Huge Serenity model found at Universal

[Nwerke]

Just don't use silicone kitchen caulk. Promise us.

:lol

 

[Commander Max]

Just don't use silicone kitchen caulk. Promise us.

:lol

And the chicken wire.

 

[redbouche]

That is awesome. Wonder if they would give it to me . That would look great in my theater room.....if it would fit.

 

[Nwerke]

Now now now. It wasn't chicken wire, it was expanded aluminium security mesh, or something like that. Credit where it is due. :lol

Pretty advacnded stuff!!! :facepalm

(My very first 'doh' smiley. YOU ROCK MONTAGAR THANK YOU.)

 

[asemblyrequired]

Just don't use silicone kitchen caulk. Promise us.

:lol

or store it outside for years even if you have money to store it inside.


-James

 

[jediknight0]

It's interesting that a model was used for just one shot... I wonder why they didn't use CGI for everything?

 

[darthviper107]

Well, it was for that whole crash sequence, they also used some shots of it for some other parts.

Honestly it would have been better to do the shots with CG, there wasn't any advantage for them to do it with a miniature. They ended up adding FX to it with CG anyways (like the landing gear falling apart, damage to the engine) And it doesn't match very well to the way the CG version looked.

 

[Nwerke]

It was presumably a matter of costings, no? Somebody budgeted the shot done both ways and found that rigging a CG model for a crash would have cost more than shooting practically.

Or it was a legacy thing - they'd already built this great big model for other shots but found they weren't using it as much as expected, so they decided to get their money's worth.

Or they just thought it would be a lot of fun to emulate the dropship crash in Aliens?

 

[drusselmeyer]

Okay, then who has the Reaver ship??

 

[Nwerke]

Did they build that too? I love those things...

 

[darthviper107]

The only miniature made was Serenity and the hangar, all the other ships were CG.

I can't imagine why it would have been cheaper to do it with miniatures though, since they already had CG models of everything, and they ended up adding CG elements to it anyways. And it's not like it would have been difficult to animate it crashing like that.

 

[JiminSTLouis]

Should have also secured the top onto the cargo hold better since you can see it rattling in the movie when it crashes.

I always thought that added some authenticity to that scene. The ship is designed to be able to swap out the entire cargo bay. Drop one off, and bolt on another fully loaded cargo bay for quick turnaround and to get the ship back into space.

 

[darthviper107]

If it was that poorly attached then they all would have died long before. I actually never got why there should be a reason to explain the slightly different cargo hold, I think people can understand that the movie has a larger budget and therefore they can afford to have a more detailed 3D model.

 

[Deathstalker II]

The reason you do the crash in miniature and supplement it with CG is physics - you'd have to pay for multiple debris passes, tons of fragments...doing it with a model means all that stuff happens naturally.

I'm reminded of Favreau on Zathura - he used men in suits for the creatures. There's a shot where one of them skids into a table, knocks a ton of stuff off of it, then rights himself and keeps running. He said that that was the benefit of practical effects: it was an unscripted but cool moment that, if they had tried to do it with effects, would have meant figuring out the physics of the slide, the physics of the moved table, the physics of everything that fell off the table, the subsequent impacts and bounces and rolls - every pass at which cost time and MONEY. In the end, all they had to do with CG was a head removal.

In the Serenity sequence, the supplemental CG was much cheaper than it would have been to create the envioronment, the ship, the explosion, the debris, the physics - each pass is more money.

Meanwhile...this:

Serenity (2005) | Grant McCune Design

 

[darthviper107]

That would normally be true, but there wasn't anything in the miniature like that--much of the damage and debris effects were added with CG, so that really only leaves the ship hitting the runway, which is a very simple animation to match. They would have saved a ton of money doing it with CG, plus it would have actually matched the previously established look of the ship. The miniature is great but the CG version is more detailed.

 

[Deathstalker II]

I'd have to disagree with your assessment that the sequence is CG-heavy. The engine and some chunks in the wide shot are CG (Whedon says the engine was a freebie from Illusion Arts), but the physical engine tearing off and the pyro...the entire skid...and the corridor/hangar it skids down - all practical. When you consider how many passes that would have needed if it were all CG...they really did cut costs.

 

[Colin Droidmilk]

Pretty weird-looking ship. Like a cross between a foe of Godzilla and a rocking-horse...

 

[micdavis]

Do you suppose this is the last large size space ship model built for a show?

 

[darthviper107]

I'd have to disagree with your assessment that the sequence is CG-heavy. The engine and some chunks in the wide shot are CG (Whedon says the engine was a freebie from Illusion Arts), but the physical engine tearing off and the pyro...the entire skid...and the corridor/hangar it skids down - all practical. When you consider how many passes that would have needed if it were all CG...they really did cut costs.

Most of the extra damage like all the little bits falling off and the landing gear damage was CG, which was way more complicated than any of the practical stuff. It would have taken much less time to do it in CG than to make the miniature and do the filming. And it would have cost much less.