Catacombs Reference Library
Space 1999 - ATV PRESS RELEASE

SPECIAL EFFECTS

The special effects provide a major challenge in the "SPACE 1999" series. They provide some of the most vivid, exciting and imaginative aspects of the productions and credit must go in particular to two men, Brian Johnson, designer and director of the special effects department, and special effects director Nick AIlder.

Brian Johnson is one of the most experienced and brilliant of Britain's special effects experts, responsible for the amazing events to be seen in such films as "Taste the Blood of Dracula", "When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth", "2001, A Space Odyssey", "Mosquito Squadron", "Something to Hide", "Nothing But the Night", "The Blockhouse", and "The Tamarind Seed".

For television, he has worked on "The Protectors", several episodes of "Budgie", "On the Buses", "Please Sir", "New Scotland Yard", and the Gerry and Sylvia Anderson puppet series "Thunderbirds".

His work has taken him on location to most parts of the world, including Venice, Spain, Denmark, Sweden, Germany, Austria, Italy and Barbados. But not exactly to the moon for "Space 1999". His work for this series has taken place at the specially equipped studios at Bray, near Windsor.

His job includes designing models, painting original artwork, floor effects and directing the combined skills of his highly efficient 12-man team of special effects and camera crew.

Born in Surrey, England, his ambition was to take up flying as a career, but he was incorrectly advised against it on medical grounds. Instead, he got a job with a company specialising in the making of television commercials and after a time found himself promoted to the laboratory. The next three-and-a-half years were spent working with cameras on a variety of film documentaries and TV commercials, and than as an assistant on feature films.

National Service, performing various duties in RAF Transport Command, interrupted his promising career, but when demobbed he found himself working on visual effects camerawork, a field in which he has specialised ever since.

Nick Allder was born into the film industry. His father, the late John Allder, was a camera engineer and Nick began his career as an assistant rostrum cameraman with a film company making commercials. Eight years later, he switched to camera special effects, at first working exclusively on motion pictures on films offering an enormous challenge to the special effects team.

Nick spent eleven months in Egypt working on the epic-scale "Khartoum", starring Charlton Heston; then the award-winning "A Man For All Seasons"; after this, to Malta for a thriller "Twist of Sand", then two years on the aerial process photography for the mammoth "The Battle of Britain". From the air, he went below the surface for the underwater photography on "Submarine X-1", and the underwater tank sequences for the Alistair Maclean thriller, "Fear is the Key Other films have included "The Music Lovers", "The Long Duel", "El Condor", "The Yellow Dog" and "Man of Gold".

Television has included "A War of Children" and "The Protectors".