proportions….
I’m not sure that any of us involved in the actual build, had an inkling of how significant ‘Thomas And Friends’ would become; but on reflection I think it does have something to do with the care that went into its development and construction. In the event, Clearwater Films would not have a particularly extended life as a company - I was remote from management, so didn’t have much of an idea of how it was being run. In retrospect, any revenue generated by the series seems not to have found its way back as working capital. There were political struggles, jealousies, recriminations that I was on the sidelines of, such that an offer I had once filming had started - to join Red Baloon Films in Central London as Art Director, came as a blessed, and welcome relief. By this time, I had begun to dabble in animating simple scenes, and I would soon become much more closely involved in the filming process…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V2nL5sSSvd0
Gordon & Thomas from the first series of Thomas The Tank Engine
Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz… The Vogon Captain -BBC Hitchhiker’s Guide….
- Dateianhänge
-
-
-
Was man tief in seinem Herzen besitzt, kann man nicht durch den Tod verlieren.
J.W.v.Goethe
J.W.v.Goethe
Re: Tim Staffell Newsletter
Broad Horizons Part II
It opens out like a flower........
Tim Staffell
Oct 21
Liberated from the confinng straightjacket of my early grounding in the blues, and subsequently ‘pure’ rock, I had absorbed first the songs of greats like David Gates, Jim Webb, Bob Dylan, Lennon & McCartney (of course), Holland,Dozier, Holland, Smokey Robinson, and a broad range of contemporary material before I discovered the Great American Songbook. From there I began to take an interest in an even wider remit. Frank Zappa’s irreverence and articulate perceptions of the music business hooked me in, and from there I began to notice individual players and soloists, and more importantly, what set them apart and gifted them with the skills that they evidenced. A particular epiphany for me was the gifting to me of the book ‘Bird’ - the biography of the great tenor player Charlie Parker. I had acquired a 7” E.P. (extended play) vinyl of four tracks of his at around this time, and his melodic imterpretations hooked me in. Given the social and economic difficulties that Black Americans had faced during his time, Parker’s skill as a player was a living rebuttal of the prejudice that prevailed; musically, though, there were strong resonances with my own responses to my aspirations, my self-confidence and the durability of my motivation...
The Mothers of Invention’s ‘Raspberry’ to the masses.
It opens out like a flower........
Tim Staffell
Oct 21
Liberated from the confinng straightjacket of my early grounding in the blues, and subsequently ‘pure’ rock, I had absorbed first the songs of greats like David Gates, Jim Webb, Bob Dylan, Lennon & McCartney (of course), Holland,Dozier, Holland, Smokey Robinson, and a broad range of contemporary material before I discovered the Great American Songbook. From there I began to take an interest in an even wider remit. Frank Zappa’s irreverence and articulate perceptions of the music business hooked me in, and from there I began to notice individual players and soloists, and more importantly, what set them apart and gifted them with the skills that they evidenced. A particular epiphany for me was the gifting to me of the book ‘Bird’ - the biography of the great tenor player Charlie Parker. I had acquired a 7” E.P. (extended play) vinyl of four tracks of his at around this time, and his melodic imterpretations hooked me in. Given the social and economic difficulties that Black Americans had faced during his time, Parker’s skill as a player was a living rebuttal of the prejudice that prevailed; musically, though, there were strong resonances with my own responses to my aspirations, my self-confidence and the durability of my motivation...
The Mothers of Invention’s ‘Raspberry’ to the masses.
- Dateianhänge
-
Was man tief in seinem Herzen besitzt, kann man nicht durch den Tod verlieren.
J.W.v.Goethe
J.W.v.Goethe
Re: Tim Staffell Newsletter
1984: One Red Balloon.....
I cut my teeth on film & animation
Tim Staffell
Oct 27
It was the year that we discovered that George Orwell was closer to the truth than expected. The broadcast commercial industry was booming; in the service of the perpetually expanding economy, film production companies were popping up everywhere. Jaded by my experience at Clearwater, and disappointed with the inneffective and insensitive management, I jumped at the chance to join a small outfit in Central London who were fielding a number of commercials directors and taking on work from all over Europe. I was initially employed as Art Director; supplied with a car, a parking spot, and a retainer, and so joined the team working on a number of medium-profile brands from across Europe. The first such film that I became - I’ll say ‘embroiled’ in - (because it turned out to be a an Anglo-Italian political joust), was for the Italian company Motta, whose flagship product Pannetone, was up for a Christmas relaunch using the best SFX that the UK had to offer. I have to say that we did a cracking job. We built a HUGE model set stretching back into the darkness of Filmfair’s studio out near the airport - Twinkling Alpine village in the distance, sweeping fields of glistening white snow, and a huge forest of miniature Christmas trees in the foreground, branches draped with literally THOUSANDS of fibre-optic harnesses, each fed by a projector complete with rotating colour wheel. The effect was quite astounding.
There’s Always a Catch…..
Yes, it was spectacular, (and expensive)… but the fly in the ointment was Luciano the Art Director from Milan. He hated it. For years he’d presided over a procession of safe, live action Motta Christmas commercials, and suddenly, the agency wanted to change tack and go for some cutting edge model animation. It was a fiasco. We couldn’t get beyond his incessant need to keep changing things. Now one of the differences between stop-frame animation and live action is the sheer logistics of setting up a shot. With live action, you can shoot your scene with actors, and then, spontaneously, if an idea occurs, you can shoot a different version, and the ability to create ‘on the fly’, as it were, is a major component of a good director’s vocabulary. Real-world Stop-frame, especially if it is pre-synched to a soundtrack, needs to be written like music and bar-charted. Luciano didn’t like that, he didn’t have any experience of animation, aand didn’t see why we couldn’t shoot endless variations. We had to school him. With Live-Action, 35mm film passes through the gate of a camera at 24 frames per second, if an animated shot takes, shall we say four seconds, then that’s roughly a hundred frames. A complex animated set up might take ten minutes to move every element before the next single-frame is taken. So that’s around a thousand minutes, or a little over SIXTEEN hours for a single four-second shot. (from a thirty-second commercial) That’s roughly two days of studio time - in those days it was very impractical to stop a shot mid-way and carry on the next day, because physical elements in the set could relax under gravity overnight - lights start up with a slightly different colour temperature, flag or reflector stands might sag a little. I’m exaggerating somewhat; these days it’s much easier to digitally process things and minimise the glitches that used to be impossible to resolve back in the day. Anyway, We got it (nearly) right in the end. Luciano wasn’t happy, but the agency and Motta were - so we moved on…
Cutting My Teeth…..
I’d been working as an Art Director for a few months for the company - Red Balloon Films, when the Executive Producer said to me - ‘Why don’t you shoot a short animated film of your own, and then we can sell you as a director, too…’ This was a great opportunity. I’d been around commercials studios for around four years by this time; watched countless commercials being set up and filmed - sat through production meetings, discussed shots, got to know cameras, lenses, lighting - rigging, and the process of calibrating model and camera movements in single-frame detail well enough to sit in the director’s chair. So I made my film - it was a minute’s worth of glorified product shots (sadly lost in the archives, somewhere) - I made the models (fruit, amd little sculpts) - storyboarded the succession of shots, bar-charted the thing to the opening of Beethoven’s ‘Waldstein’ sonata, and we shot it over a week, (I think), in the company’s studios out near the airport.
The opening shot was somewhat concerning. We were masked and gloved because it involved placing progressively coalescing drops of mercury on to a flat surface in time with the music, until they formed a mirror, which we then carefully replaced with a conventional glass one. Then the action began, reflected in the mirror, and the film proceeded. Fruit sequentially fell into shot, was rolled away, transformed and animated; the surface dissolved into a richly textured oak table, ,and the film drew together as a panorama of a carefully arranged composite of fruit, cheese, wine - silver bowl, and tastefully composed velevt drape…. the point being to create a stunning ‘beauty’ shot that would be attractive to a potential advertiser as an example of what we could achieve as a company, with me at the helm… ‘Look how good we can make your product appear!’
The Balloon Bursts…..
In the event, my career with Red Balloon Films as a director amounted to about fourteen films - European Commercials, and ‘science clips’ (product demos) - It was a stimulating time, I learned a lot, and it prepared me for my next professional engagement - with Oxford Scientific Films, who at that time were the premier natural history film unit in the UK. They possessed an armoury of cutting edge camera equipment, with motion-control rigs, high-speed capture, and rooms full of novel rigging gear. which I was very happy to employ as a director for their commercial wing…. Mostly, I shot the short, ‘in-commercial’ scientific product demos, close-ups of washing powder doing it’s thing - shampoo curing dandruff, milk splashing in slow-motion onto cornflakes, etc etc. In these cases I would make the model, create a storyboard, and film the sequence. I lasted for about a year - I was actively engaged in several other roles in the industry at the same time. OSF Films tended not to venture into the realms of stop-motion animation, but I was animating commercials here and there, as the opportunity arose… Some of them were quite prestigious - I worked with the highly influential director Tony Kaye on a series of British Rail Commercials:
At this time I was on the cusp of broadening my remit in the industry, and striking up a relationship with FilmFair - and the great Animator Barry Leith - responsible for Paddington Bear - The Wombles, and various other high profile TV shows.. From then on there would be many, many commercials which were regarded highly by the establishment…. I either worked as an assistant - or I did the animation; When there was little animation work around (it came in phases) - I would concentrate on modelwork & illustration. By this time, my network was fairly extensive, and the work didn’t have too many gaps in it…..
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qZ8e0PLFDeY
An Electron Microscope Image - part of a Washing Powder Commercial
Liquid Mercury
I cut my teeth on film & animation
Tim Staffell
Oct 27
It was the year that we discovered that George Orwell was closer to the truth than expected. The broadcast commercial industry was booming; in the service of the perpetually expanding economy, film production companies were popping up everywhere. Jaded by my experience at Clearwater, and disappointed with the inneffective and insensitive management, I jumped at the chance to join a small outfit in Central London who were fielding a number of commercials directors and taking on work from all over Europe. I was initially employed as Art Director; supplied with a car, a parking spot, and a retainer, and so joined the team working on a number of medium-profile brands from across Europe. The first such film that I became - I’ll say ‘embroiled’ in - (because it turned out to be a an Anglo-Italian political joust), was for the Italian company Motta, whose flagship product Pannetone, was up for a Christmas relaunch using the best SFX that the UK had to offer. I have to say that we did a cracking job. We built a HUGE model set stretching back into the darkness of Filmfair’s studio out near the airport - Twinkling Alpine village in the distance, sweeping fields of glistening white snow, and a huge forest of miniature Christmas trees in the foreground, branches draped with literally THOUSANDS of fibre-optic harnesses, each fed by a projector complete with rotating colour wheel. The effect was quite astounding.
There’s Always a Catch…..
Yes, it was spectacular, (and expensive)… but the fly in the ointment was Luciano the Art Director from Milan. He hated it. For years he’d presided over a procession of safe, live action Motta Christmas commercials, and suddenly, the agency wanted to change tack and go for some cutting edge model animation. It was a fiasco. We couldn’t get beyond his incessant need to keep changing things. Now one of the differences between stop-frame animation and live action is the sheer logistics of setting up a shot. With live action, you can shoot your scene with actors, and then, spontaneously, if an idea occurs, you can shoot a different version, and the ability to create ‘on the fly’, as it were, is a major component of a good director’s vocabulary. Real-world Stop-frame, especially if it is pre-synched to a soundtrack, needs to be written like music and bar-charted. Luciano didn’t like that, he didn’t have any experience of animation, aand didn’t see why we couldn’t shoot endless variations. We had to school him. With Live-Action, 35mm film passes through the gate of a camera at 24 frames per second, if an animated shot takes, shall we say four seconds, then that’s roughly a hundred frames. A complex animated set up might take ten minutes to move every element before the next single-frame is taken. So that’s around a thousand minutes, or a little over SIXTEEN hours for a single four-second shot. (from a thirty-second commercial) That’s roughly two days of studio time - in those days it was very impractical to stop a shot mid-way and carry on the next day, because physical elements in the set could relax under gravity overnight - lights start up with a slightly different colour temperature, flag or reflector stands might sag a little. I’m exaggerating somewhat; these days it’s much easier to digitally process things and minimise the glitches that used to be impossible to resolve back in the day. Anyway, We got it (nearly) right in the end. Luciano wasn’t happy, but the agency and Motta were - so we moved on…
Cutting My Teeth…..
I’d been working as an Art Director for a few months for the company - Red Balloon Films, when the Executive Producer said to me - ‘Why don’t you shoot a short animated film of your own, and then we can sell you as a director, too…’ This was a great opportunity. I’d been around commercials studios for around four years by this time; watched countless commercials being set up and filmed - sat through production meetings, discussed shots, got to know cameras, lenses, lighting - rigging, and the process of calibrating model and camera movements in single-frame detail well enough to sit in the director’s chair. So I made my film - it was a minute’s worth of glorified product shots (sadly lost in the archives, somewhere) - I made the models (fruit, amd little sculpts) - storyboarded the succession of shots, bar-charted the thing to the opening of Beethoven’s ‘Waldstein’ sonata, and we shot it over a week, (I think), in the company’s studios out near the airport.
The opening shot was somewhat concerning. We were masked and gloved because it involved placing progressively coalescing drops of mercury on to a flat surface in time with the music, until they formed a mirror, which we then carefully replaced with a conventional glass one. Then the action began, reflected in the mirror, and the film proceeded. Fruit sequentially fell into shot, was rolled away, transformed and animated; the surface dissolved into a richly textured oak table, ,and the film drew together as a panorama of a carefully arranged composite of fruit, cheese, wine - silver bowl, and tastefully composed velevt drape…. the point being to create a stunning ‘beauty’ shot that would be attractive to a potential advertiser as an example of what we could achieve as a company, with me at the helm… ‘Look how good we can make your product appear!’
The Balloon Bursts…..
In the event, my career with Red Balloon Films as a director amounted to about fourteen films - European Commercials, and ‘science clips’ (product demos) - It was a stimulating time, I learned a lot, and it prepared me for my next professional engagement - with Oxford Scientific Films, who at that time were the premier natural history film unit in the UK. They possessed an armoury of cutting edge camera equipment, with motion-control rigs, high-speed capture, and rooms full of novel rigging gear. which I was very happy to employ as a director for their commercial wing…. Mostly, I shot the short, ‘in-commercial’ scientific product demos, close-ups of washing powder doing it’s thing - shampoo curing dandruff, milk splashing in slow-motion onto cornflakes, etc etc. In these cases I would make the model, create a storyboard, and film the sequence. I lasted for about a year - I was actively engaged in several other roles in the industry at the same time. OSF Films tended not to venture into the realms of stop-motion animation, but I was animating commercials here and there, as the opportunity arose… Some of them were quite prestigious - I worked with the highly influential director Tony Kaye on a series of British Rail Commercials:
At this time I was on the cusp of broadening my remit in the industry, and striking up a relationship with FilmFair - and the great Animator Barry Leith - responsible for Paddington Bear - The Wombles, and various other high profile TV shows.. From then on there would be many, many commercials which were regarded highly by the establishment…. I either worked as an assistant - or I did the animation; When there was little animation work around (it came in phases) - I would concentrate on modelwork & illustration. By this time, my network was fairly extensive, and the work didn’t have too many gaps in it…..
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qZ8e0PLFDeY
An Electron Microscope Image - part of a Washing Powder Commercial
Liquid Mercury
- Dateianhänge
-
-
Was man tief in seinem Herzen besitzt, kann man nicht durch den Tod verlieren.
J.W.v.Goethe
J.W.v.Goethe
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