Look and Read - Cloud Burst


	CLOUD BURST STORY DETAILS

CLOUD BURST

• Index
> Introduction
> Episode Guide
> Cast and Crew
> Theme Tune (download!)
> Video Clips (download!)
> Notes
> Links
> Picture Gallery
• Story Guide
> Episode One
> Episode Two
> Episode Three
> Episode Four
> Episode Five
> Episode Six
> Episode Seven
> Episode Eight
> Episode Nine
> Episode Ten

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ON TV:	Not scheduled at the moment, but it should be repeated again in 2007 - watch this space
ON VIDEO:	Not available on video or DVD, you'll have to tape it off TV yourself
> More information on the official BBC Schools Programme Guide

Introduction

Two kids go looking for their crashed toy plane on the fens and meet a foreign scientist - Ram Pandit - who is working on a secret invention. The kids step in to help when some baddies, including one very familiar face, resort to subterfuge and kidnapping in their attempts to get hold of the invention. A more detailed story guide can be read in the episode listings below.
Apart from the ace storyline, this programme also represents the start of Look and Read's golden era under producer Sue Weeks with the introduction of Wordy doing the in-between bits plus Derek Griffiths doing the songs.

EXTRA: Download the Cloud Burst story book

Episode Guide
WARNING! SPOILERS! Reading this bit will give away the whole storyline and ruin your enjoyment if you haven't already seen/read it.

Many thanks to Andrew K. Shenton for providing this episodic breakdown. You can now follow the episodes in detail, with screen grabs, in the Story Guide.
1.	Out of Control
	In the Fens, Jenny Barber and her brother, Tim, are flying their model plane. They are watched by a man on a motor bike. The plane behaves erratically and crashes into some nearby trees.
2.	Ram Pandit
	Whilst looking for their plane, the children come across a house owned by an Indian scientist, Ram Pandit. He works with a colleague, Dick Turner, and a computer, which occupies much of one of the rooms.
3.	RAV 1
	Ram and Mr. Turner demonstrate the computer to Jenny and Tim. Ram promises to mend the control unit of Jenny’s plane. As they leave the house, they notice the man on the motor bike again.
4.	The Gas-gun
	Another Indian, Ram’s brother, is plotting to steal a computer "firing program" from Ram. Jenny and Tim set off to Ram’s house to collect the repaired remote control. Realising that his brother, Ravi, is on his way, Ram hurriedly types a message into the computer before he succumbs to gas fired by the gun of Ravi’s henchman, Number Two.
5.	In The Hut
	Ram is kidnapped before Jenny and Tim arrive. They are allowed into the house by Mrs. Green, the housekeeper, and are unaware of the fate that has befallen Ram. When they are caught in a downpour on their journey home, they shelter in a hut. As they leave, they are confronted by Mr. Turner.
6.	The Secret
	Mr. Turner is puzzled as to why Ram is not at home. He goes to the house with the children and they find the beginnings of an unfinished message on the computer. It refers to Ram’s twin brother, Ravi. He is now holding Ram prisoner in a factory. Mr. Turner takes Jenny and Tim into his confidence and reveals that he and Ram have been developing a "rain-gun" that will end drought and famine in India.
7.	To The Mill!
	Ravi announces his plan to use the rain-gun to flood the Fens and hold the country to ransom. He reveals that, using the information held on Ram’s computer, he has been able to make a copy of Ram’s rain-gun and tricks Mr. Turner into travelling to a windmill, where Ram is to be held.
8.	The Signal
	Ram is moved to the mill and, when Mr. Turner arrives, he, too, is captured and imprisoned. The children, meanwhile, are still at Ram’s house. Knowing that Ravi is returning to the house to steal the firing programme, Ram sends a message to the children using the model plane’s remote control unit, which is still in his pocket. The signal, he hopes, will alert them to Ravi’s imminent arrival. Jenny and Tim hide while Ravi steals the firing program. They follow him to the mill.
9.	Escape
	Ravi takes the rain-gun to flood the Fens, and leaves a henchman, Number Three, who we recognise as the man on the motor bike, to hold Ram and Mr. Turner prisoner in the mill. To create a diversion, Tim starts the motor bike outside and, in the ensuing confusion, he and his sister sneak inside to set Ram and Mr. Turner free. The race is on to stop Ravi using the rain-gun.
10.	Fire The Rockets!
	Ravi begins firing the rain-gun’s rockets that will ultimately cause massive flooding. Jenny suggests using her plane to hit the machine and sabotage it. Ram believes the rain-gun can be destroyed if the aerial is hit. The plane strikes the aerial and Ravi’s scheme is foiled. Ravi escapes but Number Three is unmasked as Ram’s housekeeper, Mrs. Green, who has been supplying Ram’s secrets to Ravi!

Cast and Crew

Written by Music by Designer Studio director Producer	Richard Carpenter Roger Limb Chris Robilliard Peter Craske Sue Weeks
Costume designer Mary Woods, make-up Jane Speak, graphics Peter Jones, Eddie Newstead, film cameraman Peter Chapman, film recordist Bob Roberts, film animation Adrian Dobinson, film editor Peter Orton, visual effects Tony Oxley, scientific consultant Dr Kit Pedlar, background material Bridie Raban, Cliff Moon, reading consultant Joyce M. Morris

Presented by Starring Singers Accompanied by	Richard Carpenter Tina Heath as Jenny Barber Anne Ridler as Mrs Green / Number Three Miles Anderson as Dick Turner Charles Collingwood as Wordy Nigel Rathbone as Tim Barber Renu Setna as Ram Pandit and Ravi Pandit Michael Sheard as Number Two Kenneth Watson as Mr Barber Bill Gavin as Sir Robert Blain Jane Carr Derek Griffiths Gerald Down

Theme Tune

The Cloud Burst theme tune was an all-instrumental radiophonic job.

music by Roger Limb, no lyrics
MP3 file: 38 seconds, 298 kb

> CLICK HERE for the Downloads section, including this and several other theme tunes.

Video Clips

©BBC

• Clip 1 - I'm Mr Watchword
Richard Carpenter is peacefully getting on with some writing when a strange orange creature pops out from his typewriter and starts haranguing him about the minutiae of his vocabulary. This was the first ever appearance of Mr Watchword the wordwatcher, Wordy for short.
> What happens next? Read about it in the Story Guide.

	Download WMV file 51 seconds @ 103kbps = 658kb
	Download RM file (or click here to stream it) 51 seconds @ 80kbps = 546kb

• Clip 2 - The brothers Pandit
Ram Pandit comes face to face with the evil scientist who is trying to hijack his altruistic inventions and hold the country to ransom - it's his twin brother Ravi. Try to spot the join in the split-screening, which was done directly onto 16mm film.
> What happens next? Read about it in the Story Guide.

	Download WMV file 50 seconds @ 103kbps = 642kb
	Download RM file (or click here to stream it) 50 seconds @ 80kbps = 515kb

• Clip 3 - Fire the rockets
The thrilling conclusion to the story, as Jenny finally gets her plane to hit the aerial, Ravi's lab explodes and he falls out of the van, and Number Three is finally unmasked.
> What happens next? Read about it in the Story Guide.

	Download WMV file 57 seconds @ 103kbps = 716kb
	Download RM file (or click here to stream it) 57 seconds @ 80kbps = 593kb

• You can watch another clip from Cloud Burst - involving Jenny and Tim first looking round the laboratory - on BBCi's Look and Read website. Click here for the page, which includes a streaming RealVideo (59 seconds @ 133.6kbps SS = 494kb).
> What happens next? Read about it in the Story Guide.

> CLICK HERE for more video clips from Look And Read stories.

Timeline

Production of Cloud Burst began shortly after the completion of Joe and the Sheep Rustlers, when Richard Carpenter was hired to provide a new story for the series. He was not briefed on a specific theme or topic to write about, and the story was also given a new producer who had not worked on the series previously, so finding the inspiration for a plot was a major initial labour. The producer and writer spent a lot of time thinking and driving around near Carpenter's childhood home in Norfolk, until he eventually pieced together the elements of a story based in the area. Carpenter then went to work on a script and pupil's story book, which was meticulously edited by hand to ensure that every single word and every piece of punctuation occurred the correct number of times in the correct places, and the vocabulary was limited to the 250 Key Words to Literacy and other necessary plot-words only. With this early work complete, production itself began in the spring of 1974...

FEBRUARY 1974
Wed 6th or Thu 7th (not sure which) - The first material put to film for the story, the model plane flying scenes for the first and last episodes, long before the rest of the filming begins.

MARCH 1974
Mon 25th - Final location recce by the production team

APRIL 1974
Mon 1st - Location filming with all the actors began, in and around the town of Downham Market in Norfolk, continuing over Easter a fortnight later. Cast and crew would travel between London and the location on their days off, which made it quite a disjointed affair. The initial drafts of the pupils' pamphlet and teacher's notes were also produced at this time, and checked by the producer whilst on location.
Mon 29th - With all filming for the story bits complete, editing of these segments formally began - though it is possible that film editor Peter Orton had previously begun work alone whilst the rest of the production team were still on location. At this point only the filmed story was edited - the teaching segments were written over the summer and recorded close to transmission in the autumn.

MAY 1974

JUNE 1974
Sat 1st - The radio programmes to accompany the series were recorded, carefully arranged while all the actors were still under contract! Whilst earlier stories had used cast recordings of the story book on LP, Cloud Burst was the first to be accompanied by its own radio programmes, designed to be tape recorded by teachers and used in the classroom in short segments.

JULY 1974
Thu 18th - A meeting between Joyce M. Morris (educational advisor), Roger Limb (musician) and Adrian Dobinson (animator) marks the beginning of work on the series' songs.

AUGUST 1974

SEPTEMBER 1974
Wed 11th - First studio recording session, with lots of Wordy sequences - in fact the first appearance of Wordy ever. Early on this morning, just before recording began, someone decided that the puppet didn't look quite right and stuck an old yoghurt pot on for his nose, and the Wordy face we all know was created.
Mon 16th - Second studio recording, with Richard Carpenter segments.
Tue 17th - Middle of episode 2 recorded.
Wed 18th - 4th studio recording session.
Thu 19th - First batch of animations delivered. These song animations were intended to highlight specific letters within words which were being taught by the songs. Unfortunately there was little contrast between the different colours used and it was difficult to see which bit was being highlighted. Since it was less than a week to transmission, there was no time to have the animations revised, so they simply had to crank up the contrast as much as possible while editing the episodes, though the end result was still far from perfectly distinct.
Fri 20th - First editing session, covering episodes 1 and 2. The programmes were edited at the Television International facility in London, since the BBC didn't have enough of the necessary 3-machine suites of its own to go around.
Tue 24th - TX episode 1, 10:00am
Wed 25th - Middles of episodes 3 and 5 recorded.
Fri 27th - Block editing session of all the radio episodes. The radio programmes contained a reading of the story by the actors in role, replays of several of the songs and short exercises related to listening skills. It wasn't always possible to read all the the assigned chapters within one radio programme, so they just started from the beginning and kept going as far as possible before the programme ended.
Mon 30th - 6th studio recording.
Mon 30th - TX Radio programme 1, 11:40am (chapters 1 - 4)

OCTOBER 1974
Tue 1st - TX episode 2, 10:00am
Tue 8th - TX episode 3, 10:00am
Fri 11th & weekend - Episode 4 edited. These editing sessions combined the previously completed filmed story with the teaching middles, which were recorded roughly sequentially and so didn't require extensive editing. When assembling the programmes, the last thing to be done would be the story recap at the beginning of each episode, which was assembled in the final dub since it could last however long or short was needed to fill up time. The narration was the very last thing edited on.
Mon 14th - Script for the teaching segment of episode 10 approved by the reading consultant, meaning all writing for the series was now complete.
Tue 15th - TX episode 4, 10:00am
Wed 16th - 7th studio session, recording most of episode 6.
Thu 17th & Fri 18th - Editing episode 5.
Tue 22nd - TX episode 5, 10:00am
Wed 23rd - 8th studio, with Richard Carpenter.
Thu 24th - 9th studio session.
Fri 25th - Episode 6 edited.

NOVEMBER 1974
Fri 1st - Episode 7 edited.
Tue 5th - TX episode 6, 10:00am
Wed 6th - 10th studio recording.
Mon 11th - Rest of episode 7 & a bit of 8 edited.
Mon 11th - TX Radio programme 2, 11:40am (chapters 5 - 7)
Tue 12th - TX episode 7, 10:00am
Thu 14th - Final studio recording (postponed from Wednesday 13th).
Tue 19th - TX episode 8, 10:00am
Fri 22nd - Episode 9 edited.
Mon 25th - TX Radio programme 3, 11:40am (chapters 8 - 10)
Tue 26th - TX episode 9, 10:00am
Wed 27th - Episode 10 edited.
Fri 29th - After a final editing session at 10am, production on Cloud Burst was officially completed.

DECEMBER 1974
Tue 3rd - TX episode 10, 10:00am

All dates and details here are taken from private sources and unreliable records (apart from broadcast information, obviously, which is taken from published sources) and is neither complete nor necessarily correct. I have not had any access to any internal BBC paperwork in compiling this list - so if anybody has any more information or can corroborate or refute any of this stuff, please get in touch.

Stuff covered in the timeline: filming and recording the programmes, editing the programmes, transmissions (TX) of the programmes (only the first TXs are noted), the radio programmes, including recording and transmission, and other random stuff.

Notes

Dave Matthews was unconvinced by the story's ending:
The whole plan was eventually foiled by a kid with a remote-controlled plane who crashed it into the canon about three seconds before it was about to fire. To be honest given the canon was a pretty hefty piece of kit, a little plane would hardly scratch it, never mind wipe it out! Even as an eight-year-old, it didn't fool me!

Writer Richard Carpenter comments on what Cloud Burst was really all about in an interview for TV Zone magazine in 1993:
Cloud Burst was about the invention of a rain gun and the moral of the story was that technology could be used for good or evil.
I was getting at nuclear energy really.

Ravi Pandit was businesslike and to the point. Here he pretends to be his brother Ram and makes his threats to Ram's employer, Sir Robert Blain of World Food Plan.
Hello, Sir Robert. This is Ram Pandit. The rain-gun will be tested today. I am going to flood the fens. I am going to make it rain and rain. The rivers will burst their banks and all the land will be under water. Goodbye Sir Robert.

My illustration uses grabs from the RealVideo clip available at the BBC Cult website.

Here is a list of all of the broadcasts of this story on the BBC. Unless your teachers managed to get the video recorder to work, this is when you would have seen it in school. See the Air Dates section for precise dates and times.
Autumn 1974, BBC1
Autumn 1975, BBC1
Autumn 1976, BBC1
Autumn 1977, BBC1
Summer 2003, CBBC
Autumn 2003, CBBC
Spring 2004, CBBC
Summer 2004, CBBC
Autumn 2004, CBBC
Summer 2005, CBBC
Spring 2006, CBBC

Links

• You can watch a clip from the Cloud Burst story, featuring Jenny and Tim looking round Ram's lab at the end of Episode 2, at the BBC Cult website.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/cult/ilove/tv/lookandread/v6.shtml (embedded RealVideo)

• Ian Trembirth's Look and Read site has a Cloud Burst page with a nice write-up of the story.
http://www.trembirth.demon.co.uk/lookread/ (frameset)

> CLICK HERE for more general links about Look And Read and schools TV.

Picture Gallery

This is Jenny. This is Tim. This is Dick Turner. This is Number One.


'It's the man on the motor-bike again. He has a map with him.' 'I saw him on Sunday,' said Tim. 'Down by the big drain.'	There was a light in the room. Someone was living there after all! We turned from the window. A man was standing behind us!

©BBC illustration by Trevor Ridley, text by Richard Carpenter

'Sir Robert?' I called. I went into the mill. Where was everyone? 'Ram!' I called again. Suddenly I turned round... Number Two fired the gas-gun at Mr Turner and he fell.

> See every Look & Read book cover in the Trivia section

> Get complete books, including this one, from the Downloads section

'How did you find me, Ravi?' said Ram. 'I never lost you,' said Ravi. 'When you left India, so did I. When you came to the Fens, so did I. I know everything you have been doing here. Everything!'

She ran to the car and got her plane. 'Could we hit the rain-gun with this?' she said. 'It would take more than that to stop it firing,' said Tim. Ram looked towards the rain-gun. 'If we hit the aerial, it would stop it,' he said.

The pupil's pamphlet


Look, it's the VT clock.	The first ever appearance of the "Look And Read Eyes" animation, which was produced specially for this story.	The title sequence was a series of still images of the sun and of crops growing.

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