Friday, 5 June 2020

Stars and Stripes Forever 1952

This movie has one shot of a miniature ship.
I discovered this fact after reading one of NZ Pete's terrific matteshot matte painting blogs.
Visual Effects are attributed to Ray Kellog whao started as a matte painter and eventually became head of 20th Century Fox's special effects department in 1954 after the retirement of Fred Sersen.










Submarine X1 1968

The second in a series of Oakmont Films war movies with miniature ships is Submarine X1. Again this story is loosely based on a real mission, Operation Source, where a number of attacks were carried out on German battleships in Norway using midget submarines. The submarines were known as X class or X-craft.

This operation had also been previously depicted on film with Above Us the Waves from 1955.

Like Attack on the Iron Coast, the miniature effects were once again mostly very effectively handled by the Bowie Organisation.

The shot of the depth charges rolling off the back of the German patrol boat suffers from being too small a scale miniature for such a close shot.
I have a feeling that the fictional Lindendorf battleship ship that is destroyed at the end may just be a large painted cutout rather than a miniature as the perspective never seems to change even when it is supposedly sinking and it is only ever seen at a distance.

























































































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