Mike Tucker (special effects artist)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Mike Tucker (born in South Wales) is a Welsh special effects expert who worked for many years at the BBC Television Visual Effects Department, and now works as an Effects Supervisor for his own company, The Model Unit.[1] He is also the author of a variety of spin-offs relating to the television series Doctor Who and novelisations based on episodes of the television series Merlin. He sometimes co-writes with Robert Perry.
Tucker's early work for the BBC was as a holiday relief assistant on the 1982 history series Timewatch. Following this, he became a full-time member of the BBC Visual Effects Department working on practical effects and models for a range of BBC programmes including Casualty, Top of the Pops, EastEnders, The Singing Detective, Proust and Tomorrow's World among many others. He was one of the principal effects crew for Red Dwarf series 1 - 7 and worked as an effects assistant on the final four series of the original Doctor Who. His association with Doctor Who continued long after the series was "rested" by the BBC, working on the Children in Need special Dimensions in Time.
He became a fully fledged effects supervisor in the early 1990s, handling the effects for shows including I Was a Rat, 999 International, Raging Planet and Twister Week. Starting to specialise in miniature effects he went on to handle model sequences for Egypt's Golden Empire, Disasters at Sea, Nelson's Island, Billy and the Fighter Boys, Hiroshima and The Brighton Bomb.
In 2005, Tucker became the first person who worked on the original series of Doctor Who to also work on the revived version starring Christopher Eccleston, as model work supervisor, work which continues to the present day. Following the closure of the BBC effects department in 2004 he set up his own company The Model Unit-based initially at Ealing Studios before moving on to Wimbledon Studios in 2012. As a result of the closure of Wimbledon Studios in 2014 the company returned to Ealing Studios once more.
The Model Unit has contributed miniature effects sequences for varied projects such as the Munich air disaster segment of BBC's Surviving Disaster series, Krakatoa - The Last Days, also for the BBC, Moonshot and Primeval for ITV, Human Body - Pushing the Limits, Clash of the Dinosaurs and Last Day of the Dinosaurs for the Discovery Channel and the feature film Atonement for Working Title Films.
On 23 November 2013 the BBC Broadcast a special 50th Anniversary episode of Doctor Who, titled "The Day of the Doctor".[2] Mike Tucker's Model Unit was responsible for the miniature effects in the feature-length special which was broadcast on BBC One and simultaneously in many countries and up to 1500 cinemas in the UK.[3]
Nominations & awards
In May 2006, Tucker won a BAFTA Craft Award for his special effects work on the drama-documentary Hiroshima.
In July 2008 Tucker was part of the team nominated for a Primetime Emmy for Outstanding Visual Effects in a Television Series for his work on the "Strength" episode of Discovery Channel's Human Body - Pushing the Limits.
In April 2014 Mike Tucker's Model Unit won a BAFTA craft award for Doctor Who: "The Day of the Doctor",[4] along with Milk VFX, Real SFX
He has been nominated five times for an RTS Craft Award for his work on 999 international - Missing in Action, The Brighton Bomb, Horizon - Last Flight of Columbia, Human Body - Pushing the Limits and Doctor Who - "The Day of the Doctor".
