Both Meddings' parents had worked in the British film industry: his father as a carpenter at Denham Studios and his mother as producer Alex Korda's secretary and as Merle Oberon's stand-in. Meddings went to art school and, in the late 1940s, also found work at Denham Studios, lettering credit titles. It was there he met special effects man Les Bowie working on a commercial, and joined his matte painting department.
During the 1950s, Meddings' work with Bowie included the creation of Transylvanian landscapes for Hammer Films and a "string and cardboard" invention that proved useful when Meddings was hired for Gerry Anderson's earliest television puppet shows.
Meddings' first work with Anderson was as the uncredited art assistant on Anderson's first puppet series, Torchy the Battery Boy, produced in 1957. In 1960, he painted cut-out backgrounds of ranch houses and picket fences for Four Feather Falls.He was credited with the special effects in Anderson's 1960 and 1962 series Supercar and Fireball XL5, being elevated to special effects director on 1963's Stingray for which he and Reg Hill designed the main models. He became special effects supervisor on 1964's Thunderbirds, where he was responsible for the design of the Thunderbirds craft. He was visual effects supervisor for all the Anderson puppet series of the late 1960s (Captain Scarlet, Joe 90, The Secret Service) and also on Anderson's first live-action series UFO. He performed the same role on Anderson's three feature films of the period , Thunderbirds Are Go (1966), Thunderbird 6 (produced in 1967, released in 1968) and the live action Doppelgänger (US title "Journey to the Far Side of the Sun", 1969). During his time working on these series, he and his team developed a number of innovations in the filming of miniature models and landscapes which have become standard in the industry.
In the 1970s he developed his career by working on the special effects for the James Bond movies. He first impressed producer Cubby Broccoli with some miniature effects he created for Live and Let Die in 1973. Once Broccoli realised the economic advantages of building detailed models instead of expensive full-size constructions, Meddings was encouraged to come up with ideas on the next Bond, The Man with the Golden Gun (1974)
In 1975, he created cost-effective model monsters which could be photographed in the same frame as the actors in the prehistoric adventure The Land That Time Forgot.
He returned to the James Bond films in 1977 with The Spy Who Loved Me. Among other tasks, he spent four months on location in the Bahamas, where he supervised the construction of a 'miniature' supertanker over 60 ft long and three 'miniature' nuclear submarines for exterior sequences filmed on the real ocean in shark-infested waters. He also designed and built the Lotus Esprit car which converted into a submersible, cleverly intercutting full-size body shells with one-quarter scale miniatures.
On Superman, his work included building a 60 ft (18 m) miniature of the Golden Gate Bridge to be destroyed in an earthquake with a miniature school bus and several automobiles colliding as Superman (suspended on wires) flew down to the rescue.
He set up his own visual effects company, The Magic Camera Company, based at Lee International Studios in Shepperton, while for The Never Ending Story II (1990), he set up an outfit in Germany.
Meddings believed he was asked to supervise the effects on Batman (1989) because director Tim Burton was a fan of his work on Thunderbirds.
At the time of his death, he was engaged in post-production on the latest James Bond picture, GoldenEye, on which his sons Mark and Elliott also worked. GoldenEye was dedicated "To the memory of Derek Meddings".
He appeared once as an actor, playing the role of Dr Stinson in High Spirits in 1988.
