David Nelson Godfrey Mitton (27 February 1939–16 May 2008) was a British television producer and director, and an experienced model-maker and author, best known for producing and directing the children's TV series Thomas the Tank Engine and Friends and Tugs. During the 1960s, he worked with Gerry and Sylvia Anderson as a special effects technician on series such as Thunderbirds.
Mitton was born in Preston, East Lothian and educated at Strathallan School, Perthshire before joining Royal Navy to serve in its air-sea rescue division.
With fellow directors Ken Turner and Robert D. Cardona, he managed a company, Clearwater Films (later Clearwater Features), which became part of The Britt Allcroft Company in 1991 and HIT Entertainment in 2002. Mitton left the company following the completion of the seventh series of Thomas the Tank Engine. In 2006, he started another company, Pineapple Squared Entertainment, with director David Lane.
Mitton died of a heart attack on 16 May 2008. Prior to his death, he and Lane had been working on the production of the computer-animated TV series Adventures on Orsum Island.
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“We should be blessed if we lived in the present always, and took advantage of every accident that befell us, like the grass which confesses the influence of the slightest dew that falls on it; and did not spend our time in atoning for the neglect of past opportunities, which we call doing our duty.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)