Saturday 7 November 2015

Enigma 2001

There is a 1/5th scale U-boat model featured in this fictional story based on the Enigma code breaking effort going on at Bletchley Park in England during the second world war.



The miniature sequences were supervised by Jose Granell who was then at Mill Film. (This division of the visual effects company The Mill was disbanded around a year later in 2002).

The surface submarine shots are totally convincing, filmed at sea with a real horizon and about the best miniature submarine shots I have seen. The merchant ship models are less successful with the exploding models looking very bare of both detail and  paint weathering. Unfortunately they look like they were made of foam core and were only designed for distant shots but were then employed for close ups.



A miniature fishing boat was also constructed for interaction with the model sub for the end sequence.

Thanks to reader Henry Gee for pointing me to these photographs of the Puck's escape boat miniature.





The submarine model was given to Bletchley Park for outdoor display at the end of the production. Recent photographs appear to show that along with a change in location its original movie paint scheme has been over-painted all in grey primer,and the towing fixture on the bow has been removed.



 Magic camera Company, Jose granells's most recent company (and a re-birth of the company name of legendary miniatures supervisor Derek Meddings of which Jose Granell was an integral part), has some reels and photographs of the submarine in action, the submarine miniature from K19 Widowmaker. along with various other examples of superb model ship work.



















































Nice model obscured by badly composited CG smoke.



2 comments:

  1. Hello

    There was also Puck's small fishing boat; the "Dubh Sgier":

    https://propstoreauction.com/view-auctions/catalog/id/26/lot/3277/ENIGMA-2001-Puck-s-Nikolaj-Coster-Waldau-Boat-Miniature?url=%2Fview-auctions%2Findividual-lots%2F%3Fpage%3D2%26key%3Dminiature%26items%3D96#

    Filming model - 17 high resolution images.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Nice find Henry thanks for the link.

    ReplyDelete

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