19 Facts About Derek Meddings

Derek Meddings was a British film and television special effects designer.

Derek Meddings was initially noted for his work on the "Supermarionation" TV puppet series produced by Gerry Anderson, and later for the 1970s and 1980s James Bond and Superman film series.

Derek Meddings went to art school and, in the late 1940s, found work at Denham Studios, lettering credit titles.

Derek Meddings was credited with the special effects in Anderson's 1960 and 1962 series Supercar and Fireball XL5, being elevated to special effects director for Stingray for which he and Reg Hill designed the main models.

Derek Meddings became special effects supervisor for Thunderbirds, during which time he was responsible for the design of the Thunderbird machines themselves.

Derek Meddings was visual effects supervisor for all the Anderson puppet series of the late 1960s and Anderson's first live-action series, UFO, at the start of the 1970s.

Derek Meddings performed the same role on Anderson's three 1960s feature films, Thunderbirds Are Go, Thunderbird 6 and the live-action Doppelganger.

Derek Meddings first impressed producer Cubby Broccoli with some miniature effects that he had created for Live and Let Die.

Once Broccoli realised the economic advantages of building detailed models instead of expensive full-sized constructions, Derek Meddings was encouraged to come up with design concepts for the next film in the series, The Man with the Golden Gun.

Derek Meddings returned to the James Bond films in 1977 with The Spy Who Loved Me.

Derek Meddings designed and built the Lotus Esprit car which converted into a submersible, cleverly intercutting full-sized body shells with one-quarter-scale miniatures.

For Moonraker, Derek Meddings created and photographed miniatures of Drax's space shuttles and space station and realised the final space battle.

Derek Meddings was Visual Effects Supervisor on For Your Eyes Only.

In 1975, Derek Meddings created cost-effective model monsters which could be photographed in the same frame as the actors in the prehistoric adventure film The Land That Time Forgot.

Derek Meddings built and photographed the Krypton miniatures in addition to a large-scale model of the Hoover Dam.

Derek Meddings believed that he was asked to supervise the effects for Batman because director Tim Burton was a fan of his work on Thunderbirds.

Derek Meddings set up his own visual effects company, The Magic Camera Company, based at Lee International Studios in Shepperton.

Derek Meddings appeared once as an actor, in the role of Dr Stinson in Spies Like Us.

At the time of his death from colorectal cancer in 1995, Derek Meddings was engaged in post-production on the latest James Bond film, GoldenEye, on which his sons Mark and Elliott James was born on May 1973 and worked.