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."To give the effect of them walking through spaceships wegot a couple of beer kegs from the BBC club and actually walkedaround on the beer kegs while watching the screen, so whenthey're walking along you get these metallic footsteps instead ofthe rather unconvincing wooden ones you would have got.Ittook ages to do, but it paid off."I did all the effects for the computer graphics - the filmwould arrive with nothing except for Peter Jones's voice.I had togo through it doing all the sound effects and the music tracks aswell.All the little beeps and explosions and things, which tookages to do - quite time-consuming.The TV series was interestingto work on, although frankly I preferred the radio series."The necessity of getting the Hitchhiker's scripts to the screensomewhere within the budget was responsible for a certainamount of technical innovation.Alan Bell is proudest of hisdevelopment of a new special effects process of doing `glass shots'.A glass shot, in cinematic tradition, consists of erecting atower with a painting done on glass, high in the studio, thenfilming through it, thus giving the illusion that the glass paintingis part of the picture.(The long shot of the Vogon hold in the firstepisode, for example, was done like this.) It's a complicated,fiddly, and expensive process.Bell's solution was simple: scenes requiring matte shots werefilmed or taped, then a photographic blow-up of one framewould be made.From the photos, paintings would be made.Thepaintings would be photographed as slides, and the previouslyfilmed segment would be matched up and inlaid into the paintedshot.This was quicker and easier than painting on glass, and isperhaps best displayed in the `pier at Southend' sequence, whenonly a small section of the pier was built in the studio.The rest isa perfectly aligned matte painting.The plot of the television series is nearest to the plot of thetwo records.From Magrathea the travellers are blown straight toMilliways, and, leaving there in a stolen stunt ship, we followArthur and Ford to prehistoric Earth, where the series finishes.The places where the Hitchhiker's TV succeeded best andfailed worst were places where Douglas had written somethinginto the radio series that could not be done on television.Thenarration sequences are an excellent example: one does not needlengthy narrations on television; however, being stuck with them,Douglas needed to work out how to make them work, and cameup with the graphics concept.As Douglas explained: "What made it work was the fact thatit is impossible to transfer radio to television.We had to findcreative solutions to problems in a way you wouldn't have had toif you were writing something similar for television immediately."The medium dictates the style of the show, and transferringfrom one to another means you're going against the grain thewhole time.It's the point where you go against the grain that youcome up with the best bits.The bits that were the easiest totransfer were the least interesting bits of the TV show."The idea of readouts from the book itself done in computergraphics form was that kind of thing.So you get little drawings,diagrams, all the words the narrator is saying, plus furtherexpansion - footnotes and little details - all coming out at youfrom the screen.You can't possibly take it all in."I like the idea of a programme where, when you get to theend of it, you feel you didn't get it all.There are so manyprogrammes that are half an hour long and at the end of it you'rehalf an hour further into your life with nothing to show for it.Ifyou didn't get it all, that's much more stimulating."I wasn't as pleased with the TV series as I was with theradio series, because I missed the intimacy of the radio work.Television pictures stifle the picturing facilities of the mind.Iwanted to step over that problem by packing the screen with somuch information that more thought, not less, was provoked bythe readers.Sometimes what you see is less exciting than whatyou envisage.*************************************************CUT TO MODEL SHOT OF THE SHIP.THE MISSILES ARE ON THE POINT OFHITTING IT WHEN THE SKY EXPLODESWITH BEWILDERING COLOURS AND AMONTAGE OF TOTALLY INCONGRUOUSIMAGES.THESE SHOULD INCLUDEDISTORTED PICTURES OF THEPASSENGERS, STARS, MONKEYS, STAPLINGMACHINES, TREES, CHEESE SOUFFLES.INOTHER WORDS, A BRIEF VISION OFMADNESS.INCLUDED SHOULD ALSO BE ASPERM WHALE AND A BOWL OFPETUNIAS.WE GO BACK INSIDE THEBRIDGE.EVERYTHING IS HIGGLEDY-PIGGELDY.THERE ARE A VERY LARGE NUMBER OFMELONS LYING ABOUT
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