The RIDICULOUS Models From Titanic

[Music] this video is brought to you by Squarespace ladies and gentlemen it's your friend Mike Brady from ocean liner designs now in a video from the end of last year we looked at how incredible sets were designed and built to help bring Titanic to life for the 1997 movie Titanic designed to sing in a realistic way and fool the viewer if only for a moment that what they were watching wasn't a movie but actual events as they unfolded now they don't really seemed to make movies like this anymore and they used a number of production techniques to really help bring the ship back to life for the movie one of the most impressive of these aside from the set design was the use of Scale Models what you may not know is that there were actually quite a few models made for this movie to show Titanic at various stages of its life and death it's an interesting story that begins with the film's varying Inception all the way back in 1995. today let's look at the film's most iconic shot and learn just how Scale Models helped make it happen [Music] now very famously Cameron pitched the idea of Titanic to Fox Studios Executives as a kind of three hour long Romeo and Juliet epic but the studio was a little bit dubious so you have to remember where Cameron was coming from here directed movies like Terminator alien and the abyss all hard-hitting action films those films especially the franchises made use of some awesome visual effects that were for the time revolutionary Fox expected Cameron to bring this experience to the table with Titanic so early on he had to sit down and figure out how he'd even shoot this movie in the first place now there was precedent 1953's Titanic the 1958 tonight to remember had both been filmed in an era where steamships from Titanic's age or at least close enough to it still existed and operated across the world so exterior shots could feature those ships just repainted and subbed in for the Titanic for example in a night to remember the port side of the actual British ocean liner RMS asturius was used as a proxy for Titanic and repainted in White Star lion Livery the starboard side of the ship was being demolished by the shipbreakers because at the time mysterious was actually being scrapped by 1995 when Cameron was thinking about making his film The World's major steamships were gone so he knew he'd have to start from scratch Cameron sat down with Rob Legato visual effects Guru from digital domain who had worked on Terminator and more of Cameron's films to figure out how they'd make the ship come to life off the screen he asked in a what-if universe where there were absolutely no budget constraints whatsoever how they could shoot the movie and Legato said you'd do a helicopter move along the ship like we've all seen in cruise ship commercials Legato recalled that on a film of this magnitude the unwritten rule is generally to shoot it in a way that has never been seen before our philosophy on Titanic was just the opposite we're all familiar with those helicopter shots in and of themselves those types of images they're not startling because that's what you do if it were real Jim wanted to sell the audience the illusion of how great it would be to take a trip on the Titanic so we decided to basically make a commercial for the ship but here's the question how do you shoot a commercial for a ship that no longer exists above the ocean well the pair sat down and re-watched a night to remember and all the other Titanic films that have been made up to that point and looked out for the flaws and pitfalls on this exercise Legato said most of the miniature shots involved the model ship on a slow-motion ocean which looks kind of funky miniature vessels have traditionally been populated by stationary figures tiny puppets or in extreme circumstances like Ray is the Titanic live hamsters in bonnets those types of shots are typically fairly wide with limited angles and you never really see the multitudes of people on Deck we wanted our shots to look a bit more sophisticated but Cameron and his team had one huge advantage over the previous movies they had been made too early to enjoy the incredible strides in computer visual effects which had exploded onto the scene in Earnest in the 1990s Cameron would use CGI to patch up the shots and then fill them in with people to make it seem more real but the ship had to exist first and that couldn't just be CGI so the team would have to start making Scale Models now look just before we go on with this video I wanted to tell you a quick story about when I was a struggling artist just starting out in 2018. see back then I knew I enjoyed drawing ships but I didn't know what to do about it so I set about starting up a new business then called liner designs and built my website using Squarespace and this is completely true I'm really happy to do an advert for them because I've been using Squarespace now for about five years there were three things that really worked for me there was the easy blog creating function so I could write articles about ships this is one of my favorites about my friend Ken beard who is a former piano crewman I like how graphic everything is you can make beautiful photo slideshows and get really high quality images they just look stunning I also enjoy the advanced analytics there's something really nice about seeing people access the site from all over the world if you want to build your own website or blog like me check out squarespace.com for a free trial and when you're ready for launch go to squarespace.com ocean lighter designs to get 10 off your first website or domain purchase be sure to share the link to your new website in the comments to this video we'll be sure to go and check it out now Legato knew early on that small scale models on a slow-motion water tank looked unrealistic they were fine for the 50s and 60s but wouldn't do anything for a modern audience now I'd have to go big really big and it wouldn't be easy in the movie Titanic has to sail triumphantly out on its maiden voyage and wow the audience with its size and glamor and then it has to sing and be violently destroyed during the breakup and final Plunge this couldn't all be done on one model I had to make a model for daylight external shots the glamor model if you will a model for the breakup which could actually break in half and be repaired and reset to break up again and a model for the final plunge when Titanic is violently dragged beneath the surface oh and the model for the rec sequence as well because even though Cameron and his team dive Titanic in 1995 to film for the opening sequences it simply wasn't enough and then need to shoot wider angles with the model now next time we'll look at the models used for the sinking scenes because they were just incredible but today let's just look at the glamor shot model this thing is a beast and I say is because it still exists in a warehouse Legato and his team knew that for the Glamor Shots they'd need as big a scale model as possible and this is because of the audience we can just tell if something looks off if a scale miniature is small we can just kind of tell light and Shadows Fall differently on larger objects and simply put more detail there is on a Model the more realistic it's going to look on an enormous IMAX screen millions of viewers would be analyzing every inch of a miniature so it had to be just right to begin to pull it off digital domain turned to Western Boat Works of California with a brief to create a 45-foot 13.7 meter long accurate scale replica of the ship the model would actually be longer than many real Leisure sailing yachts and so it would have to be built like an actual boat Naval architect Jay cantola who had experienced designing and building real trimaran sailing boats worked with Harlan and wolf Titanic shipbuilders to obtain plans via sister ship the Olympic begin to craft the model the shape of Olympics frames were traced and cut out and employed a complex system of planking over frames and stringers and a team of six actual boat Builders worked under cantola's direction to build the basic Hull shape in the same way they would build an actual boat when it was complete the whole thing could be handed over to digital domain for detailing this is when the expertise of my personal hero Ken Marshall was called in Ken had worked on the Miniatures for other Titanic movies and was quite simply one of the most knowledgeable people in the world when it came to Titanic's construction and appearance the digital domain team worked to layer on all the details vents lifeboats with their block and tackle even the thousands of tiny rivets running along Titanic's Hull the model was about 1 20th scale and when it was completed was simply gorgeous but with big models there came some big problems and in certain cases visual effects director Eric Nash and his team and to get a little bit creative and he later said that the bigger the miniature the more it alleviates depth of field problems but the downside is lighting them especially in a space that really isn't big enough that was one of the things we struggled with from the outset on the 45-footer as soon as we put that 45-foot ship in the big hangar at the Hughes aircraft site in Venice and tried to put our key light far away enough that it looked even and the Shadows fell naturally we quickly ran up against the ceiling or the wall in the combined space as we had it was next to impossible to light the Titanic evenly so we used multiple key lights for practical and aesthetic reasons since the ship was the lead character in the movie it had to look better than it really would have looked in a single key daylight so we took some license for example the four deck looked best when it was side lit with long raking Shadows falling across it if we applied that same direction of key light to the funnels though they looked flat and uninteresting so for those we cheated the key light more around the back I'll be the first to admit that anyone with a kind of an eye for lighting will be able to tell that the Titanics miraculously lit from two or more positions but during the flow of the scene I don't think most people will notice this 45 footer is the model used in the famous I'm the king of the world scene which Cameron had envisaged all the way back in 1995 when he and Legato were talking about shooting the movie as if it were a commercial for the ship Nash remembered that Jim thought it would be cool to start on a close-up of Leonardo DiCaprio at the bow and then go back the entire length of this 900-foot ship to show that it's basically teeming with life a thousand people walking and talking guys in steerage having a fist fight parents picking up their children and pointing out how big the smokestacks are this is the glory moment but it also sets up the rest of the story it was a fairly involved process just programming the shot and getting it to have that smooth helicopter feel the first time you get a really good look at the whole ship both in close up and in long shot now Nash thought the original camera position for the scene came ridiculously close to the model he said that after we shot a test Cameron said get closer and a model crew chief George Stevens and his team did their finest paint job They begged us not to get any closer but the model held up amazingly well we couldn't even shoot the beauty pass in one piece because it required different lighting and flagging setups for different portions we actually had two shifts shooting that shot we had to choreograph overlaps as we transitioned from one setup to the next being very careful about Shadows not changing and flags not Crossing once it was programmed and approved it took 60 hours of continuous shooting from the time we started rolling the first pass until we were finished two and a half days with a 10-man crew at all times no individual pass lasted more than a couple hours most of the work was changing setups and mats it was all said and done they had to scan 9 000 frames of film for all the various pieces and that was just the miniature portion now compositing the actors onto the decks of the Titanic was an incredibly laborious process and used what was then a new technology called motion capture digital domains own employees were shot walking and acting out the Motions of Titanic's passengers and crew they were converted into basic 3D scale people with costumes layered on top I gotta recall that we built a library of people composed of various portions and movements in which we mixed and matched and altered to make endless walk Cycles at a distance there are certain details you can't make out so he has a lot of the same people wearing different colored costumes and appearing in sunlight or in Shadow just to create the impression that these were real moving people fortunately we didn't have to create computer-generated costumes we could just generate shells apply a texture map of real Fabric or real costumes that have been photographed conventionally and then light each figure individually now two more filmmaking techniques were used to lend Credence to this shot previously all other Titanic films were shot in tanks with slow motion water but water doesn't scale well for action scenes we can tell if it doesn't look right instead a fully digital ocean was used with dozens of wake and wave elements layered in to make it look like the 45-foot Titanic model was powering its way through the ocean now the final technique involves the model itself you'll notice the black part of the hull isn't actually black but a mix of washed out grays in fact all of it is washed out the whites are actually a light gray color the red of the ship's Hull is a dull Brown this is a technique designed to mimic the imperfections in the paintwork of an object the size of something like Titanic in real life if you paint a model ship perfectly it just won't look right you need to weather it to copy the way paint Fades and scratches on large objects like buildings or ships next time you go out look at the side of a big building which has been painted one color and see just how many shades of paint you can actually see since the paint begins to fade and ship the result was stunning the model looked about as real as you could get and the shot was a Triumph for the effects team now you can still go and see the incredible 45 foot long glamor model used in Titanic last I checked it's kept at Cameron's light storm entertainment studios in La well worth a look by the sound of it the glory shot set up Titanic as the film's main character lentenair of Triumph and excitement to the film's opening act of course the ship would have to eventually be destroyed next time let's take a look at the model making used in the sinking scenes from Titanic and how they too helped bring the ship's violent end to life ladies and gentlemen it's your friend Mike Brady from ocean liner designs thank you so much for watching this video please think about liking and subscribing to the channel could support my channel on patreon you'll find the link down in the description until then stay safe stay happy and I'll see you again next time

Channel: Oceanliner Designs

Views: 204,496

Keywords: great ocean liners, maritime history, ocean liners, famous oceanliners, ships documentary, history of ships, engineering, history, ships, documentary

Id: 4yCFky-i8HU

Length: 13min 29sec (809 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 29 2023