By Kirkd For the last few weeks I’ve been reading the rather spesh blog of Gavin Rothery and todays posts was a collection of posts about Mars Attacks. Not just the film but the trading cards as well and it reminded me of my days back when I was roaming the country trying to meet with companies for work experience while finishing my degree.
One of the companies I contacted was Mackinnon & Saunders based back up in Altrincham outside Manchester, they made a name for themselves producing models for stop motion productions and at the time had worked with Cosgrove Hall creating puppets for ‘Wind in the Willows’. They have a huge portfolio of work that includes Bob the Builder, Cabbage Patch kids and Mars Attacks but I didn’t know that at the time, I had written to loads of companies trying to get to visit and was invited along to visit their studio back around 96 or 97 and found this chap greeting me just inside the door as I arrived.
I managed to find their funny little building tucked away at the end of a Metrolink tram ride from the centre of Manchester and, being a young and somewhat shy geek in training, I spent ages trying to build up the nerve to knock. When I finally got up the nerve I was met by a nice bloke who I seem to remember bore a rather scary resemblance to Sam Neill (same eyes, it freaked me out at the time) I can’t remember a name of anyone there but I do remember the insides of the building, it was like a virtual paradise to me. Tools, work benches, more P38 than you could shake a fleet of rusty cars at and some stunning models. There was a bunch of half finished Cabbage Patch dolls puppets being worked on which, at the time, I was a bit annoyed at. I’d managed to get in and I wanted to see stuff like the Sandman which I had seen on one of the channel 4 animation festivals recently but that was just my impatience and wanting to see ‘cool stuff’. Aaaa youth.
Anyway after being guided around by ‘Sam’ I was ushered upstairs and met one half of Mackinnon and Saunders. To this day I have no idea which one it was, I think I was still in shock at the martian downstairs and now I was in a small white room with a dozen or so models and kits around the walls. I remember a Judge Dredd kit and a couple of other puppets from animations but most of my attention was on the man I was talking to. One of the first things he asked me was if I had brought anything to show him and I realised I hadn’t. In my rather stupid naive way I hadn’t brought anything and to this day I regret it. I did talk to him about some ideas I had and one of them was to do with a piece of music I wanted to animate to. After a chat for a while I left but before I did I asked if I could take a picture of the Martian. I was told yes as long as it wasn’t to be used in any magazines or some kinds of work (does the internet count?).
I snapped one photo, said goodbye and shuffled off happily.
I almost forgot one last thing which was the whole point of this post… As I was talking to ‘Sam’ he told me that they had made a whole load of the martians to be developed as stop motion puppets but at full size. The idea was that Tim Burton was going to do Mars Attacks as stop motion but it all went digital instead thanks to ILM I think. They made around 10-15 full sized (five feet tall) martians but they didn’t get used as stop motion, instead they got shipped over to the States from the UK and got used as dead bodies at the end of the film when the clear up is taking place. ‘Sam’ told me that one of them went missing somewhere between the UK and the USA and that it was probably the only time a martian had been abducted by a human.