Modelmaker Bill Pearson's Portfolio & 35mm/Digital Photos (UPDATED 17/12/14)

EDChainsaws

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UPDATE 8: New material added 02/05/15; 43 new photos in the first 'Loose Photos Folders' download (covering Dr Who, Flash Gordon, Dan Dare, Day Of The Triffids, Outland, Crash, Red Dwarf Series 8, Saurus, The Zone, The Demon Headmaster).



UPDATE 7: New material added 25/02/15; 43 new photos in the first 'Loose Photos Folders' download (covering Crash, Space Precinct, and a few more misc photos). 28 pages of design work have been added into the 'The Zone - Design Notes' PDf within the 'Scripts & Extras' download. Finally two more video files have been added into the 'Bill Pearson's Video Files' download; Red Dwarf Series 8 - Bill's Modelmaking Featurette, and Gerry Anderson's Space Precinct Model Promo Reel.



UPDATE 6: New material added 14/12/14; 14 new photos in the first 'Loose Photos Folders' download (covering Blake's 7, Alien, Dr Who, Flash Gordon, Day Of The Triffids & Red Dwarf Series 8), along with scans of Bill's Starturn - A Scot's Odyssey script along with it's prospective soundtrack. Hopefully be adding more material next week.



UPDATE 5: New material added 06/12/14; 89 new photos across the two 'Loose Photos Folders', along with scans of Bill's Red Dwarf Christmas Special script, and another of Bill's scripts called Tales Of Tomorrow too. Hopefully be adding more material next week.



UPDATE 4: Two bits of news, I've spent some time over Christmas designing a website around all the material which has been preserved, which Bill can use as a professional portfolio type website for prospective clients, something he doesn't currently have. You can see that here;

http://www.bookofthedead.ws/bill_pearson/

I've tried to somewhat go after the look of Alien in the design, using a whole shedload of CSS trickery to do things like round off all the corners and embed a font called MicroExtendFLF, which is a replica of the font used heavily in Letraset detailing in 80's Sci-Fi. Anway, I should be meeting up with Bill next week to help sort though all the stuff we put into his storage, and there will no doubt be more material found which I can scan and add here, and on that linked website.




UPDATE 3: New material added 23/12/14 after meeting up with Bill again; a DVD quality copy of Bill's June 2013 Two Hour Lecture At 'The City Of Glasgow College' has been added for download, along with a scanned copy of Bills personally written script for The Zone, which includes some rough design sketches for props & models. Find links for both at the bottom of this post.



UPDATE 2: New material added 17/12/14 after meeting up with Bill again; he gave me ten CD-Rs & DVD-Rs to add here. Firstly we have new photos in the 'Loose Photos Folder 2' download. 304 digital photos from Alien Vs Predator (2004), 154 from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (2005), 357 from Casino Royale (2006), and 512 from Moon (2009), that's a total of 1327 new photos.

Separately there are three new video files to download in one ZIP file, there's 15mins of Casino Royal behind the scenes camcorder footage from the model shoots back in 2006, a Dog Star Promo DVD shot by Bill and his crew in 2005 to use as a fund raising tool, and a Red Dwarf Christmas Special Promo DVD also shot in 2005, to raise interest in new episodes of Red Dwarf, both of which run around 6mins. They're MPEG files copied 1:1 from the original DVD without re-compression.

Hopefully next time I see Bill I'll be getting a DVD quality copy of June 2013 Two Hour Lecture At 'The City Of Glasgow College', which I can add here too. I'm also hoping to be able to do high quality scans of the rest of Bill's transparency slides (the ones used in his lecture), but they've been packed away into storage and won't be accessible till January or February.




UPDATE 1: New material added 14/12/14 after meeting up with Bill; 12 transparency slide scans & 179 digital photos (found in the 'Loose Photos Folder' download). Hopefully more slide scans should be added soon. Have also separated out the downloads so people only need to download the new material, along with adding a downloadable MP4 version of Bill's June 2013 Two Hour Lecture At 'The City Of Glasgow College'.




Bill Pearson's Portfolio & 35mm/Digital Photos

Hi folks, around the end of October 2014, a good friend of mine; British 40-year veteran movie modelmaker Bill Pearson, asked me to scan eighteen old 35mm photos from his portfolio and post them on the EagleTransporter.com modelmaking forums for people there to see. They covered various models he made for films such as Dan Dare, Flash Gordon, Dr Who & Day Of The Triffids. I posted them, and that was that.

space_precinct_(1994_C_bill_pearson_-_600dpi)_-_photo_90.jpg

A few weeks later, I was helping Bill move from his old workshop in Shepperton Studios (I work just a few doors down from him), and I came across a biscuit tin full of old photos up on a shelf. I had a quick look and thought some of them looked interesting, so I asked if I could borrow the box and scan some of them, which I did, around hundred (roughly a quarter of them). Bill would never have the time to do this, so he was happy for someone else to get them out there, as they were just going to be boxed up and put into storage. A few days later I came across a second biscuit tin & A4 envelope both packed with photos, so I borrowed these and scanned another hundred or so (again roughly a quarter of the total). Then I found another pile a few days later, and another envelope a few days after that, and then I though I might as well scan his portfolios, so retrieved those from storage. I scanned a total of 438 loose photos and 147 portfolio pages, along with 12 transparency slides, and the majority of the images have never been seen before. I also got copied ten CD-Rs & DVD-Rs containing 1327 digital photos, along with 179 photos copied from Bills camera. They roughly cover a period from Alien in 1979 up to his latest projects for 2014/15. Around 2004, Bill started using a digital camera rather than 35mm SLR, so many of those digital photos have been copied over rather than scanned. The main list of films covered is as follows;

Blake's 7 (1978)
Alien (1979)
Dr Who (Undated)
Flash Gordon (1980)
Dan Dare (Undated)
Day Of The Triffids (1981)
Outland (1981)
Crash (1984)
Roy Chubby Brown's UFO (1993)
Space Precinct (1994)
Nostradamus (1994)
Bugs Series 2 (1996)
The Borrowers (1997)
Masterminds (1997)
Lost In Space (1998)
Red Dwarf Series 8 (1999)
The Astronaut's Wife (1999)
Wing Commander (1999)
Notting Hill (1999)
Battlefield Earth (2000)
The Parole Officer (2001)
Die Another Day (2002)
Thunderbirds Movie (2004)
Alien Vs Predator (2004)
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (2005)
Casino Royale (2006)
Moon (2009)
Jaime Oliver's Dubai Cooking Show (2009)
Prometheus (2012)
Edge of Tomorrow (2014)
Space Ark - Rough Model (2014)
The Man From UNCLE (2015)
Saurus (Never Made)
The Zone (Never Made)
Dog Star (Never Made)
Red Dwarf Christmas Special (Never Made)
Terry Gilliam's 1884 (Never Made)

There are also a good few odd and unidentified and/or undated photos as well. Every single loose photo available covering Alien, Dr Who, Flash Gordon, Outland, & Red Dwarf was scanned, everything else is a selection of the best photos that were there. Every single portfolio page was scanned too. The films people will probably be most interested in will be from his early days, but there are only a handful of those. This is simply because the photos he's kept from much earlier, only tend to be one or two of a finished model for use in a portfolio, rather than lots of photos taken during the making of each model. It's worth adding that some of the models & props depicted may have been partially or entirely made by others working with/for him, or even made by other people entirely, so I'm not crediting everything here to Bill, they're just Bill's photos.

All the physical photos have been scanned at 600dpi & saved as 90% quality JPEGs, any slides/negatives at 7200dpi, and digital photos copied 1:1 from the originals, so the quality is as good as it's going to get if anyone is using these as reference material. The source material quality really varied, taken with different cameras over the years, and some of the original photos were polaroids, some 3x5, 6x4, 5x7, and a handful larger. A number of the earliest photos look very red, having begun to fade. Also, a number of the images used in the second portfolio are ageing colour photocopies which have begun to degrade and leach, but some have held up better than others. I had access to just about everything that was available from Bill's workshop, which is the vast bulk of the material Bill has, along with some discs kept at home, so there probably isn't a whole load more stuff left to scan. Up for download you'll find the following;

Portfolio Folder 01 (© Bill Pearson - 600dpi).pdf (60.6mb, 12 Pages)
Portfolio Folder 02 (© Bill Pearson - 600dpi).pdf (841mb, 136 Pages)
Loose Photos Folder 01 (© Bill Pearson - 600dpi) (1.27GB, 813 Photos)
Loose Photos Folder 02 (© Bill Pearson - DigiPhotos) (1.45GB, 1329 Photos)
Scripts & Extras (© Bill Pearson - 300 & 600dpi) (267mb)
Bill Pearson's Video Files (DVD MPEG & MP4) (1.81GB)
Bill Pearson's June 2013 Two Hour Lecture At 'The City Of Glasgow College' (AC3 - 2CH - 48KHZ - 256K) (MPEG-2 - 704X576 - PAL 16x9) (1.35GB)

'Portfolio Folder 01' is Bill's original & oldest showcase, it's only twelve pages as many of it's former contents have been recycled into 'Portfolio Folder 02'; Bill's current showcase, which covers the main body of his work. None of the photos are titled or annotated, but many will be instantly recognisable to film fans. The two 'Loose Photos Folder's contain all the loose physical scanned & digital photos copied, arranged alphabetically by film title. 'Bill Pearson's Video Files' contains 15mins of Casino Royal behind the scenes footage of the 2006 model shoots, a 2005 Dog Star Promo, intended as a fund raising tool, a 2005 Red Dwarf Christmas Special Promo to raise interest in new episodes, as well as an official Red Dwarf Series 8 DVD featurette on Bill's work, and finally a Gerry Anderson's Space Precinct Model Promo Reel. 'Bill Pearson's June 2013 Two Hour Lecture At 'The City Of Glasgow College'' was a lecture given by Bill covering the majority of his life's work with slides. It is available to watch in a compressed format online HERE, but I have included the full DVD version so people can watch it on their TVs.



Click to enlarge - Screenshots from Casino Royal Behind The Scenes Camcorder Footage



Click to enlarge - Screenshots from Dog Star Promo DVD



Click to enlarge - Screenshots from Red Dwarf Christmas Special Promo


Click to enlarge - Screenshots from Bill Pearson's June 2013 Two Hour Lecture At 'The City Of Glasgow College' DVD

One last note; Saurus, Dog Star, The Zone & the Red Dwarf Christmas Special were Bill's own personally written scripts. As of 2014, none have been realised into an actual films, but Bill has invested a huge amount of his spare time designing concepts and creating models & props for all four. You can download the script for The Zone in the links list at the bottom of this thread, and hopefully the other two scripts will be added soon.

All photos are © copyright Bill Pearson, so please do not reproduce or publish them without expressed permission. If you want to contact Bill with any work or interview opportunities, you can either PM me through the forums to pass on a message, or call Bill directly though Shepperton Film Studios (just outside London, England) on phone number 00 44 (0) 1932 59 2000. Enjoy!

Some Sample Photos

alien_(1979_C_bill_pearson_-_600dpi)_-_photo_01.jpg

Alien (1979)

dan_dare_(undated_C_bill_pearson_-_600dpi)_-_photo_02.jpg

Dan Dare (Undated)

dr_who_(undated_C_bill_pearson_-_600dpi)_-_photo_01.jpg

Dr Who (Undated)

dr_who_(undated_C_bill_pearson_-_600dpi)_-_photo_02.jpg

Dr Who (Undated)

flash_gordon_(1980_C_bill_pearson_-_600dpi)_-_photo_02.jpg

Flash Gordon (1980)

outland_(1981_C_bill_pearson_-_600dpi)_-_photo_06.jpg

Outland (1981)

space_precinct_(1994_C_bill_pearson_-_600dpi)_-_photo_27.jpg

Space Precinct (1994)

red_dwarf_series_8_(1999_C_bill_pearson_-_600dpi)_-_photo_06.jpg

Red Dwarf - Series 8 (1999)

battlefield_earth_(2000_C_bill_pearson_-_600dpi)_-_photo_25.jpg

Battlefield Earth (2000)


DOWNLOADS

Portfolio Folders (© Bill Pearson - 600dpi)
(148 Pages, 600dpi JPEGs at 90 Percent - 901MB)


Loose Photos Folder 01 (© Bill Pearson - 600dpi & DigiPhotos)
(813 Photos, 600dpi JPEGs at 90 Percent - 1.27GB)


Loose Photos Folder 02 (© Bill Pearson - 600dpi & DigiPhotos)
(1329 Photos, DigiPhoto JPEGs at 90 Percent - 1.45GB)


Scripts & Extras (© Bill Pearson - 300 & 600dpi)
(300 & 600dpi JPEGs at 85 Percent - 267MB)


Bill Pearson's Video Files (DVD MPEG & MP4)

Bill Pearson's June 2013 Two Hour Lecture At
'The City Of Glasgow College' DVD
(AC3 - 2ch - 48kHz - 192k) (MPEG-2 - 720x576 - PAL 16x9 - 1.35GB)
 
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Re: Modelmaker Bill Pearson's Portfolio & 35mm Photo Scans (Upgrade on previous threa

Very cool. I was 9 when the 1st Aliens came out. I loved that and The Trifads. Flash gorden too lol

Steel Roses
 
Re: Modelmaker Bill Pearson's Portfolio & 35mm Photo Scans (Upgrade on previous threa

Thank you very much ! Will download the file when Im home !
 
Re: Modelmaker Bill Pearson's Portfolio & 35mm Photo Scans (Upgrade on previous threa

Amazing! TFS with us:cool
 
Re: Modelmaker Bill Pearson's Portfolio & 35mm Photo Scans (Upgrade on previous threa

Unknown pics 02 and 15, plus page 5 and 6 in Portfolio Folder 02.pdf is from ("the only") danish scifi series "Crash ", which aired on Danish National Broadcast in 1984 (I remember is clearly :).

Bill were a consulting modelbuilder on that production

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0389599/?ref_=nm_flmg_act_49

here's a "behind the scenes" program .. it's in danish ... but shows how they vac-formed the big bodyparts for the Dragon Destroyers.

http://www.dr.dk/bonanza/serie/unge_og_satire/crash.htm?assetId=65678


and here's the entire series:

http://www.dr.dk/bonanza/serie/unge_og_satire/crash.htm

(it's weird ... and still in danish ..... ye be warned :D ) ...... it probably explain a lot about how I became who I am :D
 
Re: Modelmaker Bill Pearson's Portfolio & 35mm Photo Scans (Upgrade on previous threa

Bill lived and worked in Denmark for quite a while.

I'm seeing him tomorrow for lunch at Pinewood. Top bloke. One of a kind. One of the best people to work for in the industry.

That's awesome that you scanned his pics. Can't wait to have a look through them.
 
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Re: Modelmaker Bill Pearson's Portfolio & 35mm Photo Scans (Upgrade on previous threa

Scanning all these pics is a godsend. Thank you, EDCHainsaws and Bill Pearson! You are lords among men.
 
Re: Modelmaker Bill Pearson's Portfolio & 35mm Photo Scans (Upgrade on previous threa

Thanks to you and Bill for this, I'm already in love with the city pic from Battlefield Earth.
 
Re: Modelmaker Bill Pearson's Portfolio & 35mm Photo Scans (Upgrade on previous threa

Bill lived and worked in Denmark for quite a while.

I'm seeing him tomorrow for lunch at Pinewood. Top bloke. One of a kind. One of the best people to work for in the industry.

That's awesome that you scanned his pics. Can't wait to have a look through them.

Bugger a bit late, but if you ser Bill again could you please thank him for the work on Crash. That show (although perhaps a bit cheeky with today's eyes) had a huge impact on me as a kid. Remember I built the Destroyers in LEGO, and look where that got me :D

Could you ask him, if he has any more material from Crash. I have a dream of building a Studioscale Destroyer one day, and any help would be appreciated :)
 
Re: Modelmaker Bill Pearson's Portfolio & 35mm Photo Scans (Upgrade on previous threa

Thanx very much for scanning the pics, and thanx to Bill Pearson for the pics and the inspirational work of all these years... (y)thumbsup

Cheers,
Wasili
 
Re: Modelmaker Bill Pearson's Portfolio & 35mm Photo Scans (Upgrade on previous threa

Thanks very much for your efforts. I bought the surviving AVP Piston Bully miniature from Bill and this is the first time I have seen it before restoration and the other vehicles. Also nice to see the work on Red Dwarf and Moon.
 
Re: Modelmaker Bill Pearson's Portfolio & 35mm Photo Scans (Upgrade on previous threa

That's one of my Battlefield Earth pics!!! :) Got an album full of those, 30 rolls worth at least! One of my favorite movies to work on, destroying the models was just as much fun as making them.
 
Re: Modelmaker Bill Pearson's Portfolio & 35mm Photo Scans (Upgrade on previous threa

Amazing portfolio of work there, really beautiful minature work.
 
Re: Modelmaker Bill Pearson's Portfolio & 35mm Photo Scans (Upgrade on previous threa

Hi all, just a quick note to say I met up with Bill today, he bought along his SD card from his digital camera containing a fair number of photos from more recent productions, along with a number of transparency slides of some older material too. I've got a Plustek OpticFilm 8100 Film Scanner from Amazon on it's way and hope to do that scanning this weekend. Once I get the ability to scan slides, negatives & transparencies, that will open up a whole pile of further earlier stuff which I haven't previously posted.
 
Re: Modelmaker Bill Pearson's Portfolio & 35mm Photo Scans (UPDATED 14/12/14)

UPDATE 1: New material added 14/12/14 after meeting up with Bill; 12 transparency slide scans & 179 digital photos (found in the 'Loose Photos Folder' download). Hopefully more slide scans should be added soon. Have also separated out the downloads so people only need to download the new material, along with adding a downloadable MP4 version of Bill's June 2013 Two Hour Lecture At 'The City Of Glasgow College'.
 
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Re: Modelmaker Bill Pearson's Portfolio & 35mm Photo Scans (UPDATED 14/12/14)

Thanks for the update - those are great photos!

Just one thing, I think pictures 1,2, & 3 of the yellow station in the "Loose Photos" folder are from Bill's Saurus project rather than from Alien.

Can't wait to see more. Keep up the good work!
 
UPDATE 2: New material added 17/12/14 after meeting up with Bill again; he gave me ten CD-Rs & DVD-Rs to add here. Firstly we have new photos in the 'Loose Photos Folder 2' download. 304 digital photos from Alien Vs Predator (2004), 154 from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (2005), 357 from Casino Royale (2006), and 512 from Moon (2009), that's a total of 1327 new photos.

Separately there are three new video files to download in one ZIP file, there's 15mins of Casino Royal behind the scenes camcorder footage from the model shoots back in 2006, a Dog Star Promo DVD shot by Bill and his crew in 2005 to use as a fund raising tool, and a Red Dwarf Christmas Special Promo DVD also shot in 2005, to raise interest in new episodes of Red Dwarf, both of which run around 6mins. They're MPEG files copied 1:1 from the original DVD without re-compression.

Hopefully next time I see Bill I'll be getting a DVD quality copy of June 2013 Two Hour Lecture At 'The City Of Glasgow College', which I can add here too. I'm also hoping to be able to do high quality scans of the rest of Bill's transparency slides (the ones used in his lecture), but they've been packed away into storage and won't be accessible till January or February.
 
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UPDATE 3: New material added 23/12/14 after meeting up with Bill again; a DVD quality copy of Bill's June 2013 Two Hour Lecture At 'The City Of Glasgow College' has been added for download, along with a scanned copy of Bills personally written script for The Zone, which includes some rough design sketches for props & models. Find links for both at the bottom of the first post.
 
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UPDATE 4: Two bits of news, I've spent some time over Christmas designing a website around all the material which has been preserved, which Bill can use as a professional portfolio type website for prospective clients, something he doesn't currently have. You can see that here;

http://www.bookofthedead.ws/bill_pearson/

I've tried to somewhat go after the look of Alien in the design, using a whole shedload of CSS trickery to do things like round off all the corners and embed a font called MicroExtendFLF, which is a replica of the font used heavily in Letraset detailing in 80's Sci-Fi. Anway, I should be meeting up with Bill next week to help sort though all the stuff we put into his storage, and there will no doubt be more material found which I can scan and add here, and on that linked website.
 
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