Martin Morley

Designs for Theatre and Television

Website created by Martin Morley using Serif Web Plus 10 All images and texts © to Martin Morley unless otherwise credited

Gemau Heb Ffiniau

Jeux Sans Frontieres

Ffilmiau’r Nant / EBU

1993

This was a big project. A huge challenge but with hind sight, great fun. In the current climate it would be impossible to mount, but it was a different era then. Tastes have changed radically and what seemed fun then would look very dated now. It was a child of it’s time.

Ffilmiau’r Nant, for S4C produced four series of the programme jointly with the EBU (European Broadcasting Union). Robin Evans and Susan Waters were the producers and had built up a wealth of experience from the previous two series before I joined the team for the last two. Robin was also the director. It was a real joint effort.

It was of course a multi-national enterprise with eight countries including Wales involved This to me very much added to the attraction of the programme.

The brief was to design mad cap games; not my natural sphere, but with a lot of help and encouragement all round we got there. All the time you had to be aware that every game had to be  really physical, that every prop had to be multiplied x 8 and there was no time to try the games in advance bar about a day before recording when all the teams converged on the location and mayhem broke out.

Once the ideas were in place the real work began. The secret was to choose the contractors carefully, give clear plans, encourage them on their way and make sure that everything arrived on time and fitted together. Easier said than done, and there were moments of panic. I was very lucky in that most of the key people had been involved in the first two series and new what to expect.

They were:

Set  Cainc: & Stageworks

Scaffolding: Serious Structures

Pools : Clwyd Pools

Inflatables: Boing

Props:  Cod Steaks & Merculo

Painting: Chris Green & Jackie Burgess

Steel work :Mackenzie Brown

One lane of the  Cheshire Cat set

Bodelwyddan Castle

The Humpty Dumpty Game

With the Roses game in the background

Two of the White Knight’s horses

In the background can be seen the large floating umbrellas of the

Tweedledum and Tweedleedee game

The backcloth to the White Knight game that Jackie Burgess painted so magnicently.

Click on icons to enlarge and see the original drawings for the Alice games

An overview of the Zodiac set, not yet complete. This followed the Alice games. It shows the sheer scale of the project. Bodelwyddan Castle is out of view on the left. The L shaped plan followed the garden wall. The presenters area was at the corner. Everything, including the 2 pools was raised on scaffolding because of the gradient.

Click on icons to enlarge and see the original drawings for the Zodiac games