The Patriot 2000

This film has some miniature ships nicely shot in a dry studio with motion control and inserted into various digital matte paintings and CG oceans.

Twelve ship models were built at 1/12 scale, six three masted ships and six smaller vessels representing a variety of smaller craft. Supervised by Joachim Grüninger, they were made from pine with various small details cast in urethane resin. The larger ships were featured as British ships and re-purposed to represent the French fleet so they were designed to be fairly generic in shape and colour scheme. They were mounted on a motion control base which was programmed to simulate the rocking motion of a ship in water and shot against a large green screen. These miniature elements were then digitally composited into the required shots.

Other miniatures included the buildings on the other side of the street in the dockside of Charlestown made at 1/12 and 1/24 scale and the roof and cupola of the town hall which was the foreground element of a transitional matte painting with a CG flag flying.

The miniature work is by Magicon a German company with some very impressive behind the scenes material on their website from the projects they have worked on. Some projects of note are the miniatures from 10000 BC, a Monster calls and the miniature tsunami effects from The Impossible.

Magicon

Source -  Cinefex Number 83 October 2000

The Poseidon Adventure 1972

L.B. Abbott and A.D. Flowers received a Special Achievement Academy Award for this film.

The Poseidon Adventure started the disaster movie cycle of the 1970s.

L.B. Abott was called upon to supervise the miniature ship visual effects after having retired as Fox studio's head of the effects department two years earlier. He decided to build the miniature at 1/48 scale (1/4 inch = 1 foot) as he could obtain a full set of plans at that scale from the owners of the Queen Mary which had been docked at Long Beach California since 1967. Some of the pre-capsize live action sequences were shot on board the stationary ship.

At 1/48 scale the miniature, supervised by Gaile Brown, was 21 feet 6 inches (6.5 m) which was considered a little small at the time, the general rule being that miniature ships should be at least 3/4 inch to the foot or 1/16 scale. After having experience shooting the Tora Tora Tora miniatures at fairly high frame rates L.B. Abbott reasoned he should be able to employ this technique, shooting at seven times normal speed or around 168 frames per second and achieve the desired shots. Another bonus to the smaller scale was that the miniature could also fit in the 32 foot by 14 foot deep (9.75m x 4.2m) Green tank for the underwater shots so only one miniature would be needed. The cost of the miniature to build in 1972 was $35,000 and it ended up weighing around 3 tons.

Poseidon miniature bottom up in the Green Tank.

For the above ocean sequences the model was shot in Fox Studio's Sersen lake. Unfortunately the plywood sheets on the backing screen had warped over time in the elements, so most of the surface shots were shot as if from a helicopter looking down and avoiding the sky. In the stormy sequences the sky backing was hidden by fog and smoke so couldn't be seen.

The capsizing wave was generated by two dump tanks placed in the far right back corner of the tank. The first take had the two towers dumping a full 1200 gallons each which resulted in a massive wave that instantly engulfed the ship obscuring it completely. The miniature was hurriedly repaired ready for the next take where the dump tanks were only half filled. That take had only one of the dump tanks trigger producing an under sized wave so a third and ultimately successful take 3 was called for.

The Poseidon miniature in the Sersen lake with the dump tanks in the back corner.

The weakest visual effects shot in the movie is the last one with a not too convincing matte painting of the upturned hull as the survivors are taken off in a helicopter.

The miniature Poseidon of the film is preserved and on display at the Los Angeles Maritime Museum in San Pedro California.