Production
Initially unenthusiastic about how he would realise Alan Fennell's script, director David Elliott returned to the production feeling more inspired after seeing the 1965 spy thriller film The Ipcress File, starring Michael Caine. Elliott remembers, "The director used all the old-fashioned shots—looking through a lampshade, etc. On Monday morning, Paddy came in and said, 'I saw a film this weekend,' and I said, 'So did I.' 'Was it The Ipcress File?' 'Yep. Right, that's what I want to do.'" Elliott therefore resolved to incorporate "quirky visuals" into his direction of "30 Minutes After Noon".
Elliott decided to open the Glen Carrick Castle scene with a tracking shot around the three walls of the puppet set and coordinated the manoeuvres with camera operator Alan Perry. In a pioneering development for a Supermarionation production, forced perspective is used in this sequence to present both a human hand and puppet characters in one frame. While the live hand, intended to belong to Southern, twiddles a pen in the foreground of the shot, the puppets of Kenyon and Dempsey are positioned across a table in the background. Although the puppets had been sculpted in 1⁄3 scale, Kenyon and Dempsey appear to be of accurate size in relation to the hand. This technique was used again later in the episode when Scott removes the bracelets from the plutonium store.
Incidental music for "30 Minutes After Noon" is for the most part recycled from previous Anderson productions. The "March of the Oysters" track from the Stingray episode "Secret of the Giant Oyster" is emitted from the television of Hudson Building janitor Sam Saltzman. The Highland theme from "Loch Ness Monster" is used for the scenes set at Glen Carrick Castle, while the miniature model itself also appears as Castle McGregor in this Stingray episode. It would make one further appearance in the Anderson productions as Glen Garry Castle in "The Trap", an episode of Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons.
Read more about this topic: 30 Minutes After Noon
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