Balloons
Over 95% of the world's latex (the vital ingredient of all party balloons) comes from millions of trees across India and Malaysia that are all descended from trees originally cultivated in London. The parent trees were grown in Kew Gardens following the spectacular theft of 70,000 rubber tree seeds from Brazil by a Mr Henry Wickham. Only 4% of the seeds germinated, but that was more than sufficient to stock the world outside Amazonia with enough trees to put an end to the Brazilian monopoly on rubber.
Rising in the presence of King Louis XVI of France, "Aerostat Reveillon" made the first recorded hot-air balloon flight in 1783. Slung beneath its canopy was a duck, a sheep and a rooster. After a two-mile flight, the survival of the animal occupants - particularly the sheep - suggested that life in the sky was possible for humans too. The King had wanted to test this out by sending criminals into the atmosphere, but we suspect that the balloon's creators, wealthy paper-makers Joseph & Etiene Montgolfier, wanted to make history by becoming the first men to fly by balloon ...which they did a couple of months later.
With an open fire beneath a canopy made of silken taffeta, the brothers stayed aloft for just twenty minutes and flew a couple miles before landing with a bump and a slightly burnt balloon! In just a couple of years the English Channel had been over-flown, but it wasn't until 1999 that a balloon flew right around the world. It took just over 19 days and, at around 20,000 feet, pilots Bertrand Piccard and Brian Jones added thirty miles to the journey compared to doing it at ground level.
The balloon dipper featured in the Magic of Making was the last one to operate commercially in the UK and had been shipped out to Poland only months before we decided to make the film - (fiddle sticks!). The machinery had been originally created and operated by a British company called Greenbrook Automations, famous throughout the world for making latex balloon monsters. To be economically viable the Greenbrook machine has to run 24 hours a day, but the high cost of night workers in the UK makes that impracticable.
One of the joys of working in Poland is the relative freedom from excessive health and safety regulations, and this made film-making a far more satisfactory experience for the Magic of Making producers, with the factory staff bending over backwards (within reason) to help us get the shots we wanted. The highlight of the trip was the terrifying sight of our cameraman photographing liquid latex through clouds of ammonia gas while standing on a wooden pallet raised by a forklift truck. Practically blinded by the fumes, the cameraman was at least strapped up and so avoided the risk of falling into the vat of liquid latex!
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Production Notes
Locations:
Thorn Park, Plymouth (With Elfic the Jester);
Kew Gardens, London, England;
Everts Balloons, Warsaw, Poland;
Cameron Balloons, Bristol, England;
Clifton Suspension Bridge, Bristol, England.