Dangerous Passage 1944

Not surprisingly Dangerous Passage is another film that lapsed into the public domain and so can be seen in any number of poor quality formats and freely downloaded from the Internet Archive. It has a very few shots of a model ship in a storm which are very murky due to the poor quality source.

In Search of the Castaways 1962

Another Disney family film from the early sixties, though not quite in the same league as Swiss family Robinson, as it tends to get very silly at times. This time Peter Ellenshaw is credited for Special Photographic Effects and there are a lot of matte paintings in the film, many of which are combined with miniatures. The film also has some model ship scenes which are reasonably effective. The model looks very much like it is the slightly modified and re-painted nitrate ship from Disney's 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea made in 1954.

The model in the tank. You can see the top of the backing through the mist.

Peter Ellenshaw Matte painting.

Matte painting above the deck houses, model below.

Miniature cliff collapse, foreground painting.

Miniature Ice bridge collapse.

Swiss Family Robinson 1960

Swiss Family Robinson was one of the all time classic family films produced by Disney. I saw it as a child on a re-release in the  cinema. It was one of the blockbusters of its day. Looking at it recently for this blog I was struck at the treatment of the animals in the film. Things certainly have changed since then and in this case, for the better. The miniature ship sequence in the film is short but very well shot. Even in the close ups, the model and the white water look very convincing which is an uncommon achievement for model ship shots.

Peter Ellenshaw supervised the model ship in a storm shots which go under the titles at the start of the film. They were shot over a two week period in England before moving on to Tobago where the rest of the film was shot.

There is a very informative documentary about Peter Ellenshaw and his work on youtube and part 5 covers The Swiss Family Robinson.