Hollywood Builds Flying Saucers

In War of the Worlds, A-bomb-proof spaceships were a headache. It takes technology to build even a make-believe flying saucer.

Birth of a flying saucer, in four easy steps. First, the designer's sketches are converted into mechanical drawings, including top, side and cross-sectional views.

Hand-tooled model grows under sculptor's hand. Model is carefully painted and tested for photogenic qualities under a wide range of lighting conditions and camera angles.

How would you build even a make-believe flying saucer ?

That was the toughest problem confronting George Pal, the producer of When Worlds Collide and Destination Moon, when he set out recently to make a movie of H. G. Well's famous science-fiction story, War of the Worlds.

You'll see the result on your local screen when his picture is released. Pal called his studio technicians together and told them to discard all thoughts of antiquated rocket ships. He wanted to set the style for space vehicles of the future. and, in line with Well's original novel, these Martian blitz machines had to look their deadly part.

That was where Art Director, Al Nozaki came in. Roughing in the first of the 1,006 sketches used to set the mood and action of the film, he crossed a flying wing with a flying saucer to produce the aerial devilfish that Pal demanded. A cobra-like death eye, flickering magnetic legs, and an atom-bomb-resistant envelope that spread itself over the space ship with the ease of a motor-operated convertible top, completed tentative specifications.

Then it was up to the model builders. Sculptors tooled the design in plaster, forming a pattern for the workers who produced the three 45-inch copper models used in the actual filming. Windows, to fit nose, wings and wing tips were cast in plastic. Into the 31-pound miniatures went fifteen hundred dollars' worth of special neon and incandescent lighting. Two motors were used to control the cobra head. Magnesium, burned on window screening, provided the fires caused by the saucers as they flew.

Hollywood's flying saucers resemble aerial devilfish. Wires lead to a movable platform above that "flies" them. Some wires carry current to the saucers motors.

Plaster is poured around the "clay pigeon" then removed and used to form a mold for copper model. Provision is made for adding plastic wing tips and electric lighting.

Cobra-like control head is drawn into place last, not forgetting to connect the motors which will swivel the death-dealing eye. Hook her up and off she flies!

Art director Al Nozaki tilts a small model of the flying saucer, trying out new camera angles for his action-packed sequence sketches.

The actual flying of the saucers followed time-tested overhead-wire technique. But the bombproof hood was a puzzler until a series of animated overlay drawings was developped.

Using double exposure, these were superimposed, one at a time, on the corresponding photo frames. The same blending of photography and drawings made possible breath-taking glimpes of flying-saucer victims, military equipment and whole cities being reduced to ashes under the scorching eyes of the Martian Juggernaut.

Watercolor (above) shows Martian spaceship attacking a valley farmhouse - and the results of clay-model study. Nozaki design resemble giant ray, or devilfish.

Huge studio set (right) supplies background for much of flying-saucer attack. It represents foothills of Southern California where movie shows Martians landing.