Article from Starlog Issue 34, May 1980

Starlog: Quest

Australian SFX Men

This issue's featured questers are talented starlog fans from halfway round the world. They are John Cox and Tad Prode, from the FX studio of David Pride and Associates, Sydney, Australia. Pride writes: 'Very rarely is Australian material submitted to your magazine, so I'm sending in these photographs to show what's happening in a small section of the industry down here. The photos are of only a few items we have produced for the Australian film and television industry. I have been working on special-effects props, model work and artwork for seven years. We also have our own model studio and montion-control camera and a front-projection unit. The projector was built from a Mitchell Camera and all systems are 35mm and have pilot-pin movments'

Top: 'The Endless Corridor' was built for a walk-through display. It's only 22" deep but uses mirror trickery to achieve 'endless' effect.

Middle: 'The City.' John Cox was mainly responsible for this model (shown here still under construction). It uses forced perspective necessitated by limited space in which is was built to be displayed.


Bottom: 'The Space Station.' This model is 3'6" wide and built so that each section can rotate in an opposite direction to it's adjoining section. Internal lighting is achieved with fiber optices. A single, external, ultra-violet light was used to matter out all unwanted supports. The model rotates 'in orbit' around a drum shaped planet which is also slowly rotated. All three of these models were built for a display coinciding with the Australian release of the Battlestar Galactica movie.

You can see an advert for this exhibition by clicking Here. Thanks to Michael Kraaz for sending me these scans.