Jack Kine

Pioneer of television special effects

John Cornwell Kine, special effects artist: born London 20 September 1921; married 1949 Gladys Martin (died 2001; two daughters); died Worminghall, Buckinghamshire 14 January 2005.

Jack Kine was a true pioneer of television. As the co-founder in 1954 of the BBC Visual Effects Department, he worked on many landmark productions, inventing techniques that stood the burgeoning industry in good stead for decades to come.

Kine was born within the sound of the Bow Bells, his boyhood friendship with his neighbour, the artist Hilda Boswell, encouraging his talent for painting. He left school to become an apprentice architectural model-maker and scenic artist for four years until 1937. His interest in the new medium of television was piqued when the BBC set up shop just down the road and he got a job as a junior artist, "slapping paint on backdrops and thoroughly enjoying it for £2 a week".

The Second World War intervened, and, after seven years as a dispatch rider in the Far East, Kine was hungry to return to Alexandra Palace. Moving to the BBC's new facilities at Lime Grove, he was promoted to be senior scenic artist, and designers often called upon this talented maverick to help them overcome hitherto unforeseen, effects-related obstacles.

One day in May 1954, Kine was crossing the workshop floor when an angular man flew through the door with a smoking bucket, hurling it outside where it promptly exploded. The man was Bernard Wilkie, seconded from the research department to experiment with fibreglass. When it became clear that television was outgrowing itself and demanding more complex and less orthodox visual requirements, the two men teamed up.

They were an inspired pairing: Wilkie an engineer with an artistic streak, Kine an artist with an interest in engineering. They worked on an ad hoc basis, often donating materials from home and co-opting their wives to sew props or act as unpaid secretarial staff. They didn't take a day off in their first year together, often working on several productions at once, and remained firm friends until Wilkie's death in 2002.

Their baptism of fire was Running Wild with Morecambe and Wise in 1954, quickly followed by Rudolph Cartier's epic production 1984. If techniques didn't exist the pair invented them, becoming model-makers, matte painters, stop-motion animators or title sequence graphic designers, depending on what the scripts demanded. "We were working totally blind," Kine told me in 1990:

We'd done very little on a really large scale. But we were reaching for the challenge and determined to prove ourselves.

They learnt fast and quickly: on Quatermass II (1955) the amorphous monster was hurriedly put together after Cartier finished one morning session with the announcement that "after lunch we shoot the creature". This was news to Kine and Wilkie. They spent their lunchtime rigging together a small model, smothered it with dry ice and cocoa powder, and shoved Kine's latex-covered hands inside: a two-hour solution which, when aired, "stopped the country in its tracks" (and was preceded by an announcement warning viewers "of a nervous disposition" not to watch).

Having designed a cumbersome spacesuit, Kine and Wilkie found themselves dressing the actor John Robinson in it, on air, during the live transmission. As the camera cut away from our hero, Kine and Wilkie literally picked him up, ran and placed him down on set in time for the next shot. Although shows were predominantly live, some pre-filming was allowed for the acme of the Kneale/Cartier/Kine/Wilkie oeuvre, Quatermass and the Pit (1958/59), for which Kine designed the hideously plausible Martian creatures.

When Kine was hanging one in the spaceship in which they were cocooned, the fishing wire holding it in place broke and the creature suddenly shifted. Cartier liked the effect and shot it in front of an unsuspecting cast. On the take, the actor André Morell jumped out of his skin, and, when it was aired, so did the nation.

Their remit covered every genre including comedy (Dad's Army, Some Mothers Do 'Ave 'Em), drama (Z-Cars, Maigret) and education (Blue Peter and Tomorrow's World). They weren't backroom boffins, but an integral part of the studio team, establishing a rapport with cast and crew alike.

The television Visual Effects Department became the biggest of its kind in the world, with a bevy of talented designers blowing things up with aplomb. BBC bureaucracy would not allow joint heads of department, so Kine became the titular chief, assuming a more administrative role, whilst Wilkie continued on the workshop floor.

Kine left the BBC after nearly 40 years, content that he had achieved his goals. He spent a happy retirement with his wife Gladys and his grandchildren kept him young at heart and tinkering. He had written a book on models and miniature-making, Miniature Scenic Modelling (1979), and he was a brilliant artist who refused to let failing eyesight stop him painting. He was great company, full of stories and proud of his work without being arrogant.

Toby Hadoke