Derek Meddings

Derek Meddings (15 January 1931 – 10 September 1995) was a British film and television special effects designer. He was initially noted for his work on the "Supermarionation" TV puppet series produced by Gerry Anderson, and later for the 1970s and 1980s James Bond and Superman film series.

Biography Early years Derek Meddings was born 15 January 1931 in St Pancras, London, England. Both Meddings' parents had worked in the British film industry: his father as a carpenter at Denham Studios and his mother as producer Alex Korda's secretary and actress Merle Oberon's stand-in. Meddings went to art school and, in the late 1940s, also found work at Denham Studios, lettering credit titles.

For GoldenEye (1995), Meddings again created miniatures. This includes a train crash and a jet fighter crash. The climatic destruction of a gigantic satellite dish used a model built by Meddings' team, intercut with scenes shot with stuntmen in Britain.

Other work In 1975, Meddings created cost-effective model monsters which could be photographed in the same frame as the actors For The NeverEnding Story II: The Next Chapter (1990), he established another company in Germany. He appeared once as an actor, in the role of Dr Stinson in Spies Like Us (1985).

Death At the time of his death from colorectal cancer in 1995, Meddings was engaged in post-production on the latest James Bond film, GoldenEye, on which his sons Mark and Elliott also worked. and Noah Luscombe (born August 1978). He also had at least one daughter: Chloe Loveday (born 1982).

Awards In 1979, for his work on Superman (1978), Meddings was awarded a shared Special Achievement Award for special effects by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, and shared the Michael Balcon Award of the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA). He was also nominated for the 1980 Academy Award for Best Visual Effects for his work on Moonraker (1979), for the 1990 BAFTA Award for Best Special Visual Effects for Batman (1989), and posthumously for a 1996 BAFTA Award for Best Achievement (in special effects) for GoldenEye (1995).

Filmography Visual effects

Fireball XL5 (1962) Stingray (1964) Thunderbirds (1965) Thunderbirds Are Go (1966) Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons (1967) Thunderbird 6 (1968) Joe 90 (1968) Doppelgänger (aka Journey to the Far Side of the Sun; 1969) The Secret Service (1969) UFO (1970) Z.P.G. (1972) Fear Is the Key (1972) Live and Let Die (1973) The Man with the Golden Gun (1974) The Land That Time Forgot (1975) Shout at the Devil (1976) Aces High (1976) The Spy Who Loved Me (1977) Superman: The Movie (1978) Moonraker (1979) Superman II (1980) For Your Eyes Only (1981) Krull (1983) Banzaï (1983) Superman III (1983) Supergirl (1984) Spies Like Us (1985) Santa Claus: The Movie (1985) Mio min Mio (1987) High Spirits (1988) Apprentice to Murder (1988) Batman (1989) The NeverEnding Story II: The Next Chapter (1991) Hudson Hawk (1991) Cape Fear (1991) The NeverEnding Story III (1994) GoldenEye (1995)

Actor Spies Like Us (1985) – Dr. Stinson