Ever wish you could see a model of a movie scene?

Dioramas of scenes from films are actually quite common. I've seen plenty of models and dioramas of scenes from Kelly's Heroes, Battle of the Bulge, Saving Private Ryan, Black Hawk Down, Full Metal Jacket, and others.

The interesting part of modelling subjects from movies is capturing the often-innacurate aspects of the vehicles used, such as this M47 Patton I built to represent "Hessler's King Tiger R-01" from Battle of the Bulge:

Plenty of modifications were needed to turn Italeri's nice M47 kit into an accurate representation of R-01 as it appears in the film. For me, that's the fun of movie modelling! Making it accurate as per the film. Some rivet-counters balk at this kind of modelling (inaccurate representations of history), but it can be just as accurate in its counting of rivets as any modelling.

The main failing I see in many models and scenes derived from movies is a lack of attention to such details. I've seen plenty of M47 "King Tiger" models from Battle of the Bulge, but I've never seen one that captures all the subtle modifications done to the actual M47s in the film to make them more "Tiger-like." Most models of this vehicle are simply painted German Gray, with Balkenkreuz slapped on. There's much more to it than that!

Of course, it's a hobby, so the individual modeller can build as he/she sees fit (my universal disclaimer!).

Although I believe you were talking about primarily military modelling, for science fiction modelling, of course, pretty much everything is from film or television!

As J-Hulk mentioned to me it's Black Hawk Down.

I have this project in mind: a hovering Black Hawk with Rangers rappeling down, a Littlebird delivering Deltas on a rooftop, another Littlebird providing air cover and a Hummer waiting behind a wall to extract the prisoners. The whole thing in 1/35 ... as soon as I buy a residence with a huge hobby room I might do it

The only thing I did until now is find a way to make the Blackhawk hover:

Bob Sarnowski did a very nice dio depicting SGTs Shughart and Gordon's last stand in Mogadishu, inspired by the movie Black Hawk Down, that featured the Delta Force snipers defending the wreckage of Super 64, in their effort to protect pilot Mike Durant. Lots of work went into the wrecked Black Hawk, and the wreckage strewn around the scene. Very well done, and captures the drama of the moment.

 Nick Infield won Best in Show at the 98 World Expo with his beuatiful shadow box dio, depicting the filming of the last scene in Casablanca, titled "We'll Always Have Paris", complete with forced perspective effects. The plane in the background was of much smaller scale, but positioned in such a way that it just looks like it's in the distance. He also places a translucent screen between it and the foreground scene, so that it's just out of focus, but he covered it with bare metal foil, so that it reflected light. The camera crew, lighting fixtures, boom mic and all the movie making equipment is in there, and director Michael Curtiz sits in hie chair, marked Director, watching Bogie and Bergman acting out the final scene.

 Infield is a cameraman in Hollywood, as his day gig, and many of his larger modeling projects center around the motion picture industry.

I'd post pictures, but they are all in magazines, and I don't know how kosher it would be to put up scans from a  magazine. If anyone's interested, the BHD dio is featured in issue 45 of Historical Miniature Magazine Sept/Oct 04, and the Casablanca dio is in issue 14, Sept/Oct 98 of the same magazine.

 I recall that there's a really nice rendition of the truck from Duel in Shep Paine's book How to Build Military Vehicles. I too have also seen many Saving Private Ryan dios and vignettes.

Nice work on the M47, BTW J-Hulk. That used to drive me nuts how the movies always used Patton tanks or M41s as Germans. When I was a kid, I'd get pissed and say "Why are they shooting? It's just more Americans!".

 Personally, I haven't had the urge to pull a scene from a movie, though I did have a plan to acurately sculpt all seven samurai from The Seven Samurai, but I just haven't had the motivation to do the work, and most people probably aren't familiar enough with that movie to recognize the likeness of the actors.

 I heard that they put up a sculpture of William Wallace in Scotland that was a likeness of Mel Gibson.

The Infield dio sounds like a real beauty!

How about a dio of this:

Someday, I'm going to make the scene from Kelly's Heroes, with the Tiger (on a T-34 Chassis) trying to turn it's gun around but it was blocked by the wall and the tree.  It will have "Oddball's" Sherman behind it having just fired a shell of pink pant at the hind end of the Tiger. 

n/t

I'd kinda like to do one of Jay and Silent Bob standing in front of the quickie mart.  Make it black and white like in clerks.  Btw, clerks II is coming out.  The first one is an excellent training film for anyone working retail.

Historex_Rob wrote:

If you have not already thought of this... by using thin gauge, piano wire, one could use the figures' repel lines to support the helicopter.

Thanks for the hint, but I was thinking of fast rope insertion and not rappeling; if I remember correctly the fast rope is about 3in. thick so the steel rod I used should fit the duty.

n/t

Great responses guys I was hoping to get an interesting discussion going with my querry. J-hulk kesselrings tiger from the BotB looks just the way I remember it,I was hoping to someday do Telly Savalas's "sherman"( see Chaffee) Bargain Basement the first one he had. Avus thats a great idea on how to hover the Blackhawk. Plymonkey I would love to see those Dios someday I'll have to look for the magazines, and as for The Seven Samaurai I would recognise the characters It is one of my favorite movies along with Yojimbo and Haruke Kadokawas Heaven and Earth. Bgrigg the airplane lobby shot would DEFINATLY get a laugh at a modeling contest Scott I think I saw somewhere on this forum that very dio but I can't remember the thread

Heaven and Earth is a good one. Much of that was filmed in Canada! My post about my latest project is buried on the second page, titled My Latest Effort, but you should be able to appreciate it, being a samurai film buff. I'm in the process of painting it right now, so I haven't had any new pics up. Seven Samurai is probably one of my all time favorites as well. It's certainly one of the best of the Kurosawa samurai films. I really love Throne of Blood too. No one does Shakespeare quite like Kurosawa.

How about the new King Kong movie... there are several scenes that would really make good dios there!  Maybe the scene with the leach-things engulfing the guy?  Or the heroine on the "sacrifice stick" waiting for the unknown horror to come?

How about the new King Kong movie... there are several scenes that would really make good dios there!  Maybe the scene with the leach-things engulfing the guy?  Or the heroine on the "sacrifice stick" waiting for the unknown horror to come?

Fish-Head Aric wrote:

How about the new King Kong movie... there are several scenes that would really make good dios there!  Maybe the scene with the leach-things engulfing the guy?  Or the heroine on the "sacrifice stick" waiting for the unknown horror to come?

I would really like to build the boat from that movie.  It is nicely weathered and have plenty of details.

Avus wrote:

Historex_Rob wrote: If you have not already thought of this... by using thin gauge, piano wire, one could use the figures' repel lines to support the helicopter. Thanks for the hint, but I was thinking of fast rope insertion and not rappeling; if I remember correctly the fast rope is about 3in. thick so the steel rod I used should fit the duty.

Only problem is making sure you get the wire/rope hooked up in the right place.  There are four rings in the ceiling which are used for troop insertion. 

viper_mp wrote:

Only problem is making sure you get the wire/rope hooked up in the right place.  There are four rings in the ceiling which are used for troop insertion.

Yes, but I wasn't thinking of the "thin" rope insertion but the "thick" rope insertion and there are only two thick ropes (one on each side) coming out of the helicopter.

This is waht I meant by rappeling (four thin ropes):

And this by fast rope (two thick ropes, actually on the pic it's only one since it's a Navy Seahawk):

I would go for the Japanese land-based naval gun in the movie "Windtalkers", with the loaders having to carry the bagged charges and the artillery shell and ramming them into the breach seperately.

Or something from the movie "We Were Soldiers", such as the "Broken Arrow" scene, when they called in a full-support air strike, or the rescue scene from "Flight of the Intruders".

  Tom T

Ive always thaught it might be fun to build the scene from Kellys Heroes where oddball and his men emerge from the train tunnel. Are there any good kits to use for Oddball's Sherman?

IIRC, Oddball's Sherman, in fact all the tanks in his little unit, were British Fireflies, sans the stowage bins on the back of the turrets. They may have just had the barrels extended to look like M4A3 76s, but something just didn't look right about them, for US M4s in WWII. The barrels were too long for the 76mm they put on US M4s.

There's a set of US soldiers walking, and they are sculpted to look vaguely like Oddball, Kelly, Telly Savalis and whoever was the fourth one (Don Rickles?) in that scene where they stared down the Tiger I. Can't remember who actually made the kit though. Nearly certain it was Verlinden.

plymonkey wrote:

IIRC, Oddball's Sherman, in fact all the tanks in his little unit, were British Fireflies, sans the stowage bins on the back of the turrets. They may have just had the barrels extended to look like M4A3 76s, but something just didn't look right about them, for US M4s in WWII. The barrels were too long for the 76mm they put on US M4s.

 

Oddball's Shermans were actually Yugoslavian vehicles that had 76mm guns installed post-war in the usually 75mm-gunned turrets . They're definitely not British Fireflies.
The stowage bin-like boxes on the bustles of a Fireflies are actually armored boxes for the radio set, by the way.
Just a little Firefly trivia!

You know what? You're right. I knew that about the boxes, having scratchbuilt a firefly interior about ten years ago, during my Sherman kick. Totally spaced it out.

 Didn't know that about those particular vehicles though. I guess you get them wherever you can. At least they got their hands on actual Shermans, rather than using M47s or M41s.

I've been pondering the truck scene in the desert from Raiders of the Lost Ark. I'm just not sure my skills are equal to the task

There are more movie scenes I would love to depict in dioramas than I can count on one hand. And model fugure companies lately seem to have been casting many of the figures to make this a reality. One day I will make one come true. The top on my list is the scene from " A Bridge Too Far" where the paras kill the resting Panzer crew on the streets of Arnhem. One day....

Have you guys seen the movie call Downfall?  This film was made by German film makers and showing last 10 days of A.Hitler and the battle of Berlin.  There were some cool scenes from this movie that I would love to make diorama out of.  Especially the street fighting scene, where a hitler youth and a german soldier in the same foxhole with panzerfausts!  That movie was just awesome.

id like to build a scene from pearl habour were the zeros go ova tha hill n ther are the littl kids starin at them or wer i think ther zeros attak the airstrip

or

i wud build the scene from memphis belle wer them to men r hangin out the bombbay

I think I'd love to do the scene from Saving Pvt Ryan where the U.S. troops are making their last stand at the bridge.  Tom Sizemore had just fired his last bazooka round at the oncoming German tank.  Tom Hanks runs to help save him by bringing him back across the bridge.  They're clinging to each other as their running back over the bridge, Sizemore with the bazooka barrel still in his grasp as he's limping as fast as he can.  That's the scene I'd like to do if my diorama skills were better.

Another good one from Saving pvt Ryan would be the"mexican standoff" scene where the paratroopers and rangers are on one side of the wall,and the german squad is on the other and the wall has just collapsed.the germans and americans are bolth standing there pointing their guns at each other and yelling at the other side to drop their weapons.

tornado wrote:

id like to build a scene from pearl habour were the zeros go ova tha hill n ther are the littl kids starin at them or wer i think ther zeros attak the airstrip or i wud build the scene from memphis belle wer them to men r hangin out the bombbay

That would be a really cool build, because if i remember correctly they actually used T-6 texans for the flying "zeros" in that movie. It would be cool to do up 2 texans in japanese colors.

Steve

They've been using T-6s since at least the mid 70s, with Baa Baa Black Sheep. They probably used them in a movie or two, but I haven't seen Tora Tora Tora, or anything else relating to Pearl Harbor from that era in a while. I was way into Baa Baa Black Sheep in my youth though, and I remember the T-6s as Zeros.

 Not a bad mock up really, but they looked a little too much like the trainer/recon planes they really were.