FREEBORNS | g3vjm

Freeborns 1979

Derek Freeborn was an expert modelmaker, often working in glass fibre. His wife was an expert in costume design, she had been a costume designer and dresser at Covent Garden Opera House. They made countless figures for museums and exhibitions all over the world.

I met them when working on Geological Museum projects and colaborated with them on many projects over the years. Lots of jobs were simply special lighting controllers, but there were many animation and computer controlled displays. The biggest was a 'fully operational' volcano, built for Sir James Gardner for the Taiwan Natural History Museum (See Gardner).

Derek retired in around 1988 and the business was taken over by his son Kit who ran it for a few more years. With Kit I did the electronics for the Bank of England Fox and Pitt display, and several others.

Sir Richard Leaky's discovery of one of the oldest human finds in the 1970s called Lucy Australopithecus (3.2 million years ago), were very popular and several dioramas were made, some of which traveled around the world. The magic of our models was that sensors were built in along the plinth of the model and as the visitor moved Lucy's eyes would momentarily flick towards the visitor. It was quite unnerving if you caught the movement out of the corner of your eyes.

The Museum of Photography in Bradford as it was then known, made a gallery on early television.

The built a replica of the first TV studio and all the equipment. Arthur Askey was the first announcer on television and an animated model of him was mounted in front of an early replica TV camera.

The visitor had controls to move the head and arm so they could see how any movements made the picture blurred, and how very srtong make up was needed to make te picture clear.

In 1986 Wigan Pier Museum opened showing life from the beginning of the century. In those Victorian times workers had more leisure and with the advent of rail made the most of days out, visiting such places.

The Wigan Pier Museum (Designed by Robin Wade) showed what life was like in those days and used actors to interact with the visitors to give them a taste of the reality of the times. Part was a gallery based on a Victorian sea side pier with all its attractions.

I built several of the displays. One was a fortune teller. The visitor pressed the button and the fortune teller looked up and down with realistic eye movements, then lifted her hand from the crystal ball where you could read your fortune.

The ball had a drum under it with several different fortunes that changed for each visitor.

There were other animated displays of various theatre scenes including onr of George Fornby. The museum had millions of visitors before it closed just over 10 years ago.

Wigan Pier Fortune Teller

The face after dressing and painting

The Crystal Ball

Her eyes lower to read your fortune as her hand raises to show it

The Crystal Ball

Showing your fortune

View at Rest

View before visitor pressed the button

The Works

Showing the drum that held the fortunes

Basic Fibre Glass model

The start of construction

Dancing Puppets

Driven by radio control servos

Mike Copus and Jane

Hands on building the museum Mike Copus was a superb artist

I did several animation special effect jobs for TV commercials with Derek. This one was for 'Boost' chocolate in the 1980's. A mascot figure for the front of a sports car was made and I animated it by radio control. There were 2 models, one happy with straight wings, the other sad and floppy wings, The story was the car owner was taking his driving test with a very stern examiner.

At the start all was going wrong and even the mascot got depressed with his floppy wings drooping. At a traffic light pause in the test the driver took a bar of 'boost' out of his pocket and started to eat it. The mascot turned around to watch, and the driver threw him another bar. The mascot caught it and eat it (inset done by real actors). The lights then turned green and they drove off. All went perfectly and he passed his test.

It was a real experience for me as the film industry is Union based and no one was allowed to touch my equipment. Most of the action scenes were made with the car mounted on a super low vehicle with all the film crew shooting the action. This vehicle was extremely powerful (American origin) and could accelerate and corner like a sports car with us all hanging on for dear life while working the equipment. My job was to flap his wings and turn his head on command.

The filming was done in the streets of South London starting at 3.30am. A crew man went around the houses in the streets to be used with rolls of banknotes, knocking residents up, asking if the had cars parked there and handing them cash to move them.

The weather was awful, late autumn with a howling gale blowing slates of houses. A camera and tripod were blown over and smashed. We did it for 2 days, very exhausting but the catering (breakfast and lunch) was superb.

A shot of the mascot on the car. Left with droopy wings and top right with straight wings

The unplated models during construction. There were 2 interchangeable models, one happy and one sad.

These are the only photos I can find ay the moment. There are lots more somewhere showing the low loader we drove round on for filming.

Derek built a diorama of the Auschwitz conenntration camp in the early 1980s for the holocaust museum in Los Angeles. I designed and built a searchlight to go in the watch tower. It was lit by fibre optics from a remote light source making it easy to change the lamp.

The unit was driven from a remote motor and scanned along the side of a row of huts. The diorama was built with false perspective making it seem very deep. The watch tower and huts were placed at an angle so the size of the searchlight beam got bigger as it scanned to the front of the model making the perspective very real. There was a second light source with optical fibres going to dozens of perimeter lights

Another job that was quite effective. 2 rows of waving flags were needed for a backdrop to a diorama. They had to wave in a random manner and at different speeds. It needed a motor for each flag running at different voltages from separate sequence controllers. Good quality motors had to be used to keep the noise levels down. Luckily it was an enclosed diorama so they could hardly be heard

I made an Ames window display for Derek for the Bristol Museum. Difficult to photograph but it is a window frame made asymmetrical as if viewed from an oblique angle. In the photo it is directly facing the camera as the shadow shows but due to the perspective it appears at an angle. It is mounted on a drive motor that makes it rotate slowly. However when viewed from the front it appears to flip one way then the other as if by magic. Sometimes a stick is fitted to it that pokes through the frame. It becomes even more amazing as the stick seems to turn constantly but the window seems to flick back and forth.