Interviews · 25 February 2022
Red Dwarf The opening sequence, explained
Red Dwarf interviewed by Kevin Durham, 25 February 2022. 4m 09s on tape.
This clip is from a live fundraising event, for updates on further events follow me on Instagram To donate to the children's hospice we were raising money for please click on the link below. ttps://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/Kevin-Durham In this Red Dwarf interview I ask the Rob Grant and Ed Bye about how the opening sequence was put together. Red Dwarf is a British science fiction comedy franchise created by Rob Grant and Doug Naylor, which primarily consists of a television sitcom that aired on BBC Two between 1988 and 1999, and on Dave since 2009, gaining a cult following. The premise of the series follows the low-ranking technician Dave Lister, who awakens after being in suspended animation for three million years to find he is the last living human, with no crew on board the mining spacecraft Red Dwarf, other than Arnold Rimmer, a hologram of Lister's deceased bunkmate, and Cat, a life form which evolved from Lister's pregnant cat.
What's on the tape
A transcript, made by machine from the audio and tidied up. It gets names and the odd word wrong, so treat it as a way to find the bit you want rather than as a quotation. Every timestamp jumps to that moment in the video.
0:02 Devised and by whom and how many pints did it take to come up with it well I can answer a bit of this but I need a bit of help from Rob. My memory of this was that when we first got the script we thought the first thing we need to do is the first thing that needs to be done. Which is the model shots because that's going to be the first thing to be shot before the rest of the show we sat in the pub in camberwell. And we were sitting there having our important production meeting and I'm guessing no I'm pretty certain about this actually that we came up with the idea. Of the great big long spaceship flying. And that was in our first session and that was approximately. Oh I can't tell you how many pints actually yet but I I've got an idea of how many that was and then we went had a second.
0:48 Meeting in the nameless pub in campbell well and then had another thought about the opening titles and came up with the idea of lister cleaning. The outside of it and that was another x amount of pints and then we were so pleased with ourselves that we had another x amount. Of pints to celebrate how great our ideas was luckily somebody wrote it down because I don't really remember the rest of the so so that was uh where. It was devised and I sort of given some of it away and then in the end our original idea was to have the spaceship going. Going going and going and then and then you sort of develop around the front and it would go in and you'd see craig. But it was so complicated. And different we had to compromise so we did have the ship running around and then we did another shot of it coming across the screen.
1:38 And then we we went to that I mean. It is such a wonderful opening sequence for its time because first of all there's the music and the you know you're in some lonely dangerous. But interesting place I mean it really that howard's music just sets it but then you see this model and it's a model shot and you know but but bloody. Hell then you pull back and now there's a brush going up and down and now it's actually what we now know to be craig charles. And you pull out and then you've got that wonderful sequence in the titles whether where the craft's coming you're in the belly of the craft. With it flying over your head so I think in after 30 seconds you've told so much story. Already in the opening titles I remember. The direction we gave pete ragg for the model was we wanted it to be non-aerodynamic.
2:28 And ugly because it was a practical it was a practical. Mining vessel in space and uh so it would make it different from any you know it wouldn't well the asteroid embedded in the side of it yeah. Normally as a result of that yeah but I do remember going to the model studio and seeing it and it was it was seven. For long um and they painted it Red and I thought no I didn't mean to be Red I didn't want a Red spaceship. And and but it kind of grew on me was this the painting the ship because of the punishment detail in states I think that's what we came down to yeah. To explain this grumpy face yeah my understanding what my thing was it was originally it was six pints. On the first meeting when we thought about the overhead shot between three of yeah so it's two pints each we restrained in those days and then the second.
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3:26 Section the second session we had which was where we came up with the painting idea that was another. Six pints so that's that's 12. and then we celebrated with another. Three pints so that's 15. so the answer to uh how many points have come to devise the opening titles was 15 pipes. Well 45 between all of us. Oh yes okay we're going to pick it's going to be nitpicky on my maps okay yes it just sounds better doesn't it yeah it does actually.
