According to the Producers Creative Partnership Mediterranean Film studios website, (http://www.the-pcp.com/a-short-history-of-maltas-water-facility.html) the very first natural horizon tank built at the Malta facility was constructed for the production of the miniature effects for this film by Special Effects supervisor Benjamin "Jim" Hole in 1963.
James B Harris who was Stanley Kubrick's Producer for some of his early output, directs a really tight story of Cold war tensions escalated to dangerous levels and filmed in gritty black and white. The miniature work is uniformly excellent and totally uncredited. There is a brief reference to a model making company called Shawcroft models having worked on the film here; http://www.richingspark.com/newhistory/shawcroft.html
The miniature of the title, the USS Bedford, is a Farragut class destroyer and is well detailed and realistically weathered. The motion through the water is very well done with a nice slicing bow wave and swinging by the stern turns. There is a Russian submarine in the story but all you see is a periscope and snorkel protruding above the surface. In some of the frame grabs you can see the difference in water texture between the overflow edge of the tank and the much more distant real ocean horizon though I never noticed this viewing the film as it really is a compelling story very well crafted by all involved.
Showing posts with label Bedford Incident. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Bedford Incident. Show all posts
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Most Popular posts in the last 7 days
-
Captain Blood really re-invigorated the swashbuckler genre. The previous era of swashbucklers had been made in the 1920's when full siz...
-
I have been contacted by the historian at the 20th Century Fox Ranch who has a photograph of some interest to readers of this site. He write...
-
Visual Effects Supervisor - Scott Squires Visual Effects Director of Photography - Patrick Sweeney The effects for this movie were orig...
-
Won oscar for best Special Effects (1955). Probably the most recognised submarine shape ever, fictional or otherwise, was the Nautilus des...
-
Tora Tora Tora stands out as a prime example of the art of model ships in the cinema due largely to the scale of the the work undertaken and...
-
There is a car carrying, river crossing ferry in a sequence of this film that for for the rolling over shots required a 1/8th scale miniatur...


































