The Abyss Submersibles Project

John Eaves, last I spoke to him told me he had some castings or parts....
Im pretty sure it was ABYSS. Might check with him.

Id love to build one!
 
Randomly found this thread while doing a search for something else. Very very cool BTS photos. The Abyss is a film that fascinates me so much because of the fact that a lot of it was real...in actual water.

I heard a story about one of the miniatures catching on fire after many hours of construction, which meant the entire process had to be repeated on a 2nd model. I forget which one it was.
 
The abyss was a great movie and i look forward to seeing your progress on this and I agree with steve that this would make a great rc submarine. Anybody have better rez pictures from its production I dont think all take the dive and scratch anything like you but i always love looking at miniature production photos.
 
I've scanned the Cab hull but scan data needs a bit of massaging before it can be used and i haven't had the time to dive into it. But i will.
 
I agree A deep core model would be awesome. To be honest tho I'm just looking forward to seeing them submersibles done always like seeing something new built that hasen't been done on the rpf before. I never thought the abyss got its fair due at the theater great movie. There is a link over at Stan Winston studios school with the guys that made the underwater aliens its really interesting i would post it up here but i forgot which one it is.
 
Back in 1988 I was hired by Dream Quest Images to supervise the model shop for Jim Cameron's The Abyss. Over the course of more than a year I oversaw the fabrication and filming of dozens of models.

Dave, do you know how they did that scene when Coffey's sub falls over the cliff and is crushed by the pressure? I always wondered how you could make a model crush inward onto itself on camera. Its one of the best all time villain death scenes in my opinion.
 
Dave, do you know how they did that scene when Coffey's sub falls over the cliff and is crushed by the pressure? I always wondered how you could make a model crush inward onto itself on camera. Its one of the best all time villain death scenes in my opinion.

Yes, for that scene a 1/8 scale model of Flatbed was built around a glass vacuum bell jar, the kind that are used for scientific experiments. The dome end of the bell jar pointed forward, replacing the plexiglass cockpit dome of the model. A simple cockpit interior and Coffey puppet was placed inside the jar. (I think the Coffey puppet was filled with blood bags!) The jar was wrapped with stretched bungee cords and there were cables connecting the bungee cords to various extremities on the model. finally, small explosive "Det Charges" were glued to the surface of the bell jar.

To film the shot, the model was suspended nose up underwater in the tank and all the air sucked out of the bell jar creating a vacuum. When the det charges were fired off the shattered the bell jar which then imploded. the stretched bungee cords constricted pulling in some of the model parts making the whole thing crunch inwards.

We used a similar setup a couple of years later for the film Crimson Tide to show the Russian Akula sub going through explosive decompression. For that model we used 6 much larger vacuum bell jars, placed end to end in the 18 foot long model submarine. The hull of that Akula model was made from sheet lead. When the bell jars were shattered by the charges in rapid succession from back to front, they imploded, sucking in the lead hull. Unfortunately the camera angle used in the cut of the film didn't show off the shot the best, but there is a very good behind the scenes bit that does on the DVD extras.

Those were the good ol' days, none of the mamby pamby CG stuff. We really got our feet wet back then. Literally!
 
We used a similar setup a couple of years later for the film Crimson Tide to show the Russian Akula sub going through explosive decompression. For that model we used 6 much larger vacuum bell jars, placed end to end in the 18 foot long model submarine. The hull of that Akula model was made from sheet lead. When the bell jars were shattered by the charges in rapid succession from back to front, they imploded, sucking in the lead hull. Unfortunately the camera angle used in the cut of the film didn't show off the shot the best, but there is a very good behind the scenes bit that does on the DVD extras.

Those were the good ol' days, none of the mamby pamby CG stuff. We really got our feet wet back then. Literally!

Very interesting. I'll have to pick up Crimson Tide, I haven't seen that one yet.
 
I did some quick calculations. The bell jar inside Flatbed was 8 inches in diameter by 12 inches tall. It had a surface area of about 300 square inches. Atmospheric pressure at sea level is 14.696 pounds per square inch. Most good vacuum pumps can create about an 85% to 90% of a pure vacuum. So conservatively there would have been 3,700 to 4,000 pounds of force released when the dome imploded!
 
A little bit of progress. I've scanned the hull and sail and incorporated the geometry into the master model. There's still a lot of clean up to do on the scans but they fit into the modeled components nicely.

HullScanView2_zpsef711cf8.jpg


HullScanView1_zps92c0af01.jpg


HullScanView3_zps938528d6.jpg
]

CabRoughHull1_zps8fb9b6d2.jpg


CabRoughhull2_zps99312252.jpg
 

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