Dont Panic

by Dont Panic [lit]

  theoretically they could have sent me back to radio. I said I'd try

  to keep an eye on the occasional recording and rehearsal, but

  frankly I didn't have the time, and basically I had nothing to do

  with the TV show.

  "Alan Bell made a big point of this in the TV show, as when

  my credit comes up in the titles it explodes and shoots off into

  space...(It is true that John Lloyd's Associate Producer credit does explode during the end titles. However, according to Alan Bell, this is pure coincidence.)

  "Really, the only thing I did on the TV series was writing the

  original memo, and being in on a few early discussions to get things

  moving, and the BBC corporate machinations booted me out."

  Lloyd has mixed feelings about the director and producer of

  the series, Alan J.W. Bell, and on how the television shows

  eventually turned out.

  "I didn't like working with Alan. He's one of this breed of

  TV producers who... I'm not saying he isn't hardworking,

  because he is, but he wouldn't ever run over time, or overspend.

  He just wanted to get the job done. He's less interested in the

  script or the performance than he is in the logistics of how the

  programme gets made.

  "In some of the rehearsals I attended actors were saying the

  words in the wrong order, and mispronouncing them, and Alan

  wouldn't correct them. He was much more interested in the

  technical side - and technically he knew an awful lot. He was

  very bold and brave on the technical side. Some of the actual

  shots in Hitchhiker's are wonderful.

  "But it didn't work for me as a comic performance, because

  it wasn't being directed. They hadn't got old Perkins there; he's a

  real nitty-gritty man, the sort who would spend hours getting one

  sound effect right, worrying about the script and the attitude and

  all that, things which Alan would see as trivial and irritating.

  "I remember going to the editing of the pilot, and there were

  some terrible edits, and I told Alan he had to go back and do it

  again, because it just didn't work. His attitude was, `We haven't

  got any time - we've got to go on.'

  "Personally, I think Hitchhiker's on TV was not all it could

  have been. If it had been done properly it would have won all the

  awards. And the only evidence there is that it was a really original

  show are the computer graphics. Reading the scripts you'd think

  `Suddenly television has gone into the 1990s. This is unbelievable!'

  But then, most of the performances and filming were nowhere

  near as good as, say, Dr Who.

  "Alan is not a great original mind. Douglas is.

  "To give Alan Bell credit, it was a difficult job to do

  logistically, and you can't Belgium with TV the way you can with

  radio - the way Geoffrey would keep going till the last minute

  and keep actors hanging around while stuff was written. You

  can't do that with TV - there's a limit. There does have to be a

  grip on things which Douglas, well... I've co-produced things

  with him on radio, and he does tend to be a bit daffy. He tends to

  think you can go on forever. I suppose he's been a bit spoiled.

  "Alan did get the thing onto the air, which probably Douglas

  would never have done - and I can't say that I would have done,

  either!"

  It was the first time that Douglas had worked with someone

  on Hitchhiker's who he felt was less than sympathetic to his ideas

  and work. He wanted John Lloyd as producer, and he wanted

  Geoffrey Perkins around: the radio people he knew understood

  Hitchhiker's.

  This was not to be. Alan Bell was a television person, and

  had, as he admits, little time for people from radio who attempted

  to tell him his job.

  Geoffrey Perkins explains, "Television people tend to think

  that radio people don't know anything, which has an element of

  truth in it, but they tend to know more about scripts than people

  in TV ever do. And the TV people tended to think that Douglas

  didn't know what he was talking about.

  "Now, on radio, when Douglas burbled, one could say,

  `Okay, might try that,' or, `No, shut up'. But the TV attitude was

  that he didn't know what he was talking about. I read the first TV

  script and I thought it was one of the best scripts I'd ever seen.

  He'd thought up all that graphics stuff. It was absolutely brilliant."

  Ask people what they remember best of the Hitchhiker's TV

  series, and the answer is usually `the computer graphics'. The

  graphics - sequences apparently from the screen of the actual

  Hitchhiker's Guide - were incredibly detailed, apparently

  computer-created animated graphics, full of sight gags and in-

  jokes, and presumably designed for people with freeze-frame and

  slow-motion videos, since there was no way one could pick up on

  the complexities of the graphics sequences in a single watching at

  normal speed.

  Would one have noticed, for example, the cartoons of

  Douglas Adams himself, posing as a Sirius Cybernetics

  Corporation Advertising Executive, writing hard in the dolphin

  sequence, and in drag as Paula Nancy Millstone Jennings?(Douglas also made a couple of real-life appearances in the TV series. In Episode One he can be seen at the back of the pub, awaiting the end of the world with equanimity; in Episode Two he is the gentleman who withdraws large quantities of money from a bank, then takes off all his clothes and wades into the sea. Rumours of an out-takes tape (in which more of Douglas than is seemly is seen in this seene) abound. Douglas played this part because the actor who was meant to be doing it was moving house that day, and, an hour away from filming, Douglas stepped into the breach. As it were. During the filming of the series, and while he wasn't running naked into the sex, Douglas generally sat in a deckchair and did crosswords. Sometimes, according to a number of the netors and technicians, he fell off the chair, although none of them were quite sure why.)

  Could one have picked up on all the names and phone numbers

  of some of the best places in the universe to purchase, or dry out

  from, a Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster?

  One of the phone numbers in the graphics of Episode Six

  was that of a leading computer magazine who phoned Pearce

  Studios, responsible for the graphics, to ask which computer it

  was done on, and whether a flat-screen television was built into

  the book prop used on the show. The comment beside the phone

  number was not flattering.

  The computer graphics were all done by hand.

  In January 1980, animator and science fiction fan Kevin

  Davies was working for Pearce Studios in Hanwell, West

  London, when he heard the blipping and bleeping of Star Wars

  droid R2D2 from the BBC cutting rooms down the corridor. He

  wandered down to the cutting rooms and met Alan J.W. Bell, at

  that point engaged in cutting a sequence of Jim'll Fix It in which a

  child got to visit the Star Wars set.

  Bell discovered in Davies not only a Hitchbiker's fan with

  communicable enthusiasm, but also through Davies, he discovered

  Pearce Studios, led by Rod Lord, who were commissioned to do

  the graphics for the TV show (their quote for Episode One was

  half that of t
he BBC's own animation department, while the trial

  section produced by the BBC's own animators was so appalling it

  was unusable).

  Pearce Studios, under animator Rod Lord, did not possess a

  graphics computer. What they did have was animators, who

  worked in a very computerish style.

  WARNING! TECHNICAL BIT - HOW IT WAS DONE:

  The sound track of Peter Jones's voice was broken down for

  timing, and notes of frame numbers per line of dialogue were

  taken. Pencil drawings were made, then punched acetate cels were

  laid on top, and the pictures were traced with pens. The lettering

  was a combination of dry transfer and set on an IBM typewriter.

  The artwork (black drawings and lettering on a clear cel) would

  then be photographically reversed out, to clear letters and drawings

  on black backgrounds.

  These were back lit under an ordinary 16mm film rostrum

  camera, the colour being added with filter gels. Each line of lettering

  and each colour required a separate exposure and a separate piece of

  artwork (the babel fish sequence, for example, needed about a

  dozen passes under the camera). The main difference between this

  animation and the more usual version was that instead of animating

  a single frame per drawing, several frames at a time were taken to

  give any moving objects the slightly jerky, staggered feel that people

  expect from computer graphics. [The television series was entered

  into the innovation category at the Golden Rose of Montreux TV

  Festival. It won absolutely nothing (the Golden Rose went to the

  US-made Baryshnikov on Broadzaray, in case anyone is interested)

  and apparently left foreign audiences confused and reeling. At home

  it did rather better. In the BAFTA Awards for 1981, Hitchhiker's

  received two of the ten awards. Rod Lord gained a BAFTA award

  for the graphics(Rod Lord received his second graphics BAFTA for the `computer graphics' in the Max Headroom TV movie, four years later. Now I bet you thought those were computer generated...), and Michael McCarthy received one for being

  Sound Supervisor of Hitchhiker s.]

  END OF TECHNICAL BIT

  I asked Paddy Kingsland, responsible for most of the music and

  sound effects in the TV series (and the pilot for the radio series, as

  well as the second radio series) what was so special about the

  Hitchhiker's sound effects, and what the differences were between

  radio sound and TV sound. "I suppose the difference between

  doing TV and radio was that for radio they'd say, `We need The

  End of the World as a sound effect - go away and do it.'

  "On TV The End of the World is composed of hundreds of

  shots with a close-up of the Vogon ship, then a close-up of

  screaming crowds, a shot of a laser in space, and so on. You don't

  just have one sound effect, you have a bit of this and a bit of that

  ending with a bang which actually then cuts off because you're

  back inside the spaceship again very quickly. The shape is all

  finished and all you can do is do stuff to fit the pictures that have

  been done.

  "I thought the TV show was good in parts. I thought the

  computer graphic stuff was very good, very well thought out.

  And some of the performances were marvellous.

  "But inevitably there were things that didn't hang together

  too well. It's a problem you get when you mix together film and

  TV studios and doing it all to a deadline - there's no time to sit

  back and look at the thing and say, `Is that all right?' And if it

  isn't, to do it again.

  "I don't think it had the magic of the radio series, because

  you could see everybody. Like Zaphod's extra head - that was

  one of the more spectacular failures of the T'V show. A tatty prop

  can be amusing, but if you don't have the money to do it right it's

  sometimes better not to do it at all.

  "I was pleased with the sound effects of the TV series

  however. It was the detail that did it. Alan Bell had everybody

  miked up with radio mikes to start with so that they only got the

  voices of the people and none of the exterior effects. So we did

  things like overdubbing all the footsteps in the spaceships-

  which is never done for British TV.

  "To give the effect of them walking through spaceships we

  got a couple of beer kegs from the BBC club and actually walked

  around on the beer kegs while watching the screen, so when

  they're walking along you get these metallic footsteps instead of

  the rather unconvincing wooden ones you would have got. It

  took ages to do, but it paid off.

  "I did all the effects for the computer graphics - the film

  would arrive with nothing except for Peter Jones's voice. I had to

  go through it doing all the sound effects and the music tracks as

  well. All the little beeps and explosions and things, which took

  ages to do - quite time-consuming. The TV series was interesting

  to work on, although frankly I preferred the radio series."

  The necessity of getting the Hitchhiker's scripts to the screen

  somewhere within the budget was responsible for a certain

  amount of technical innovation. Alan Bell is proudest of his

  development of a new special effects process of doing `glass shots'.

  A glass shot, in cinematic tradition, consists of erecting a

  tower with a painting done on glass, high in the studio, then

  filming through it, thus giving the illusion that the glass painting

  is part of the picture. (The long shot of the Vogon hold in the first

  episode, for example, was done like this.) It's a complicated,

  fiddly, and expensive process.

  Bell's solution was simple: scenes requiring matte shots were

  filmed or taped, then a photographic blow-up of one frame

  would be made. From the photos, paintings would be made. The

  paintings would be photographed as slides, and the previously

  filmed segment would be matched up and inlaid into the painted

  shot. This was quicker and easier than painting on glass, and is

  perhaps best displayed in the `pier at Southend' sequence, when

  only a small section of the pier was built in the studio. The rest is

  a perfectly aligned matte painting.

  The plot of the television series is nearest to the plot of the

  two records. From Magrathea the travellers are blown straight to

  Milliways, and, leaving there in a stolen stunt ship, we follow

  Arthur and Ford to prehistoric Earth, where the series finishes.

  The places where the Hitchhiker's TV succeeded best and

  failed worst were places where Douglas had written something

  into the radio series that could not be done on television. The

  narration sequences are an excellent example: one does not need

  lengthy narrations on television; however, being stuck with them,

  Douglas needed to work out how to make them work, and came

  up with the graphics concept.

  As Douglas explained: "What made it work was the fact that

  it is impossible to transfer radio to television. We had to find

  creative solutions to problems in a way you wouldn't have had to

  if you were writing something similar for television immediately.

  "The medi
um dictates the style of the show, and transferring

  from one to another means you're going against the grain the

  whole time. It's the point where you go against the grain that you

  come up with the best bits. The bits that were the easiest to

  transfer were the least interesting bits of the TV show.

  "The idea of readouts from the book itself done in computer

  graphics form was that kind of thing. So you get little drawings,

  diagrams, all the words the narrator is saying, plus further

  expansion - footnotes and little details - all coming out at you

  from the screen. You can't possibly take it all in.

  "I like the idea of a programme where, when you get to the

  end of it, you feel you didn't get it all. There are so many

  programmes that are half an hour long and at the end of it you're

  half an hour further into your life with nothing to show for it. If

  you didn't get it all, that's much more stimulating.

  "I wasn't as pleased with the TV series as I was with the

  radio series, because I missed the intimacy of the radio work.

  Television pictures stifle the picturing facilities of the mind. I

  wanted to step over that problem by packing the screen with so

  much information that more thought, not less, was provoked by

  the readers. Sometimes what you see is less exciting than what

  you envisage.

  *************************************************

  CUT TO MODEL SHOT OF THE SHIP.

  THE MISSILES ARE ON THE POINT OF

  HITTING IT WHEN THE SKY EXPLODES

  WITH BEWILDERING COLOURS AND A

  MONTAGE OF TOTALLY INCONGRUOUS

  IMAGES. THESE SHOULD INCLUDE

  DISTORTED PICTURES OF THE

  PASSENGERS, STARS, MONKEYS, STAPLING

  MACHINES, TREES, CHEESE SOUFFLES... IN

  OTHER WORDS, A BRIEF VISION OF

  MADNESS. INCLUDED SHOULD ALSO BE A

  SPERM WHALE AND A BOWL OF

  PETUNIAS. WE GO BACK INSIDE THE

  BRIDGE.

  EVERYTHING IS HIGGLEDY-PIGGELDY.

  THERE ARE A VERY LARGE NUMBER OF

  MELONS LYING ABOUT.

  THERE IS ALSO (THOUGH NO ONE CALLS

  ATTENTION TO IT) A GOAT WITH A SCALE

  MODEL OF THE EIFFEL TOWER STRAPPED

  TO ITS HEAD STANDING ABOUT. THIS

  GOAT IS NEVER EVER REFERRED TO, BUT

  IT WILL CONTINUE TO BE WITH THEM