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Though I had William Creber's studio
drawings of the craft, they did not reflect the actual models built by the Twentieth Century-Fox Carpenters. There was a lot of ' Model Builder license' and undocumented Art Department changes as work progressed
during their construction back in the early sixties. The miniatures are clearly at odds with the studio drawings I have of the vehicle, yet the old Aurora kit of the FS-1 is faithful to those drawings. Set within
the miniatures door may be the nozzle end of a smoke flair mounting tube?
As applied to effects miniatures the word 'practical' identifies features of the miniature that are fabricated to perform specific
functions. If the studio drawings indicate to the Model Builders that the miniatures hatch has to be 'practical' it means that that hatch has to mimic, to some degree, the operation of a real (prototype) hatch; it
has to open and close in a realistic manner. Further, keeping with the hatch example here, if the practicality of operation extends to the need of having the miniatures hatch hand-wheel turning and working a locking
ring or array of securing dogs, then that more complex requirement will be outlined by narrative and/or a detailed auxiliary drawing and built into the mechanism. The Art Department dictates, the
Carpenter/Prop/Miniature/Paint Shop does.
Practical features incorporated by an FS-1 effects miniature would included: air-bubble generator to leave a visible wake through the water;
lit searchlights; opening hatches; liquid dye ejection (not confirmed); operational manipulator claw arms; deploying/ retracting landing gear; operational landing arresting hook; interior detailing and lighting;
mounting for smoke-flair; very light weight for 'Lydecker rig' aerial work; and had to have the mass and robustness to survive high-speed water impacts at the effects pond during shots representing the FLYING
SUBMARINE making the transition from air to water 'flight'.
As the FS-1 Effects miniature(s) had to do so many things for so many episodes it would have been impossible to incorporate all the above
features into one model. The solution was a common one for the industry: make several FS-1 miniatures, each outfitted to perform one or more of the above functions. Making many models of a like subject, each
incorporating one or more special features, though not an elegant solution, does make good sense.
Multiple miniatures, all externally looking the same (well … ideally they would all look the same), reduces single unit complexity and
provides the production crew with 'backup' miniatures - in the event of damage or loss of a filming miniature, a replacement could quickly be rigged and pressed into service, providing the scene being shot did not
demand so specialized a task that no other FS-1 miniatures would do. In the motion picture/TV industry time … be it first (actor) or second (effects) unit work … is money!
onto part 2 Methodology
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