Were some of the submarine scenes really filmed in the sea?
Matt79
Posts: 13MI6 Agent
I have been interested in Derek Meddings's special effects work for years being a fan of the supermarionation series. Derek's work on the Bond films was outstanding and I often wonder whether some of the scenes with the Lotus in The Spy Who Loved Me and the Neptune in For Your Eyes Only were really filmed under the sea or whether all the shots were filmed in a tank at Pinewood?
I know some of the Lotus scenes were filmed in The Bahamas, but I wasn't sure if they were just the scenes of the car/submarine appearing above the surface.
I know some of the Lotus scenes were filmed in The Bahamas, but I wasn't sure if they were just the scenes of the car/submarine appearing above the surface.
Comments
Were there not three different Lotuses, one for land, for conversion and one for the sea?
This is interesting to hear. I read that some underwater scenes were shot at Pinewood, so I don't know if this includes the Neptune scenes.
Derek Meddings's effects had become so advanced by the Bond films and the models were impossible to tell from the real thing. In the days of the Gerry Anderson series, Derek and his team actually filmed underwater shots through a thin tank as his book 21st Century Visions said they couldn't afford to film underwater. The scenes with Stingray, Thunderbird 4 and going up to the Skydiver in UFO were very well done and the underwater illusion worked very effectively.
All shot in Bahamas. The Neptune was literally just by the underwater ruins set they built.
I recommend the book Special Effects Superman: The Art And Effects Of Derek Meddings by Paul and Martin Shubrook. It has varying prices on bookfinder.com It covers Derek’s career ranging his start in UK television, the blockbusters including Superman and Batman, and of course the Bond movies discussed in this thread. While many of my Bond books go into storage, this one stays on the shelf for whenever I need a miniatures fix.
I haven't seen much of John Richardson's effects, I didn't realise they differed to Derek Meddings's work
I have been reading about the book and I have seen it has mixed reviews, but going by your comments I think I will buy it. I already have Derek's 21st Century Visions book specifically about his work on the Anderson series, it was written about 2 years before he died
Lots of it is really good, but the bridge at the end of Living Daylights is maybe of the strongest bits of modelwork he did. It's very hard to tell.
The end of Skyfall with the helicopter crashing into the house is probably one of the best bits of modelwork in the whole series as doubtless it's been digitally combined with larger fullscale elements etc. so it really is seamless.
Oh thanks, I didn't know about that one. He seemed to have a very interesting career, and some of the stories he tells on the Bond DVDs are fairly hair-raising: like when he had to wade out and try to free the model of the Q Boat when it was stuck at the top of a huge waterfall!
You’re welcome! MR comes to mind the most from that book because of that. Although they eventually resorted to a miniature boat going over the falls, I’m impressed with how they tried to do that for real and appreciate the danger factor involved. I also thought it was interesting how John Richardson depicted the mortar hits in the river boat chase ironically with makeshift mortars mounted underwater.
I kind of wonder, is Meddings' stuff really celebrated because everyone can tell they're models? Aren't the guys whose modelwork was actually impossible to spot because it looked like the fullsize things, actually better?
I hadn't seen many of John Richardson's effects and although the image with the bridge looks very impressive and impossible to tell from the real thing, I always thought Derek Meddings's effects were just as convincing. I never knew anyone could tell they were just models compared to the models used by John Richardson
Compare to, say, the train crash in The Fugitive. Or even the Hercules taking off in Living Daylights.
I think maybe the only model shot in GoldenEye which is convincing is the one of the MIGs taking off, you wouldn't know that was a model.
I haven't seen Superman for years, I think I only saw it as a child in the late 80s. I have always been impressed by the shots of the Lotus and Neptune, they don't look like models to me. I haven't seen Goldeneye in full so I can't comment on the plane crash or the MIGs taking off.
Have any of you seen Derek's effects in UFO, or any of the supermarionation series?
I've seen lots of Gerry Anderson stuff and the models are lovely, but I tend to think they work in that world but rarely look big.
Due to the politics surrounding the first
two films not all of the sequences on the first
one were Mr Medding work. the floodwaters from the
dam and Superman's improv rocks water diversion were
done by a different company. They are painfully poor.
For Bond, TSWLM, Moonraker and FYEO are excellent
examples.
Thunderbirds and the later Supermarionation series speak
for themselves. Visually, they are still engaging over half a
century later.
I do rate Mr Richardson's work too. What he did on
Raise The Titanic as well as TLD and LKT was very well
done.
FYEO is some of his better work; you can still tell the docks are a model but it’s hidden reasonably well, and the St Georges and Neptune look good. Plus the forced perspective helicopter stuff at the beginning actually is flawless.
TSWLM I’m just not convinced about, I think there are a lot of really bad model shots in that one. The tiny bubbling Lotus, the speedboat... Atlantis is also a problem, and Ken Adam also has to be a bit to blame for it, because the design is so wild and unique that we have no visual reference to try and understand how big it’s supposed to be. That quick optical shot when Bond is approaching it for the first time in Naomi’s launch and someone has stuck an image of it onto the horizon is the only time it has any sense of scale. The model looks as big as it is, certainly not the size of an oil rig.
I didn’t know Richardson did Raise the Titanic; that’s very interesting. I’m afraid again, for me that’s just.. better.
As far as I remember the decision was not to go „unbubbled‘ because it looked more realistic with them.
Also the Lotus conversion shots where to my knowledge done on several full size models....
Dalton - the weak and weepy Bond!
Then they must have got some really tiny divers, or a huge cameraman:
That's the shot I'm talking about, with the Lotus approaching the window. It's a pretty poor shot I think and the bubbles really seal the deal.
The shot of the rear wheelarch looks like a model due to the short depth of field, but I think you're probably right and it is fullsize.
The model shot of it entering the water seen from below has always annoyed me since I was a kid because the angle the model enters the water from is so much steeper than the angle the fullsize car dives in from above!
There's another model shot or two of the car disappearing behind some rocks, which are fine.
Dalton - the weak and weepy Bond!
The post of mine you were responding to said 'tiny bubbling Lotus'; not 'tiny bubbles'. The model was tiny. The bubbles were in fact huge, as Asp said. You've misunderstood.
The size of the bubbles was something I haven't noticed. I'm not sure how many scale models of the car were used, as well as the small model wouldn't there have also been one that was about half the size of the full sized Lotus?
I think I’ve seen a quarter size one mentioned, you can certainly see a bigger model in the pictures when they’re shooting the car diving into the water; looks maybe about a metre long? And there’s a similar sized one of the submarine version of the car in that promo photo of Meddings sitting surrounded by his models from various films.