The adventures of Scooterman:

STUFF

The series had a lot of effects that gave the illusion of a great technology inside "Scooterman"'s garage and on his vespa.

The vespa: The vespa was a regular vespa motorcycle from "Piaggio" , and the model of this vespa is :"Vespa Special" . The product line of this model was between 1970 to 1972. The vespa was a loan for the six programmms. The workers of the prop. department did all kinds of "cosmetic" changes on it for the show. On the front wheel fender they put a small antenna . Near the driver's sit they put a little tv monitor in which "Scooterman" & "kickstand" got briefed by the Chief(Irv Kaplan).On the handles of the stearing wheel the prop. department put leather stripes which gave the vespa the heroic look. A little electric antenna was placed on the right wing.The antenna was raised every time "Scooterman" talked with the chief. Metal bars were placed on the vespa,to achieve the futuristic look."Scooterman"'s symbol was glued to the front of the vespa and on its back.

The Scooter's monitor: The tv monitor on the scooter was a real small tv monitor which showed the "Scooterman" symbol with a light grid. The grid turned on & off on the screen with the sound waves which presented the chief's voice. The sound waves moved according to Irv Kaplan's reading of the text.

As far as I know the effect worked this way: They transmited through cables to the tv monitor, the picture of the symbol with the grid turning on & off rapidlly. They shoot it with one camera. Second camera shoot the sound waves from an oscilloscope . Irv Kaplan talked to a microphone connected to oscilloscope . That process produced the sound waves.The editor took the shooting from the first camera(gridded symbol)and from the second camera(sound waves)and mixed them together to the well-known shot of the vespa's monitor.

The scooter's moving platform:

Every time "Scooterman" & "kickstand" went to action the Vespa turned to the garage's door on a rotating platform . To get this kind of an effect , the prop. department staff built the wooden platform with a rope around it , so that it moved the vesppa's platform .

Scooterman's garage computer:

The left picture shows "scooterman"'s garage. If you look above the Vespa's leather sit you'll see the garage's computer. The right picture is the resized picture of this machine(the picture is fuzzy due to resolution problems I had proccesing this picture).This so called computer is actually an editing machine. This editing machine was out of order and the production crew decided to put it on the set to give it another futueristic aspect.

The grage's door effect

Same as the rotating platform - here was also a rope that opened the door.

Here are the pictures of the completed model , of Scooterman' garage. This model is held today by the Israeli educational tv center . I've built this model as a gesture and as a memorial act.

All rights reserved to the Israeli educational television center & to Mickey Raphaelovich