The Thing : Documentary
Launched on Saturday 17th May at The National Museum of Computing, Block H, Bletchley Park, our brand new documentary looks into the dark and intriguing world of spying. Entitled The Thing this documentary focuses on a covert listening device that defies time, technology and belief.
Invented at the outset of the Cold War, and in a pre-digital age, by the genius of Leon Theremin, the Thing (as it was originally called) led to espionage, betrayal and political wrangling on a truly global scale.
The documentary shot over 5 years, was filmed and produced by Oomph Creative, researched and narrated by John Little (TSCM Principal RSES, FSyI, FmTSCMi, MIET), and gives us the fascinating background to a very complex story over an 90 year period.
This is the story behind the Great American seal bug. It spans 90 years, 2 World Wars, the Cold War and involves 3 great nations.
5 Years in the making
We received a call from John Little in late 2019 to say that he had a story that he wanted to tell and that he wanted to record it. During the telephone conversation, he explained that this is a passion project and immediately went into great detail. An hour later and with our brains full to bursting, Emily and I went through our notes and both agreed 2 things. Firstly this indeed was a deeply fascinating story, secondly neither of us really had a handle on it.
Our intrigue and possibly instinct got the better of us and so in early 2020 we turned up, equipment in hand, to the Bletchley Park address given, unloaded and started filming the story overview. If you cast your mind back, you will remember that at this period the world was about to change forever. As we commenced on this labour of love, the UK slowly went into lock down.
On day 1 it became immediately apparent that this was going to be a lot more work and detail going in to this than the planning sessions had suggested. Every time John spoke to camera another question would come into our mind. The issue was that the complexity of the story was so great that we could not simply move on to the next bit, every element was intertwined with other elements and therefore could not be missed.
From inception to completion, this story full of intrigue, political wrangling and of course spying gripped us. The momentum never dropped and was always something we looked forward to filming. Unlike the viewer, we had to wait weeks, sometimes months to find out what happened next, who was involved and where that led.
John’s passion project was infectious and it turned into our passion project. After 5 years (almost to the day) we finally wrapped up filing, put the finishing touches on the edit, and brought the project to a close.
Anyway, it turns out that our instinct was right. We pitched the documentary to The National Museum of Computing in Bletchley Park and they said “yes please” we will premiere it. Tickets sold out within 72 hours and a second date has been booked in. We could not have hoped for a better response. What next? The documentary launch is the priority, then we can see where The Thing leads us.
John LIttle holding ‘the Thing’ working replica in front of The Bombe, Block H, Bletchley Park.
John LIttle and The Thing in the Colossus room.
John LIttle, The Thing & the Great American Seal.
The screening
With so much having gone into the researching of the Satyr, the development of the clandestine bug, and the painstaking making of the documentary, it seemed fitting to launch the short documentary in the amazing facilities at The National Museum of Computing (https://www.tnmoc.org) within Bletchley Park.
