Realism in the arts is generally the attempt to represent subject matter truthfully, without artificiality and avoiding speculative and supernatural elements . The term is often used interchangeably with naturalism , although these terms are not synonymous. Naturalism, as an idea relating to visual representation in Western art, seeks to depict objects with the least possible amount of distortion and is tied to the development of linear perspective and illusionism in Renaissance Europe. Realism, while predicated upon naturalistic representation and a departure from the idealization of earlier academic art , often refers to a specific art historical movement that originated in France in the aftermath of the French Revolution of 1848 . With artists like Gustave Courbet capitalizing on the mundane, ugly or sordid, realism was motivated by the renewed interest in the common man and the rise of leftist politics. The realist painters rejected Romanticism , which had come to dominate French literature and art, with roots in the late 18th century.
109-556: Kyrano is a fictional character featured in the 1960s British Supermarionation television series Thunderbirds and its 2004 live-action film adaptation . Kyrano is the father of Tin-Tin Kyrano and is half-brother of The Hood . He is the manservant in the Tracy household, sharing domestic duties with Grandma Tracy . He is renowned for serving tea and coffee within the house and is upset when Parker tries to take this duty from him in
218-425: A "reality effect" to maintain its authenticity . Aesthetic realism, which was first called for by French filmmakers in the 1930s and promoted by Andre Bazin in the 1950s, acknowledges that a "film cannot be fixed to mean what it shows", as there are multiple realisms; as such, these filmmakers use location shooting, natural light and non-professional actors to ensure the viewer can make up her/his own choice based on
327-675: A "trademark". According to Sylvia Anderson, the term was used to "distinguish the pure puppetry of the stage from our more sophisticated filmed-television version". Lou Ceffer of the website Spy Hollywood calls Supermarionation a "marketing term". A 1960s supplement of the British trade newspaper Television Mail described Supermarionation as a "technical process" whose main features, besides electronic puppet control, were use of 35 mm colour photography, 1 ⁄ 5 -scale filming stages, back projection , live-action inserts and live action-style special effects, and video assist to guide
436-417: A car battery. The Andersons' puppet work also included The Investigator (1973), a pilot for an unmade Supermarionation series. This featured both marionettes and live actors but did not include the term "Supermarionation" in the credits. Noting that Gerry Anderson would have preferred to make live-action productions instead of puppet series, Percy argues that his style of filming was developed to "make
545-418: A few railway scenes, in painting until the later 19th century, when works began to be commissioned, typically by industrialists or for institutions in industrial cities, often on a large scale, and sometimes given a quasi-heroic treatment. American realism , a movement of the early 20th century, is one of many modern movements to use realism in this sense. The Realist movement began in the mid-19th century as
654-503: A general attempt to depict subjects as they are considered to exist in third-person objective reality without embellishment or interpretation and "in accordance with secular, empirical rules." As such, the approach inherently implies a belief that such reality is ontologically independent of humankind's conceptual schemes, linguistic practices and beliefs and thus can be known to the artist, who can in turn represent this 'reality' faithfully. As Ian Watt states, modern realism "begins from
763-477: A method of chemically darkening them to keep them as thin as possible. During filming, the wires often needed to be further concealed using "antiflare" spray (grease mist) or various colours of paint to blend in with the sets and backgrounds. Balancing the weight was crucial: puppets that were too light would be difficult to control; too heavy and their wires would not bear the load. Inserts of real human hands, arms and legs were used to show complex actions that
872-488: A new, flexible material, but the results proved unsatisfactory and the idea was abandoned. As the reduced head size made it harder to sculpt faces in Plasticine, guest characters were now played by a group of permanent, all-fibreglass puppets that were made to the same standards of workmanship as the regular characters. Likened to a " repertory company ", these puppets could be superficially altered from one appearance to
981-490: A nod to Supermarionation, the series was credited as being "created in Hypermarionation". According to Anderson, Hypermarionation was not simply animation, but a "photo-real" production method combining CGI, high-definition picture and surround sound. Garland suggests that through Hypermarionation, Anderson sought to achieve a "hyperreal simulation of his live-action film utopia". In 2014, a Kickstarter campaign
1090-510: A position on Tracy Island upon the organisation's formation, he accepted. The Hood has a hypnotic power over Kyrano, which he sometimes uses to extract information on International Rescue and its secrets. Kyrano never mentions this to anyone, dismissing the Hood's telepathic intrusions as mere "dizzy spells" despite his otherwise unquestionable loyalty to the Tracys. A widower, Kyrano's full name
1199-810: A prelude for the popularity of scenes of work in genre painting in the 17th century, which appeared all over Europe, with Dutch Golden Age painting sprouting several different subgenres of such scenes, the Bamboccianti (though mostly from the Low Countries ) in Italy, and in Spain the genre of bodegones , and the introduction of unidealized peasants into history paintings by Jusepe de Ribera and Velázquez . The Le Nain brothers in France and many Flemish artists including Adriaen Brouwer and David Teniers
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#17327974302031308-608: A puppet series called Moon Rangers . The episode features story-within-a-story marionette sequences that were written and filmed as a tribute to Supermarionation. The puppet series Space Patrol , created by Roberta Leigh and Arthur Provis and filmed by Leigh's company National Interest Picture Productions , used marionettes similar to those of APF's early series (including the use of automatic mouth movement). However, they were made in natural body proportions. The Japanese series Aerial City 008 (1969) and X-Bomber (1980) also featured Supermarionation-style puppets, with
1417-578: A range of weather conditions and degrees of natural light. After being another development of Early Netherlandish painting, 1600 European portraiture subjects were often idealized by smoothing features or giving them an artificial pose. Still life paintings and still life elements in other works played a considerable role in developing illusionistic painting, though in the Netherlandish tradition of flower painting they long lacked "realism", in that flowers from all seasons were typically used, either from
1526-552: A reaction to Romanticism and History painting . In favor of depictions of 'real' life, the Realist painters used common laborers, and ordinary people in ordinary surroundings engaged in real activities as subjects for their works. Its chief exponents were Gustave Courbet , Jean-François Millet , Honoré Daumier and Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot . According to Ross Finocchio, formerly of the Department of European Paintings at
1635-584: A surface realism often associated with naturalism) borne of an unfulfilled desire to make live-action films for adults", further commenting that Anderson's typecasting as a puppet TV creator "led him on a lifelong quest to perfect a simulation of reality". He notes that Anderson's involvement with puppets began at a time when Western puppet theatre "had become increasingly marginalised to a niche, to an association with children's entertainment", and that APF's productions used an "aesthetic of incremental realism" to appeal to children and adults alike (a target audience that
1744-677: Is also attributed to William Dean Howells and Henry James who served as the spokesmen for realism as well as articulator of its aesthetic principles. The realistic approach to theater collapsed into nihilism and the absurd after World War II. Italian Neorealism was a cinematic movement incorporating elements of realism that developed in post-WWII Italy. Notable Neorealists included Vittorio De Sica , Luchino Visconti , and Roberto Rossellini . Realist films generally focus on social issues. There are two types of realism in film: seamless realism and aesthetic realism. Seamless realism tries to use narrative structures and film techniques to create
1853-428: Is also commonly derogatorily referred as "traditional bourgeois realism". Some writers of Victorian literature produced works of realism. The rigidities, conventions, and other limitations of "bourgeois realism" prompted in their turn the revolt later labeled as modernism ; starting around 1900, the driving motive of modernist literature was the criticism of the 19th-century bourgeois social order and world view, which
1962-483: Is based on " objective reality ." It focuses on showing everyday activities and life, primarily among the middle- or lower-class society, without romantic idealization or dramatization. According to Kornelije Kvas, "the realistic figuration and re-figuration of reality form logical constructs that are similar to our usual notion of reality, without violating the principle of three types of laws – those of natural sciences, psychological and social ones". It may be regarded as
2071-459: Is commonly recognized as having made great progress in the representation of anatomy. No original works on panels or walls by the great Greek painters survive, but from literary accounts and the surviving corpus of derivative works (mostly Graeco-Roman works in mosaic ), illusionism seems to be highly valued in painting. Pliny the Elder 's famous story of birds pecking at grapes painted by Zeuxis in
2180-749: Is far older as demonstrated by the principles of dramatic forms such as the presentation of the physical world that closely matches reality. The achievement of realism in the theatre was to direct attention to the social and psychological problems of ordinary life. In its dramas, people emerge as victims of forces larger than themselves, as individuals confronted with a rapidly accelerating world. These pioneering playwrights present their characters as ordinary, impotent, and unable to arrive at answers to their predicaments. This type of art represents what we see with our human eyes. Anton Chekov , for instance, used camera works to reproduce an uninflected slice of life . Scholars such as Thomas Postlewait noted that throughout
2289-432: Is never revealed in the series and he seems happy to be referred to by his surname. In the 2004 film, Kyrano has a wife, Onaha. Kyrano appears to be his given name, rather than his surname, and he and his family are Malaysian Indian Muslims. Kyrano does not appear in the 2015 remake series , in which he is said to be retired. However, his daughter (renamed Tanusha "Kayo" Kyrano) and brother are still major characters. In
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#17327974302032398-679: Is the precise, detailed and accurate representation in art of the appearance of scenes and objects. It is also called mimesis or illusionism and became especially marked in European painting in the Early Netherlandish painting of Robert Campin , Jan van Eyck and other artists in the 15th century. In the 19th century, Realism art movement painters such as Gustave Courbet were not especially noted for fully precise and careful depiction of visual appearances; in Courbet's time that
2507-588: The Labours of the Months in late medieval art, of which many examples survive from books of hours , concentrate on peasants laboring on different tasks through the seasons, often in a rich landscape background, and were significant both in developing landscape art and the depiction of everyday working-class people. In the 16th century, there was a fashion for the depiction in large paintings of scenes of people working, especially in food markets and kitchens; in many,
2616-610: The Metropolitan Museum of Art , Realists used unprettified detail depicting the existence of ordinary contemporary life, coinciding with the contemporaneous naturalist literature of Émile Zola , Honoré de Balzac and Gustave Flaubert . The French Realist movement had equivalents in all other Western countries, developing somewhat later. In particular the Peredvizhniki or Wanderers group in Russia who formed in
2725-476: The "Naturalist school" was somewhat artificially erected as a term representing a breakaway sub-movement of realism, that attempted (not wholly successfully) to distinguish itself from its parent by its avoidance of politics and social issues, and liked to proclaim a quasi-scientific basis, playing on the sense of "naturalist" as a student of natural history , as the biological sciences were then generally known. There have been various movements invoking realism in
2834-424: The "rolling road", an adaptation of the technique whereby foreground, middleground and background elements of road sequences were created as separate rolls of looped canvas and spun at varying speeds. In the pursuit of realism, newly built models and sets were deliberately "dirtied down" with paint, oil, pencil lead and other substances to give them a used or weathered look. Jetex propellant pellets were fitted to
2943-400: The 1860s and organized exhibitions from 1871 included many realists such as Ilya Repin , Vasily Perov and Ivan Shishkin , and had a great influence on Russian art. In Britain, artists such as Hubert von Herkomer and Luke Fildes had great success with realist paintings dealing with social issues. Broadly defined as "the faithful representation of reality", Realism as a literary movement
3052-625: The 1960s and used them to create a politically oriented cinema. French filmmakers made some politically oriented realist films in the 1960s, such as the cinéma vérité and documentary films of Jean Rouch while in the 1950s and 1960s, British, French and German new waves of filmmaking produced "slice-of-life" films (e.g., kitchen sink dramas in the UK). Verismo was a post-Romantic operatic tradition associated with Italian composers such as Pietro Mascagni , Ruggero Leoncavallo , Umberto Giordano , Francesco Cilea and Giacomo Puccini . They sought to bring
3161-715: The 1960s. These productions were created by Gerry and Sylvia Anderson and filmed at APF's studios on the Slough Trading Estate . The characters were played by electronic marionettes with a moveable lower lip, which opened and closed in time with pre-recorded dialogue by means of a solenoid in the puppet's head or chest. The productions were mostly science fiction with the puppetry supervised by Christine Glanville , art direction by either Bob Bell or Keith Wilson , and music composed by Barry Gray . They also made extensive use of scale model special effects, directed by Derek Meddings . The term "Supermarionation"
3270-520: The 5th century BC may well be a legend. As well as accuracy in shape, light, and color, Roman paintings show an unscientific but effective knowledge of representing distant objects smaller than closer ones and representing regular geometric forms such as the roof and walls of a room with perspective. This progress in illusionistic effects in no way meant a rejection of idealism; statues of Greek gods and heroes attempt to represent with accuracy idealized and beautiful forms, though other works, such as heads of
3379-603: The Andersons referred to as " kidult "). Garland suggests that this drive towards increased realism echoed "19th-century marionette theatre's own attempts to distinguish itself from other forms of puppetry (especially glove puppets ), which also involved a tethering to the newly-emergent realist aesthetic across the arts". In 1983, Gerry Anderson returned to puppetry with his independent science-fiction TV series Terrahawks . The characters of this series were made as three-foot-tall (0.91 m) rubber hand puppets, operated from
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3488-808: The Battery Boy . This series used puppets with wooden bodies and heads of "plastic wood" (a mixture of cork dust, glue and methylated spirit ). The heads incorporated moveable eyeballs and a hinged jaw that was opened and closed with a string. In practice, jaw movement was difficult to control due to the bobbing of the puppets' heads. By now all puppet sets were three-dimensional. They had also become more detailed, being made mostly of cardboard with fibreglass props. After Torchy , APF severed ties with Leigh and produced its first independent series, Four Feather Falls , using funding from Granada . The puppets now had hollow fibreglass shells for heads and tungsten steel wires instead of strings. Meanwhile,
3597-454: The Elder and Younger painted peasants, but rarely townsfolk. In the 18th century, small paintings of working people remained popular, mostly drawing on the Dutch tradition and featuring women. Much art depicting ordinary people, especially in the form of prints , was comic and moralistic, but the mere poverty of the subjects seems relatively rarely to have been part of the moral message. From
3706-619: The French Barbizon School and the Düsseldorf School of painting , with its students from many countries, and 20th-century American Regionalism are movements that are often also described as "naturalist", although the term is rarely used in British painting. Some recent art historians claimed either Courbet or the Impressionists for the label. The development of increasingly accurate representations of
3815-419: The Hood "another of Thunderbirds ' weak links" and stating that the series reveals almost nothing of his and Tin-Tin's backstory. Supermarionation Supermarionation (a portmanteau of the words "super", " marionette " and " animation ") is a style of television and film production employed by British company AP Films (later Century 21 Productions) in its puppet TV series and feature films of
3924-706: The Renaissance and Baroque . Demetrius of Alopece was a 4th-century BCE sculptor whose work (all now lost) was said to prefer realism over ideal beauty, and during the Ancient Roman Republic , politicians preferred a truthful depiction in portraits, though the early emperors favored Greek idealism. Goya 's portraits of the Spanish royal family represent a sort of honest, unflattering portrayal of important people. A recurring trend in Christian art
4033-416: The Renaissance, such images continued in book illustrations and prints, with the exception of marine painting which largely disappeared in fine art until the early Industrial Revolution , scenes from which were painted by a few painters such as Joseph Wright of Derby and Philip James de Loutherbourg . Such subjects probably failed to sell very well, and there is a noticeable absence of industry, other than
4142-449: The back streets of contemporary Italian cities and used "naturalist" as a self-description. Bellori , writing some decades after Caravaggio's early death and no supporter of his style, refers to "Those who glory in the name of naturalists" ( naturalisti ). During the 19th century, naturalism developed as a broadly defined movement in European art, though it lacked the political underpinnings that motivated realist artists. The originator of
4251-423: The car for much of the time, so it would be much easier to make them convincing." According to interviewer Kevin O'Neill , this use of future settings for greater realism "almost accidentally" ensured that all of APF's subsequent series would be science fiction. In 2006, Anderson stated that the transition to this genre "wasn't a conscious move at all", but rather a natural progression given the basic deficiencies of
4360-443: The company's puppet techniques more lifelike. When we got to making this better class of puppet film, I was looking for a more fitting way to explain how our productions differed from those of our predecessors. I wanted to invent a word that promoted the quality of our work, so we combined the words "super", "marionette" and "animation". It didn't mean anything other than that, and it certainly didn't refer to any specific process. It
4469-466: The components in the head was rejected in favour of moving the entire lip-sync mechanism to the chest, where it was connected to the mouth by a cable that ran through the neck. This made it possible to shrink the heads and make the puppets of Captain Scarlet and later series in natural proportions. Around this time, Century 21 also tried to make the puppets' faces more lifelike by crafting them in
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4578-411: The crew. According to Chris Bentley, the term encompasses "all of the sophisticated puppetry techniques" used by APF – the foremost being the automatic mouth movement – "combined with the full range of film production facilities normally employed in live-action filming" (such as front and back projection, location shooting and visual effects ). Other commentators have cited the complexity and detail of
4687-561: The door, you'd cut to the reverse angle and that would be the puppet of Stanley Unwin ... I used Stanley Unwin, married to his own puppet, to enable him to do all the things that the puppet couldn't do." Special effects were created with miniature models and sets in a range of scales. A wide variety of materials were used in their construction – for example, rock faces were made from painted blocks of polystyrene, while miniature vehicles incorporated recycled household objects and parts from toy model kits. The lighting used for effects shooting
4796-583: The early 15th century and gradually spread across Europe, with accuracy in anatomy rediscovered under the influence of classical art. As in classical times, idealism remained the norm. The accurate depiction of landscape in painting had also been developing in Early Netherlandish/Early Northern Renaissance and Italian Renaissance painting and was then brought to a very high level in 17th-century Dutch Golden Age painting , with very subtle techniques for depicting
4905-406: The effort we were putting in and offer us live-action films ... When we did those early things we asked ourselves what we could do to improve them. Christine Glanville , who was so important to us as we went on with the puppets, came up with improvements all the time. — Sylvia Anderson on the making of APF's early productions (2001) Gerry Anderson's first experience with puppet filming
5014-625: The elaborate style of puppetry" used in APF's productions. Anderson denied that the term referred to a process, stating that he coined it as a promotional tool to separate APF's output from other children's puppet series like Muffin the Mule and Flower Pot Men . This was motivated by his embarrassment in working with puppets as opposed to live actors, and his wish to dispel the notion that APF's marionettes were "the sort of puppets that were used in pre-school programmes". He also likened Supermarionation to
5123-648: The elite. In the West, classical standards of illusionism did not begin to be reached again until the Late medieval and Early Renaissance periods and were helped first in the Netherlands in the early 15th century, and around the 1470s in Italy by the development of new techniques of oil painting which allowed very subtle and precise effects of light to be painted using several layers of paint and glaze. Scientific methods of representing perspective were developed in Italy in
5232-658: The episode " The Mighty Atom ". Kyrano was once the heir to a rubber plantation fortune in Malaysia, but was cheated out of it by The Hood. After this, he decided to withdraw from the world of material gain and spend the rest of his life in meditation. He lived all over the world, pursuing careers as a chef in Paris, a gardener in England, and a scientist producing synthetic foods from plants for astronauts. When his old friend Jeff Tracy , founder of International Rescue, offered him
5341-431: The episode "Signals – Part 1", Kayo mentions that her father was devastated by Jeff's disappearance and hopes that he will come out of retirement if Jeff is found alive. Jon Abbott of TV Zone magazine describes the original Kyrano as a "fawning manservant" whom Jeff treats patronisingly, arguing that he represents a negative stereotype. Marcus Hearn regards him as a "poorly sketched character", calling his secret ties to
5450-490: The fact that the legs of each puppet were controlled by only two strings, which made complex articulation impossible. According to Sylvia Anderson, the re-design exacerbated the puppets' core deficiencies: "The more realistic our puppets became, the more problems we had with them ... It was just possible to get away with the awkward moments in Thunderbirds because the proportions of the characters were still caricature. It
5559-401: The famously ugly Socrates , were allowed to fall below these ideal standards of beauty. Roman portraiture , when not under too much Greek influence, shows a greater commitment to a truthful depiction of its subjects, called verism . The art of Late Antiquity famously rejected illusionism for expressive force, a change already well underway by the time Christianity began to affect the art of
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#17327974302035668-444: The film, rather than being manipulated into a "preferred reading". Siegfried Kracauer is also notable for arguing that realism is the most important function of cinema. Aesthetically realist filmmakers use long shots , deep focus and eye-level 90-degree shots to reduce manipulation of what the viewer sees. Italian neorealism filmmakers from after WWII took the existing realist film approaches from France and Italy that emerged in
5777-423: The food is given as much prominence as the workers. Artists included Pieter Aertsen and his nephew Joachim Beuckelaer in the Netherlands, working in an essentially Mannerist style, and in Italy the young Annibale Carracci in the 1580s, using an unpolished style, with Bartolomeo Passerotti somewhere between the two. Pieter Bruegel the Elder pioneered large panoramic scenes of peasant life. Such scenes acted as
5886-413: The habit of assembling compositions from individual drawings or as a deliberate convention; the large displays of bouquets in vases were atypical of 17th-century habits; the flowers were displayed one at a time. The depiction of ordinary, everyday subjects in art also has a long history, though it was often squeezed into the edges of compositions or shown at a smaller scale. This was partly because art
5995-447: The hero of Four Feather Falls , avoids walking by riding a horse called Rocky, while the characters of Fireball XL5 , Stingray and Thunderbirds achieve the same through use of personal hovercraft. Supercar and Stingray ' s focus on their eponymous car and submarine, as well as Stingray ' s depiction of Commander Shore as a paralytic reliant on a futuristic "hoverchair", are examples of other devices used to overcome
6104-415: The hinged jaw gave way to an electronic lip-sync mechanism. Designed by Hill and Read, this was powered by a solenoid , mounted in the head and fed electric current by two of the wires. Lip-syncing was a key step in the development of Supermarionation, and Four Feather Falls is regarded by some sources as the first Supermarionation production. The mechanism made it easier for the puppeteers to operate
6213-495: The hope that the results would bring them bigger-budget commissions with live actors. To add to this more sophisticated look, the series often used three-dimensional sets instead of traditional flat backgrounds , while puppeteers Christine Glanville and her team operated the marionettes not from the studio floor, but from a bridge above it. Following the completion of Twizzle , APF was unsuccessful in securing new clients, so accepted another puppet commission from Leigh: Torchy
6322-445: The integrity to match the material." The final Supermarionation series, The Secret Service , used footage of live actors to such an extent that the result according to Stephen La Rivière was "half-way between live action and Supermarionation". Its protagonist, Stanley Unwin, was modelled on the comedian of the same name , who both voiced the puppet character and served as its human body double in long shots and other scenes where
6431-456: The latter of the two referring to its filming style as 'Supermariorama' in reference to Supermarionation. In South Africa, similar techniques were used to make Interster (1982–86). The American puppet series Super Adventure Team (1998) was created in imitation of Supermarionation but with more adult themes and suggestive situations. Team America: World Police , a 2004 puppet film by South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone ,
6540-434: The marionettes in time with their dialogue as it was no longer necessary to learn the characters' lines. According to Anderson, as exaggerated movements were no longer needed, the puppets were finally able to speak "without their heads lolling about a like a broken toy." By now the puppeteers' movements were guided using a basic form of video assist: a TV camera mounted directly behind the film camera, which relayed footage to
6649-446: The mid-19th century onwards, the difficulties of life for the poor were emphasized. Despite this trend coinciding with large-scale migration from the countryside to cities in most of Europe, painters still tended to paint poor rural people. Crowded city street scenes were popular with the Impressionists and related painters, especially ones showing Paris. Medieval manuscript illuminators were often asked to illustrate technology, but after
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#17327974302036758-415: The naturalism of influential late 19th-century writers such as Émile Zola , Gustave Flaubert and Henrik Ibsen into opera. This new style presented true-to-life drama that featured gritty and flawed lower-class protagonists while some described it as a heightened portrayal of a realistic event. Although an account considered Giuseppe Verdi 's Luisa Miller and La traviata as the first stirrings of
6867-431: The need to make puppet series as science fiction (2006) In a 1977 interview, Gerry Anderson said that the steps taken to make the puppets more lifelike were an attempt to "make the [puppet] medium respectable". On the preparations for Supercar , APF's first science-fiction production, he remembered "[thinking] that if we set the story in the future, there would be moving walkways and the puppets would be riding around in
6976-453: The new company and play a significant role in the development of its productions. The puppets of Twizzle had papier-mâché heads with painted eyes and mouths and were each controlled using a single carpet thread. Speech was indicated by nodding the heads. Somewhat embarrassed to be making a children's puppet series, Anderson and Provis decided to produce Twizzle in the style of a feature film, incorporating dynamic shooting and lighting in
7085-453: The next – for example, by adding or removing facial hair. In a 2002 interview, Anderson said that during the production of Captain Scarlet he was hoping to move into live-action television and that he endorsed the new puppets as a compromise for his inability to use live actors. In 2006, he recalled that Century 21 had been " typecast " for its puppetry: "[S]o, knowing it was the only thing I could get finance for, I desperately wanted to make
7194-499: The nineteenth and twentieth centuries, there were numerous joining of melodramatic and realistic forms and functions, which could be demonstrated in the way melodramatic elements existed in realistic forms and vice versa. In the United States, realism in drama preceded fictional realism by about two decades as theater historians identified the first impetus toward realism during the late 1870s and early 1880s. Its development
7303-416: The novel. Many Naturalist paintings covered a similar range of subject matter as that of Impressionism , but using tighter, more traditional brushwork styles. The term "continued to be used indiscriminately for various kinds of realism" for several decades, often as a catch-all term for art that was outside Impressionism and later movements of Modernism and also was not academic art . The later periods of
7412-434: The other arts, such as the opera style of verismo , literary realism , theatrical realism and Italian neorealist cinema . When used as an adjective, "realistic" (usually related to visual appearance) distinguishes itself from "realist" art that concerns subject matter. Similarly, the term "illusionistic" might be used when referring to the accurate rendering of visual appearances in a composition. In painting, naturalism
7521-701: The painting of portraits as low down the social scale as the prosperous merchants of Flanders , and some of these, notably the Arnolfini Portrait by Jan van Eyck (1434) and more often in religious scenes such as the Merode Altarpiece by Robert Campin and his workshop (circa 1427), include very detailed depictions of middle-class interiors full of lovingly depicted objects. However, these objects are at least largely there because they carry layers of complex significance and symbolism that undercut any commitment to realism for its own sake. Cycles of
7630-503: The personality of their precursors, also stating that the increased emphasis on realism hampered the puppeteers' creativeness. Fellow sculptor Terry Curtis believed that the re-design took away the puppets' "charm". According to director Desmond Saunders , APF was trying "anything to get [the puppets] to look like ordinary human beings. But they are not ordinary human beings! ... I often wonder it if would have been better to make them more like puppets, not less like puppets." A drawback of
7739-550: The position that truth can be discovered by the individual through the senses" and as such, "it has its origins in Descartes and Locke , and received its first full formulation by Thomas Reid in the middle of the eighteenth century." While the preceding Romantic era was also a reaction against the values of the Industrial Revolution , realism was in its turn a reaction to Romanticism, and for this reason it
7848-437: The puppet film as 'respectable' as possible". She also comments that APF's filming techniques "would not only result in a level of quality and sophistication not seen before in a family show, but also give birth to some of the most iconic series in the history of British children's television." Garland describes the underlying theme of Anderson's work as a "self-reflexive obsession with an aesthetic of realism (or more accurately
7957-430: The puppet was impractical to use. According to Anderson, this was another way of avoiding the problem of lack of mobility: "I came up with the idea of getting Stanley Unwin to do all the walking shots, and driving shots in this Model Ford T [the character] had. If, for example, you had a sequence where Stanley Unwin would arrive at a building in his Model T, he would ... get out, walk down the path, and as soon as he opened
8066-497: The puppets could not perform, such as operating machinery. In a 1965 interview, Reg Hill estimated that the Supermarionation productions contained "three or four times" as much cutting as live-action features because the puppets' lack of facial expression made it impossible to sustain the viewer's interest "for more than a few seconds" per shot. The puppets' distinguishing features were their hollow fibreglass heads and
8175-414: The puppets' lack of mobility. Because we had characters who couldn't stand properly without their knees sagging, and characters who had no expression, it was very difficult to play a love scene and impossible to have a fight. And so it seemed the way to go was anything that was fast-moving and had a lot of excitement, so it seemed that science fiction was the best option. — Gerry Anderson on
8284-763: The puppets, models and sets as aspects of Supermarionation. Marcus Hearn states that the term reflected Gerry Anderson's desire to "promote his company's collective ingenuity as a proprietary process" and "[ally] his productions with Hollywood photographic techniques such as CinemaScope and VistaVision ." He adds that it "encompassed the full panoply of APF's expertise – production values in model-making, photography, special effects, editing and orchestral music that had never been so consistently applied to any type of children's programme, let alone those featuring puppets." We were determined to break away from [children's puppet programmes], so we treated those programmes as if they were something really special and hoped people would see
8393-409: The puppets. Sylvia said that the reasons were budgetary, due to the fact that APF could not yet afford to work with live actors: "... we were picking subjects that we could easily do in miniature scale." David Garland calls character movement Anderson's " bête noire " and states that the puppets' limited mobility resulted in "vehicle-heavy science fiction" becoming his "preferred genre". He considers
8502-424: The smaller heads was that they upset the weight distribution; this made the puppets harder to control, to a point where they would often have to be fixed to G-clamps to be kept steady. In addition, problems achieving realistic depth of field made it considerably harder to film close-up shots. A major limitation of the marionettes was their inability to walk convincingly. This was due to their low weight and
8611-424: The solenoid dictated the puppets' body proportions. Head-mounted solenoids made the heads oversized compared to the rest of the body; the latter could not be scaled up to match as this would have made the puppets too bulky to operate effectively, and would have required all the set elements to be enlarged. According to commentator David Garland, the disproportion was influenced partly by "aesthetic considerations ...
8720-622: The solenoids that powered the automatic mouth movements. Character dialogue was recorded on two tapes. One of these would be played during filming, both to guide the puppeteers and provide a basis for the soundtrack; the other would be converted into a series of electrical signals. When activated by the signals, the solenoid in the head caused the puppet's lower lip to open and close with each syllable. The heads of regular characters were entirely fibreglass; proto-heads were sculpted in clay or Plasticine and then encased in rubber (or silicone rubber ) to create moulds, to which fibreglass resin
8829-424: The studio floor in a process called "Supermacromation". This was similar to the techniques employed by American puppeteer Jim Henson . In 2004, Anderson created a Captain Scarlet remake titled New Captain Scarlet , which was produced using computer-generated imagery (CGI) and motion-capture techniques. Motion capture was used heavily for action sequences as it provided more convincing character movement. As
8938-562: The suffering that Christ had undergone on their behalf. These were especially found in Germany and Central Europe. After abating in the Renaissance, similar works re-appeared in the Baroque , especially in Spanish sculpture. Renaissance theorists opened a debate, which was to last several centuries, as to the correct balance between drawing art from the observation of nature and from idealized forms, typically those found in classical models, or
9047-443: The term to increase the "respectability" of puppetry, a medium he had not originally intended to work with. According to Sylvia, the productions were described as "Supermarionation" to distinguish them from traditional puppet theatre. Noting that a major disadvantage of APF's marionettes was their inability to walk convincingly, commentators have argued that the term expressed Gerry's preference for artistic realism and his wish to make
9156-460: The term was the French art critic Jules-Antoine Castagnary , who in 1863 announced that: "The naturalist school declares that art is the expression of life under all phases and on all levels, and that its sole aim is to reproduce nature by carrying it to its maximum power and intensity: it is truth balanced with science". Émile Zola adopted the term with a similar scientific emphasis for his aims in
9265-473: The theory being that the head carried the puppet's personality". It resulted in many puppets developing caricatured appearances, though Anderson stated that this was not intentional. Between Thunderbirds and Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons , the development of miniaturised electronic components prompted APF – now called Century 21 Productions – to create a new type of puppet. The option to downsize
9374-413: The thing look as close to live action as possible. And I think it was that that drove me on to bring in all the improvements and techniques." Thom believes that the re-design reflected Anderson's desire for greater "realism and spectacle". Not all of Anderson's colleagues welcomed the change. Puppet sculptor and operator John Blundall pejoratively referred to the new puppets as "little humans" that lacked
9483-537: The typical, with others such as Michelangelo supporting the selection of the most beautiful – he refused to make portraits for that reason. In the 17th century, the debate continued. In Italy, it usually centered on the contrast between the relative "classical-idealism" of the Carracci and the "naturalist" style of the Caravaggisti , or followers of Caravaggio , who painted religious scenes as though set in
9592-498: The undersides of miniature ground vehicles to emit jets of gas resembling dust trails. Over time, the effects used for puppet gunfights became more elaborate: whereas gunshot effects in Four Feather Falls were created by simply painting marks on the film negative (which showed up as white flashes on the finished print), for later series the puppets' miniature prop guns were fitted with small charges that were fired using
9701-535: The use of marionettes – the kind of puppet "perhaps most unsuited" to an action format – to be "one of the most striking paradoxes" of the Anderson productions. Carolyn Percy of the Wales Arts Review comments that the inclusion of "futuristic vehicles" like Supercar allowed APF to devise "more exciting and imaginative scenarios" and "work around the limitations of the puppets ... to give their 'acting'
9810-464: The various monitors around the studio. The term "Supermarionation" was coined during the production of Supercar , APF's first series to be made for Lew Grade 's distribution company ITC Entertainment . Its final 13 episodes were the first to be credited as being "filmed in Supermarionation". The puppets and puppet sets of Supermarionation were built in 1 ⁄ 3 scale, the former being roughly two feet (61 cm) tall. Each marionette
9919-534: The verismo, some claimed that it began in 1890 with the first performance of Mascagni 's Cavalleria rusticana , peaked in the early 1900s. It was followed by Leoncavallo's Pagliacci, which dealt with the themes of infidelity, revenge, and violence. Verismo also reached Britain where pioneers included the Victorian-era theatrical partnership of the dramatist W. S. Gilbert and the composer Arthur Sullivan (1842–1900). Specifically, their play Iolanthe
10028-566: The visual appearances of things has a long history in art. It includes elements such as the accurate depiction of the anatomy of humans and animals, the perspective and effects of distance, and the detailed effects of light and color. The art of the Upper Paleolithic in Europe achieved remarkably lifelike depictions of animals. Ancient Egyptian art developed conventions involving both stylization and idealization. Ancient Greek art
10137-407: The work of other artists generally. Some admitted the importance of the natural, but many believed it should be idealized to various degrees to include only the beautiful. Leonardo da Vinci was one who championed the pure study of nature and wished to depict the whole range of individual varieties of forms in the human figure and other things. Leon Battista Alberti was an early idealizer, stressing
10246-468: Was "realism" that emphasized the humanity of religious figures, above all Christ and his physical sufferings in his Passion . Following trends in devotional literature , this developed in the Late Middle Ages , where some painted wooden sculptures in particular strayed into the grotesque in portraying Christ covered in wounds and blood, with the intention of stimulating the viewer to meditate on
10355-412: Was applied to create the finished shells. Guest characters were played by puppets called "revamps", whose faces were Plasticine sculpted on featureless fibreglass heads. This allowed the revamps to be re-modelled from one episode to the next and play a wider range of characters. Many regulars were modelled on contemporary Hollywood actors. The puppets' eyes were moved by radio control. The placement of
10464-405: Was countered with an anti-rationalist, anti-realist and anti-bourgeois program. Theatrical realism is said to have first emerged in European drama in the 19th century as an offshoot of the Industrial Revolution and the age of science. Some also specifically cited the invention of photography as the basis of the realist theater while others view that the association between realism and drama
10573-416: Was devised by effects director Derek Meddings to allow filming of dynamic shots in confined space. It involved painting the sky background on a canvas, which was then wrapped around a pair of electrically driven rollers, and creating an impression of movement by running the canvas around the rollers in a continuous loop as opposed to moving the miniature aircraft itself. Thunderbirds saw the introduction of
10682-542: Was expensive and usually commissioned for specific religious, political or personal reasons, which allowed only a relatively small amount of space or effort to be devoted to such scenes. Drolleries in the margins of medieval illuminated manuscripts sometimes contain small scenes of everyday life, and the development of perspective created large background areas in many scenes set outdoors. Medieval and Early Renaissance art usually showed non-sacred figures in contemporary dress by convention. Early Netherlandish painting brought
10791-496: Was first used during the production of Supercar , whose final 13 episodes were the first to be credited as being "filmed in Supermarionation". Some sources consider its precursor, Four Feather Falls , to be the first Supermarionation series because it saw the introduction of the electronic lip-syncing mechanism that featured in all of APF's later puppet productions. The term was coined by Gerry Anderson, who regarded it as APF's trademark. In later life, he said that he invented
10900-464: Was five times as strong as that normally used on a live-action production. Effects were typically shot at high speed (72 to 120 frames per second ) with the footage slowed down in post-production to give a sense of greater weight or steadiness, thus making the sequences look more realistic. High-speed filming was essential for shots on water in order to make the small ripples inside the filming tank look like ocean waves. As sets were built to scale, it
11009-459: Was in 1956, when Pentagon Films – a group of five filmmakers including Anderson and his friend Arthur Provis – was contracted to make a series of Noddy -themed TV advertisements for Kellogg's breakfast cereal. Around this time, Pentagon also produced a 15-minute puppet film called Here Comes Kandy . These early efforts were noticed by children's author Roberta Leigh , who had written a collection of scripts titled The Adventures of Twizzle and
11118-463: Was inspired by Thunderbirds and has been described as an imitation or spoof of Supermarionation productions. Stone and Parker dubbed their filming process "Supercrappymation" (or "Supercrappynation") as the wires were deliberately left visible. A Stargate SG-1 episode, " 200 " (2006), features a self-parody in which the characters are played by Supermarionation-style puppets. Realism (arts) In 19th-century Europe, "Naturalism" or
11227-429: Was later when we had developed a more realistic approach ... that the still imperfect walk was [all] the more obvious." To limit the need for leg movement, many scenes featuring walks were filmed from the waist up , with motion implied by a puppeteer holding the legs out of shot and bobbing the marionette up and down while pushing it forward. Other scenes showed puppets standing, sitting or driving vehicles. Tex Tucker,
11336-406: Was launched to fund a remake of the anime series Firestorm , to be produced using a technique called "Ultramarionation". In the 2010s, Stephen La Rivière and his production company Century 21 Films began a revival of Supermarionation. Their productions are listed below. Century 21 Films also worked on "Apollo", a 2019 episode of Endeavour that is set partly in a TV studio which is making
11445-603: Was looking for a film company to turn them into a puppet TV series. By this time, Anderson and Provis had left Pentagon to form their own company, Anderson Provis Films (AP Films or APF). They accepted the commission, disappointed not to be working with live actors but realising that they needed Leigh's investment to stay in business. Before starting production, Anderson and Provis hired three staff: continuity supervisor Sylvia Thamm (former secretary at Pentagon and Anderson's future wife), art director Reg Hill and camera operator John Read . All three would later be made co-directors of
11554-506: Was more often a characteristic of academic painting , which very often depicted with great skill and care scenes that were contrived and artificial, or imagined historical scenes. Realism, or naturalism as a style depicting the unidealized version of the subject, can be used in depicting any type of subject without commitment to treating the typical or every day. Despite the general idealism of classical art, this too had classical precedents, which came in useful when defending such treatments in
11663-402: Was often hard to maintain a realistic sense of depth. Underwater sequences were filmed not in water, but on dry sets with a thin aquarium between the set and the camera to distort the lighting. Bubble jets and small fish were added to the aquarium to create forced perspective . Beginning with Stingray , shots of aircraft in flight were filmed using a technique called the "rolling sky", which
11772-538: Was our trademark, if you like. — Gerry Anderson on the origin of the term (2002) The term was coined in 1960 by Gerry Anderson. Sources describe Supermarionation as a style of puppetry, a production technique or process, or a promotional term. Emma Thom of the National Science and Media Museum defines it as APF's use of electronics to synchronise puppets' lip movements with pre-recorded dialogue. According to Jeff Evans , it "express[es]
11881-433: Was suspended and controlled with several fine tungsten steel wires that were between 1 ⁄ 5000 and 1 ⁄ 3000 of an inch (0.0051–0.0085 mm) thick, replacing the carpet thread and twine strings that had been used prior to Four Feather Falls . To make the wires non-reflective, initially they were painted black; however, this made them thicker and more noticeable, so manufacturers Ormiston Wire devised
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