Botany Bay 1953

This film can be found in its entirety on You tube. The quality of the pictures is not the greatest, the source looks to be digitised from a VHS recording off TV.

There are some pretty decent model ship effects supervised by Paramount studios' photographic effects chief Gordon Jennings, however the scenes set in Australia are pretty unconvincing with a couple of Koalas in a tree in a studio set.

                    

K19 The Widowmaker 2002

Most of the Submarine action in this film appears to be Computer Generated but there was a model built and photographed for the sequence where the K19 submarine surfaces rapidly breaking through an ice sheet. In fact a part of the extra features on the DVD, looks at the visual effects and covers the model shoot, entirely neglecting the much larger digital portion of the effects work. Lets face it models are inherently more interesting to look at than a couple of people pointing at a computer screen.

Even so there is not very much of the model left on the screen in the actual movie after the digital team has covered it in particle effects snow and ice.

The miniature effects were produced by Mill Film.

UPDATE 14/04/2015

I have just stumbled across an old Cinesite miniatures reel that, among other things, clearly shows the model being shot motion control for the underwater shots as well as a surface aerial shot.

         

                 

Luxury Liner 1948

Supervised at MGM by A Arnold Gillespie, the model featured in this light entertainment musical is a 54 foot (16.5m) long Passenger ship called the "Mayflower". It is built at 3/4" = 12" or 1/16th scale. The ships wake is produced by pumps and what Arnold Gillespie in his book " The Wizard of MGM" calls "syphons". I assume this to mean that there is a venturi effect with a water pump arranged to suck air into the system producing bubbles or white water. The bow wave is effected with nozzles mounted at the bow just under the surface of the water and angled back and up producing that curving wave topped with foam.

For the rough ocean shots there were 3 wave machines in the foreground and three in the back. Also there were three wind machines mounted at the back above the wave machines and a total of 6 modified surplus aircraft as wind machines, two of which were mounted on floating pontoons.

A shot of the ship's deck combines the studio partial set with a matte painting and miniature ocean shot in the tank. All the night scenes are shot in full daylight using filtering and altering the exposure to suit.

          One of the shots of the Liner was re-used in the Fred Astaire Movie Royal Wedding 1951.