DI Alex Drake
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Post by DI Alex Drake on May 12, 2020 16:17:32 GMT
Oh no! Really?? Why do they have to ruin everything? I remember discovering that (after I'd stopped watching) they added in girl trains . I can safely say that watching it as a 2/3/4/5 year old girl, I never once thought "oh no, there are no girl trains so I cannot relate to this" or "evidently my purpose in life is just to be one of the carriages". . It's just painful, all the ultra-PC cr*p. They introduced foreign accented trains during the UK produced era; which was a nice touch. When the US got hold of it, it became 100% PC.
There is even an Autistic Locomotive..... Don't even get me started on the "stereotypical" idea of Autism. Where it is assumed everyone on the spectrum has the same symptoms/traits. On the same point - "Sesame St" introduced a similar character recently - and that was done very well. (Considering it's US produced).
I was working at Shepperton Studios about 20something years ago, and was shown around the "Thomas" sets; people think it was one large layout. Each shot was a section of board with a working model railway; which they would wheel in to the rostrum area. There was sections for the Yard, Station, Hill, River, Smaller Station.
Each train had it's own drawer, with a collection of facial expressions that could be changed. This was all in "G" garden railway scale; then they had a couple of much larger fronts of trains (faces) for closeups. They had built a special camera cage, using a periscope/mirror arrangement, so the camera could get down at the level of the set. This was big budget Model Railwaying. The trains eyes were Radio Controlled.
Sorry for ruining the magic for everyone...... Not at all, you've always got interesting insights! I'm surprised actually that the models weren't bigger. I don't think I want to investigate modern Thomas. Sounds like painful viewing.
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DI Alex Drake
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Post by DI Alex Drake on May 12, 2020 16:19:32 GMT
Sorry for ruining the magic for everyone...... Well, that's ruined Alex's day, she thought they were actually alive. Don't be silly not even police officers are alive, let alone Thomas and his friends. But if you try and tell me Old Bear isn't real, I'll get the Guv to stamp on all your toys.
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Three Litre
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Post by Three Litre on May 12, 2020 16:21:14 GMT
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Sparky
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Post by Sparky on May 12, 2020 16:27:45 GMT
Not at all, you've always got interesting insights! I'm surprised actually that the models weren't bigger. I don't think I want to investigate modern Thomas. Sounds like painful viewing. In the "archive" in the loft I have a pile of "Central TV" Staff Magazines. One of them did a feature on "Thomas" during production of it's first series. (As it was Central who brought them for showing on ITV).
There are some photos - I'll scan them in and add them to the TV Studio related thread.
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DI Alex Drake
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Post by DI Alex Drake on May 12, 2020 17:15:43 GMT
Not at all, you've always got interesting insights! I'm surprised actually that the models weren't bigger. I don't think I want to investigate modern Thomas. Sounds like painful viewing. In the "archive" in the loft I have a pile of "Central TV" Staff Magazines. One of them did a feature on "Thomas" during production of it's first series. (As it was Central who brought them for showing on ITV).
There are some photos - I'll scan them in and add them to the TV Studio related thread. Looking forward to it, Sparky :)
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Post by Sam Tyler on May 12, 2020 18:09:20 GMT
I was working at Shepperton Studios about 20something years ago, and was shown around the "Thomas" sets; people think it was one large layout. Each shot was a section of board with a working model railway; which they would wheel in to the rostrum area. There was sections for the Yard, Station, Hill, River, Smaller Station.
Each train had it's own drawer, with a collection of facial expressions that could be changed. This was all in "G" garden railway scale; then they had a couple of much larger fronts of trains (faces) for closeups. They had built a special camera cage, using a periscope/mirror arrangement, so the camera could get down at the level of the set. This was big budget Model Railwaying. The trains eyes were Radio Controlled.
Sorry for ruining the magic for everyone...... Nothing ruined for me Sparks I'd guessed that it was all sectional as there just aren't the practicalities of having a large layout when sections of it wouldn't be used or accessible for filming. I'm surprised at them being G scale though, I was expecting O Gauge as the characters are clearly larger than OO/HO scale but don't appear to be as large as G scale. Interesting bit about the camera though as they wouldn't have had the smaller CCD sensors that cameras are equipped with today. I'm still looking for a small enough camera with decent image and inbuilt battery to put in a Scalextric car. I've seen people use Go-Pro cameras on a chassis to get the image quality but they are cumbersome, and I've also tried the USB memory stick sized cameras but they don't have image stabilisation. Sam.
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Cartman
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Post by Cartman on May 12, 2020 18:30:37 GMT
The latest tv version is awful. I remember the original books by the Reverend W Awdry from when I was a kid and they were much better.
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Sparky
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Post by Sparky on May 12, 2020 18:31:37 GMT
I was working at Shepperton Studios about 20something years ago, and was shown around the "Thomas" sets; people think it was one large layout. Each shot was a section of board with a working model railway; which they would wheel in to the rostrum area. There was sections for the Yard, Station, Hill, River, Smaller Station.
Each train had it's own drawer, with a collection of facial expressions that could be changed. This was all in "G" garden railway scale; then they had a couple of much larger fronts of trains (faces) for closeups. They had built a special camera cage, using a periscope/mirror arrangement, so the camera could get down at the level of the set. This was big budget Model Railwaying. The trains eyes were Radio Controlled.
Sorry for ruining the magic for everyone...... Nothing ruined for me Sparks I'd guessed that it was all sectional as there just aren't the practicalities of having a large layout when sections of it wouldn't be used or accessible for filming. I'm surprised at them being G scale though, I was expecting O Gauge as the characters are clearly larger than OO/HO scale but don't appear to be as large as G scale. Interesting bit about the camera though as they wouldn't have had the smaller CCD sensors that cameras are equipped with today. I'm still looking for a small enough camera with decent image and inbuilt battery to put in a Scalextric car. I've seen people use Go-Pro cameras on a chassis to get the image quality but they are cumbersome, and I've also tried the USB memory stick sized cameras but they don't have image stabilisation. Sam. It was originally shot on 16mm film.
Using the same type of camera they that would have been used on "Sweeney", "Minder" etc. Even they were small - they were still quite large, bulky and awkward to get into tight spaces - particularly if you want the camera at the same level as the characters. To get round it, they build a kind of periscope to attach to the front, so the camera could sit at a suitable height, but also get the right shot. I am sure, they moved on to 35mm a few series later - and those cameras were bigger!
As you say - these days, using CCD cameras would have been much easier. The Go Pro cameras aren't too bad quality either; same as some of those they have on drones.
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Post by Arthur Pringle on May 12, 2020 23:08:22 GMT
Never quite understood the massive popularity of Thomas The Tank Engine. I've not read Rev Awdry's books or watched the tv shows closely but putting names & faces to trains or any kind of inanimate object/machine strikes me as lazy, though I do like 'Ivor The Engine', maybe it's because he doesn't have a face. I mean you can put a pair of eyes & smiley mouth on virtually anything, a turd even, and 'create' a character, and I think many writers for children have done just that.
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Post by Sam Tyler on May 13, 2020 0:04:49 GMT
Fair comment Tiger, I see what you're saying but in my opinion that basic principle has worked for generations of children to feed their imagination and it continues to this day with so many other stories and programs. Not quite machines but you can go back a couple of hundred years to Beatrix Potter making characters and storylines based on various animals whether wild animals, farm animals or pets. My kids loved the stories and visiting Beatrix Potter's house. I'd never read the stories until we had our kids and they are perfect for a night time read when kids are at that wonderful age where every such story is 'magical'. Then when I was a kid we had Tales of the Riverbank where live creatures were given a voiceover, Ivor The Engine as you mentioned - but one thing Ivor had which Thomas missed out on was a resident dragon. We also had Morph, Gillespie etc blobs of plasticine with names, Bill and Ben the flowerpot men, all inanimate objects given names and characters. Wind forward to more recent decades and the likes of Disney's Toy Story where inanimate objects, in this case toys, come to life. We've seen Budgie the helicopter courtesy of Fergie, Bob the builder with his machines Scoop, Muck, Dizzy etc.
Personally I think it is clever rather than lazy, to give a creature or an inanimate object a name and character and to convey that to a child in a manner that makes the child understand and be able to differentiate between the good, bad or flawed traits of all those characters. It is a mild form of learning without the harshness and realities that humans bring.
Sam
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