This is great! I worked at Wonderworks and worked on The Abyss. We built the Benthic and the sub interior that was flooded. I did a lot of the deck details and cranes. That was a fun show and really great people. Dave Beasley taught me how to use an airbrush
This was my 1st major picture job @ Dream Quest. Started as a runner/p.a., gradually became a spfx technician working on stages during the down-time between runs from Simi to Hollywood - usually looking for parts for the model makers, or p/u drop-off reels to the lab. Some people should remember me as "The Flash" b/c I drove a turbo Toyota Supra and could get from Simi to Hollywood and back within an hour. I still have some parts off the Montana sub because we had to destroy it.
@@wimheitinga728 Unfortunately, most f.x. in the big shows are CGI including the sets and vehicles. But there are still many hand props made, costumes, and models are used, depending on the shot and how realistic they want it to appear. Most of it has to do with budget, like if you can afford good CGI or not. Low budget shows sometimes rely on cheap models. It also depends on how clever the director and crew are. "Marwin" is a good modern example of how models and CGI blended.
I was working with Jim Olson in his private shop in Pasadena, CA when we got the job of making the spire that was shown on at 20:29. I did most of the carving with what seemed like a zillion cans of bondo to make for close ups. Shame we didn't get any credit in this video but I thought is was important enough now to mention. Was one of the most fun projects I'd done in my work as a propmaker in Hollywood for many motion pictures in the 80's and 90'. The best part was I knew what I had done and it made for a great conversation piece many years later. Thanks for sharing...
I suppose it's nice to get listed in the credits. (I knew a miniatures guy named Jack Sessums who did mainly trains modeling.) But I remember in the Great Muppet Caper movie where Kermit and Fozzie are flying around the credits in a balloon and Fozzie asks, "Nobody reads those names anyway, do they?". And Kermit answers, "Sure. They all have families."
@@trainliker100 I would have loved to interview Sessums, but he passed away before I started interviewing. Broken Arrow and Knight Rider etc. He did a lot of great work and isn't well recognised.
Such an amazing job. I remember the end of the movie when those things arm out of the water thinking how alien and exotic they looked. The color scheme and texture gave it the sense it was not quite terrestrial yet something familiar. One of the greatest movies ever and the pinnacle of filmmaking for its time. It was the behind the scenes footage that ignited my passion for filmmaking and the artistry behind it. Before that, having been only born in '81, movies were magical because I never realized they were created by people and the shear amount of work that went into creating the visuals. I thought they actually shot it on the bottom of the ocean in an actual underwater drilling platform. I knew the aliens were fake at least. Again thank you for your amazing work!
@piercefilm Do we know who made the miniature submersible? It was recently auctioned by Propstore and it was an actual working submersible. Propstore replaced the lights with LED’s and they said it weighs around 100 pounds. Great channel!
I love this movie. I rewatch it sometimes. I never realized the surface ship wasn't real. Awesome job, guys ! Computer graphics ain't never gonna replace you.
@@TheNefastor Yeah? Righto! I do love practical effects and I absolutely love models. CGI is alright, but it can look quite dodgy (depending on the budget, I s'pose.) and many times it's overused. But done well, like The Abyss for example, can look magnificent... like The Abyss!
@@robanderson473 The Mandalorian went back to practical effects. His spaceships are models. Peter Nolan also used models for Interstellar. Even today when CGI have gotten quite good, you can still feel a marked difference when models are used instead.
The Benthic Explorer to me will always be the best miniature of this film. The fact they built a miniature ship the size of an actual boat and took it out to open water really sold the effect. I really thought it was a full sized ship the first time I saw this movie. Makes me wish more filmmakers were as ambitious as Jim was in the 80's and 90's (with a few exceptions of course)
This was the first time I learned about how movies were made. Learning about how they filmed it in a giant water tank. You can tell exactly how James cut his teeth on this movie allowing him to make Titanic so epic and grand. But his movies wouldn't be possible without the hundreds and thousands of individuals that brink his visions to life.
I remember seeing this in the cinema at the time. It also happens to be one of the first dvds I bought. I never get tired of watching it, a great movie
4k remastered was in cinema for one night. it is still super amazing rewatching it after all these years. thz 4 making this chip to remember it. thz 4 everyone who were involved in this film. u have done it. thank you
The more time and effort you put into making a beautifully detailed hero piece, the greater the chance that its ultimate fate is to be dashed apart on the ground.
The gorgeous Space Station V from 2001 is a good example, a photographer got a few shots of the remains of it in a field right before a group of children came along and destroyed it.
I wonder if this movie is going to be retrofitted into the Avatar universe as Pandora's first contact with humanity? Cameron should absolutely make the Abyss an Avatar prequel.
Still probably the most technically challenging film ever made. This is one part of the making of - the making of documentary on the special edition DVD shows all the practical stuff that they had to do with the actors in the massive tanks they built. Still my favourite making of documentary and the the Aliens documentary is up there too. Amazing!
There are a couple good ones for Jaws, plus feature length docs for Blade Runner, 12 Monkeys, Brazil, Apocalypse Now, Aliens, Terminator 2, etc. They're out there, but still few and far between. Nowadays, forget it. They're short little clips with only surface level detail of the behind-the-scenes.
This was so awesome to see, wow! I was one of the Special FX artists who helped create these miniatures for The Abyss, so this really brought back memories! I was just 16 years old when I worked on this, I mostly helped on the miniatures for the giant crane that collapsed! I got to work on a couple movies early in my career with Bob and Dennis Skotak, I also helped create the miniatures for Lords Of The Deep with them! I remember they built an amazing miniature Submarine all out of a bunch of junk you would find in your bathroom, haha! I got to help out with that too and I still have photos of it! I’ve started to post some of my Special FX work on my TH-cam channel if you are interested, I did a really cool one on all the prop weapons we created for “Men In Black”, you might dig it! Thanks so much for posting this! Cheers!😄👍
Haha, well it’s awesome but he can be a tough one for sure! He’s brilliant, he’s an amazing artist, and he always has an exact vision of what he wants, and if people can’t produce that he can be a lil harsh haha! But it is great to work with someone so creative, it pushes you to really deliver the best! I’ve worked with twice, on The Abyss and Terminator 2 in 3D for Universal, and both projects were amazing! But yeah, I don’t always love the way he treats people, Hollywood can be rough and there are a lot of god complexes to deal with! I did special FX for over 20 years on tons of feature films and I always hated the unjustified egos! Not my thing haha!🤣👍
The Skotaks were a kick to work with. I was a camera assistant for them on a few projects, but they worked with such small crews that everybody did whatever job need to be done. This was in the early '90's, and both Dennis and myself were just learning the new 3d graphics technology, so we had lots of discussions about software. I also worked briefly on T2-3D, on the parking garage stage. I watched JC loose his temper a couple times. Arnold was really cool though. When they wrapped Arnold from the show, he made a short speech to the crew and said, "I don't care what James Cameron says about any of you, I thought you were all GREAT!!"
@@piercefilm Really awesome work, appreciate all your effort. I missed out on Sense of Scale on DVD - is there any chance of it being available to purchase digitally i.e through Apple/Amazon etc in the future?
Apparently Cameron oversaw the transfer and it should be released in 4k here soon. Now if only he could get around to giving us a remastered “True Lies.”
..to be honest the Concept art of the 'mother' ship was far more sophisticated than the final model in the last scene. . A crazy shoot - amazing the crew survived this shoot!!
They called it The Abuse rather than The Abyss. Cameron was and still is a task master. To be fair, though, he puts double the effort in as anyone else, so it's not like he's just sitting there on his fat ass barking orders.
Damn, those miniatures can be huge! I keep saying this but everytime I see miniatures, It just amazes me the amount of talent it requires in order to look good on film.
Have really fallen in love with these production videos as I watch a lot of DVD special features anyway, I'm especially captivated by these as i have no tactile creativity like this myself. Rephrasing a comment i made on one of their other videos... I love how it shows things from such a human perspective and not just a technical one (I think I wrongly used the word 'professional' last time) I hope that wasn't misinterpreted the first time because it was meant as a compliment.
DVDs are a treasure because of commentary audio tracks.. you can watch the film enjoying the insight from the director, actors, or a panel of the production. It would be Great if Hulu and Netflix ect would add that option. I bet its contractual copyright stuff that prevents it. I cant believe any of the people at these streaming services havent thought of it.
@@DVincentW There's a TH-camr i follow Called Oliver Harper. Him and some of his friends have done some pretty decent movie commentaries. Put on the movie, turn of the sound and you have a new perspective. I know they're not the first to do it but they and professional and fun at the same time. He is also involved in documentaries through Amazon Prime that follow Genres. In search of... last action heroes. In search of... Darkness. I enjoy special features that cover everything from writing to post production. And commentaries from Actors, directors, production crew. All so fascinating.
I agree. For some of us it may be a somewhat bittersweet when we realize this was the type of thing we may have been good at if “life” hadn’t taken us down a different path.
That's part of the reason I did these interviews. I wanted more info from the model makers, and no one else was going around to interview them! And I wanted to meet them as well.
This is fantastic. Thanks for this -- one of my favorite films of all time. Back when the people behind the scenes were as important or more important than the principals. Outstanding 👍👍
Thank you Berton. I bought sense of scale a while ago and i come back again and again to your channel for your interviews and BTS work. I enjoy that you allow the subject to speak at length about their experience so we can all visit these instances of BTS movie magic. Please keep doing this. BTS tales from the veterans is what made me want to get into film making.
Great movie. Especially when you figure it was done in 1989. Holds up perfectly well today. Also, Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio and I were in high school together, although she was a couple of years behind me. She was involved in school dramatics. (And did I take any notice of here then - well, no.) The scene where Bud Brigman (Ed Harris) is trying to revive Lindsey Brigman (Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio) after she had to drown is one of the more gripping scenes I can recall seeing in movies. By the way, Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio is her given name, not a stage name.
@@seanriopel3132 They used a combination of full scale subs and a real, working underwater drilling rig built in sections, along with miniatures for any dangerous stunt work or shots where you had to see the drilling rig in its entirety.
@@dan_hitchman007 I watched a bunch of behind the scenes/making of The Abyss stuff. I absolutely loved that movie when it came out. Then eventually I learned it was the same guy who did Terminator 2 which was my single favorite movie for over a decade. Every since then I have been a huge fan. Titanic, True Lies then eventually Avatar. James Cameron is on another level. One of the biggest reasons is he actually studied physics in college. He has a very technical mind when it comes to making movies so all of his movies gave a real foundation in science and facts. When designing the flying machines for Avatar he wouldn't let the designers out something on the copters unless it had some actual fictional purpose. That attention to detail pays off in the biggest ways.
@@dan_hitchman007 lol haven't seen either. But in all fairness he only produced and wrote them. He didn't direct which means he wasn't involved to the extent he normally is with his biggest movies. Whenever he writes, producers and directs a movie he always hits it out of the park... And we are finally getting the sequels to Avatar after 12 years of delays.
This was great to reveal. That crane could almost have its own name credit as an antagonist character. It gripped me and really made a dramatic impact of course in the story. @12:30 about the problems with water I kept murmuring "alcohol, alcohol" because I knew long ago that was how Pinestone eventually got the giant water tank waves behaving down to scale around the model naval ships. Modelers are the ultimate problem solvers.
Cameron is all Avatar, Avatar, Avatar and has so little time for his prior work. T2 on 4k Blu-ray looks like ass. I only think he supervised the 3D conversion for the theatrical re-release and didn't look at what Studio Canal was doing with the 4k home video release. It's atrocious.
I remember when they were filming The Abyss. I live about 10 miles from Gaffney, S.C.. My friends brother was local scuba diver who worked at a local dive shop who helped with others at the big tank.
It's safe to say the miniature and visual effects for The Abyss top the list of my all time favorites, if not the movie as a whole. My Cinefex issue #39 is unfortunately a little worn around the edges from years of occasional rereading.
All these segments together would be over 12 hours long! I had to break the doc down into pieces. This TH-cam channel is a perfect way to show these segments. More coming soon!
@piercefilm productions Many thanks for saving and sharing this interesting , informative and very entertaining video with "us". It is (in my opinion) channels like Yours, that are run and "shaped" by the personal passions of it's creators that makes TH-cam great (when it is :) Best regards
I was one of the few who saw _The Abyss_ in the theater. Loved it! Always wondered how they made the first sub crash look so good. By using a giant miniature!
I'm curious to know if at least some of these models still exist somewhere in a private collection. Cool video. It's always interesting to see how they do this stuff
I genuinely love The Abyss - it's just crazy we still don't have an Blu-ray let alone 4K release of it! Apparently all the restoration work has been done for a few years now, but Cameron just can't find the time to approve it.
At 42 feet long, I'm surprised they FX guys just didnt put a motor in the Benthic Explorer then have a person inside pilot it instead of towing the thing. I mean the model is bigger than a lot of recreational watercraft.
A buddy of mine used to spend weekends camping near the Salton Sea. On one trip he told me he found this huge purple thing pulled up on the shore of the lake, and that there were these big model ships further out in the water. The purple thing was damaged, and he had broken off a piece and showed it to me. Sometime later we went to see The Abyss and my buddy recognized the purple thing as the alien ship. Unfortunately when he returned to the Salton Sea, all the models were gone.
I remember enjoying this film as a kid. Saw it in the cinema twice. Haven't seen it since. Never realised there were PUPPETS in it! So that's a compliment to how well the physical effects were done. When will CG catch up? I's been a long tome now and it still looks crap
I've got to watch The Abyss again, It's been so long I've totally forgotten the plot. The only thing I remember is Ed Harris getting his super strong ring caught in the door and looking at the alien blob.
I thought the nuclear effects were shockingly vivid enough to have some political value for nuclear disarmament, like The Day After except snuck into a massive entertainment hit. The Day After had expensive effects for 1983 TV but its visual of people being vaporized looked like an animated phaser blast from 1960s Star Trek. T2, less than a decade later and with more money looked a lot more convincing.
@@MagicAl5F4781 The way the attack sequence in The Day After is cut is what does it for me: each subsequent stage of destruction is depicted in sequence, like reading a textbook on the effects of a nuclear detonation. Of course that's after watching it a dozen times over the years, but I still remember the punch it packed the night it aired.
The city model effects in some nuclear blast shots were not convincing because the miniatures didn't have a lot of detailed work (probably ran out of time), but the parts with the people being blown to bits were savage and made the effects artists like Stan Winston very depressed. The deluxe T2 Extended Cut laserdisc came chock full of making of footage of how they did it all.
I'm gonna call B.S. on the Coast Guard not being able to handle a storm on the water but a random guy on a special effects team was able to save the day.
The Coast Guard usually won't risk lives for an empty Hollywood boat model in a storm. But the model is so expensive that the production crew will try to save it.
I found out later there was a bunch of scenes in the movie I never saw. Was there a version that just did not have the pollution plot or something? I am going to have to see the movie again.
The almost three-hour official director's cut has a lot of extra effects shots that had not been completed in time for the theatrical run along with a nuclear war subplot that everyone was trying to avert and the aliens threatened the world with gigantic tidal waves unless the super powers stood down. For the most part, it makes for a better film. It has never been released on Blu-ray or 4k Blu-ray. A travesty. Cameron made sure the long cut was the final cut as he had the extra footage hot spliced back into the cut theatrical negatives.
@@piercefilm Virus [1999] is a superb movie..Great plot, great cast (Jamie Lee Curtis & Donald Sutherland) and awesome effects. It amazes me how underrated it is, and how many sci-fi fans are unaware of it.
I have been building models since the 60s nothing like what these guys do. I'll take real props ove cgi anytime the exception is dinosaurs jurassic Park broke the bank on that.
It was cut apart and reused in Virus (1999). I have a segment about that coming up soon. Then it was chopped up again and turned into the ship for Underworld 2. I have a segment on that already here on my channel.
What i didn't like about the Abyss is how they drowned a rat in one of the scenes.It looked like a cruel animal experiment.Other than that.Great movie!
That's uncomfortable to watch, I'll admit, but it's supposedly actually breathing the (still experimental) breathing fluid, so it wasn't actually drowning (though it surely thought it was). Another scene along those lines is the monkeys asphyxiating in The Andromeda Strain (1971?), which was done by actually asphyxiating them with CO2 (revived immediately afterwards).
This is great! I worked at Wonderworks and worked on The Abyss. We built the Benthic and the sub interior that was flooded. I did a lot of the deck details and cranes. That was a fun show and really great people. Dave Beasley taught me how to use an airbrush
The unsung heroes of film and tv…..you people got my attention 🥰
This was my 1st major picture job @ Dream Quest. Started as a runner/p.a., gradually became a spfx technician working on stages during the down-time between runs from Simi to Hollywood - usually looking for parts for the model makers, or p/u drop-off reels to the lab. Some people should remember me as "The Flash" b/c I drove a turbo Toyota Supra and could get from Simi to Hollywood and back within an hour. I still have some parts off the Montana sub because we had to destroy it.
Great story mate... and great you managed to save some treasure!
Greetings from an English armour-maker in a French forest. 🇬🇧👍⚒️
Has modelmaking completely been replaced by CGI by now?
@@wimheitinga728 Unfortunately, most f.x. in the big shows are CGI including the sets and vehicles. But there are still many hand props made, costumes, and models are used, depending on the shot and how realistic they want it to appear. Most of it has to do with budget, like if you can afford good CGI or not. Low budget shows sometimes rely on cheap models. It also depends on how clever the director and crew are. "Marwin" is a good modern example of how models and CGI blended.
LOL, I hate “Slimey Valley”. hahahahah
@@homefront3162 I should write a book about living there. Freaks & gangs. lol
I was working with Jim Olson in his private shop in Pasadena, CA when we got the job of making the spire that was shown on at 20:29. I did most of the carving with what seemed like a zillion cans of bondo to make for close ups. Shame we didn't get any credit in this video but I thought is was important enough now to mention. Was one of the most fun projects I'd done in my work as a propmaker in Hollywood for many motion pictures in the 80's and 90'. The best part was I knew what I had done and it made for a great conversation piece many years later. Thanks for sharing...
Cool! Yeah, Pat Mcclung only mentioned a few of the companies working on the miniatures. There were so many! You all did great work.
I suppose it's nice to get listed in the credits. (I knew a miniatures guy named Jack Sessums who did mainly trains modeling.) But I remember in the Great Muppet Caper movie where Kermit and Fozzie are flying around the credits in a balloon and Fozzie asks, "Nobody reads those names anyway, do they?". And Kermit answers, "Sure. They all have families."
@@trainliker100 I would have loved to interview Sessums, but he passed away before I started interviewing. Broken Arrow and Knight Rider etc. He did a lot of great work and isn't well recognised.
Such an amazing job. I remember the end of the movie when those things arm out of the water thinking how alien and exotic they looked. The color scheme and texture gave it the sense it was not quite terrestrial yet something familiar. One of the greatest movies ever and the pinnacle of filmmaking for its time. It was the behind the scenes footage that ignited my passion for filmmaking and the artistry behind it. Before that, having been only born in '81, movies were magical because I never realized they were created by people and the shear amount of work that went into creating the visuals. I thought they actually shot it on the bottom of the ocean in an actual underwater drilling platform. I knew the aliens were fake at least. Again thank you for your amazing work!
@piercefilm Do we know who made the miniature submersible? It was recently auctioned by Propstore and it was an actual working submersible. Propstore replaced the lights with LED’s and they said it weighs around 100 pounds. Great channel!
_The Abyss_ will always be one of a kind, because only James Cameron had the balls to shoot an underwater adventure film of this scale.
Exactly as a diver I can understand him
The Abyss is just chock full of incredible effects work. One of my alltime favourites.
Which makes it all the more tragic that it hasn’t got a blu ray release
@@GringoXalapeno making it super hd would just make everything look fake
@@CoolGobyFish that’s your opinion but most of it would look great
If this was a series on Netflix I would never be bored watching it no matter how many seasons. I love this stuff :)
Thanks for tuning in. Much more coming up!
I love this movie. I rewatch it sometimes. I never realized the surface ship wasn't real. Awesome job, guys ! Computer graphics ain't never gonna replace you.
HELL YEAH !
I concur! Brilliant stuff!
@@robanderson473 since I posted my comment, I learned that Hollywood is moving back to scale models. Very nice !
@@TheNefastor Yeah? Righto! I do love practical effects and I absolutely love models. CGI is alright, but it can look quite dodgy (depending on the budget, I s'pose.) and many times it's overused. But done well, like The Abyss for example, can look magnificent... like The Abyss!
@@robanderson473 The Mandalorian went back to practical effects. His spaceships are models. Peter Nolan also used models for Interstellar. Even today when CGI have gotten quite good, you can still feel a marked difference when models are used instead.
Now this is ART!
Thank you guys for all this amazing and hard work. 🙏🏻
The Benthic Explorer to me will always be the best miniature of this film. The fact they built a miniature ship the size of an actual boat and took it out to open water really sold the effect. I really thought it was a full sized ship the first time I saw this movie. Makes me wish more filmmakers were as ambitious as Jim was in the 80's and 90's (with a few exceptions of course)
@@bobrew461 another excellent display of miniature effects!
This was the first time I learned about how movies were made. Learning about how they filmed it in a giant water tank. You can tell exactly how James cut his teeth on this movie allowing him to make Titanic so epic and grand. But his movies wouldn't be possible without the hundreds and thousands of individuals that brink his visions to life.
The only thing that spoilt it was the Explorer’s propeller blowing in the wind at the end. Once you see it you can’t unsee it.
I remember seeing this in the cinema at the time. It also happens to be one of the first dvds I bought. I never get tired of watching it, a great movie
These guys did such an awesome job on the affects and modeling!!! It looked real!!! Not the cartoon CGI effects they use today!!
4k remastered was in cinema for one night. it is still super amazing rewatching it after all these years. thz 4 making this chip to remember it. thz 4 everyone who were involved in this film. u have done it. thank you
The more time and effort you put into making a beautifully detailed hero piece, the greater the chance that its ultimate fate is to be dashed apart on the ground.
The gorgeous Space Station V from 2001 is a good example, a photographer got a few shots of the remains of it in a field right before a group of children came along and destroyed it.
@@AlanCanon2222 See, this is the downside to primates learning to use tools that the movie warned us about!
@@decibelfilm If only the kids had hummed some Richard Strauss while trashing it.
Only movie in my top 10 where the Making Of is as good as the flick itself.
thats what she said
One of my favorites is the making of Predator th-cam.com/video/yb_XfVGP_GE/w-d-xo.html
I wonder if this movie is going to be retrofitted into the Avatar universe as Pandora's first contact with humanity?
Cameron should absolutely make the Abyss an Avatar prequel.
Still probably the most technically challenging film ever made. This is one part of the making of - the making of documentary on the special edition DVD shows all the practical stuff that they had to do with the actors in the massive tanks they built. Still my favourite making of documentary and the the Aliens documentary is up there too. Amazing!
There are a couple good ones for Jaws, plus feature length docs for Blade Runner, 12 Monkeys, Brazil, Apocalypse Now, Aliens, Terminator 2, etc. They're out there, but still few and far between. Nowadays, forget it. They're short little clips with only surface level detail of the behind-the-scenes.
This was so awesome to see, wow! I was one of the Special FX artists who helped create these miniatures for The Abyss, so this really brought back memories! I was just 16 years old when I worked on this, I mostly helped on the miniatures for the giant crane that collapsed! I got to work on a couple movies early in my career with Bob and Dennis Skotak, I also helped create the miniatures for Lords Of The Deep with them! I remember they built an amazing miniature Submarine all out of a bunch of junk you would find in your bathroom, haha! I got to help out with that too and I still have photos of it! I’ve started to post some of my Special FX work on my TH-cam channel if you are interested, I did a really cool one on all the prop weapons we created for “Men In Black”, you might dig it! Thanks so much for posting this! Cheers!😄👍
Thanks for watching. I´ll check out your channel. Bob and Dennis Skotak are masters at creating amazing miniatures from found objects.
Haha, well it’s awesome but he can be a tough one for sure! He’s brilliant, he’s an amazing artist, and he always has an exact vision of what he wants, and if people can’t produce that he can be a lil harsh haha! But it is great to work with someone so creative, it pushes you to really deliver the best! I’ve worked with twice, on The Abyss and Terminator 2 in 3D for Universal, and both projects were amazing! But yeah, I don’t always love the way he treats people, Hollywood can be rough and there are a lot of god complexes to deal with! I did special FX for over 20 years on tons of feature films and I always hated the unjustified egos! Not my thing haha!🤣👍
The Skotaks were a kick to work with. I was a camera assistant for them on a few projects, but they worked with such small crews that everybody did whatever job need to be done. This was in the early '90's, and both Dennis and myself were just learning the new 3d graphics technology, so we had lots of discussions about software. I also worked briefly on T2-3D, on the parking garage stage. I watched JC loose his temper a couple times. Arnold was really cool though. When they wrapped Arnold from the show, he made a short speech to the crew and said, "I don't care what James Cameron says about any of you, I thought you were all GREAT!!"
Nice video!
I was an architectural modelmaker for about 23 years,but thankfully,no one asked us to put our models in water!
One of my favourite movies, it's really great to hear more about the effort that went in to all the effects by all involved.
I made sure to ask as many of the model makers as I could about their contributions.
@@piercefilm Really awesome work, appreciate all your effort. I missed out on Sense of Scale on DVD - is there any chance of it being available to purchase digitally i.e through Apple/Amazon etc in the future?
@@MrDemonicDan Sometimes a few show up on Amazon. But the DVD is like a teaser for this channel.
One of James Cameron’s masterpieces. Absolutely love this movie. Really hope it gets released in 4K.
Apparently Cameron oversaw the transfer and it should be released in 4k here soon. Now if only he could get around to giving us a remastered “True Lies.”
@@DisposableSupervillainHenchman That’s good new. Yay! 😂 I know right. I’d love to see that happen too. One of my favorite action movies of all time.
I absolutely love the subject matter and the approach of this film. Amazing work!
..to be honest the Concept art of the 'mother' ship was far more sophisticated than the final model in the last scene. . A crazy shoot - amazing the crew survived this shoot!!
They called it The Abuse rather than The Abyss. Cameron was and still is a task master. To be fair, though, he puts double the effort in as anyone else, so it's not like he's just sitting there on his fat ass barking orders.
Damn, those miniatures can be huge! I keep saying this but everytime I see miniatures, It just amazes me the amount of talent it requires in order to look good on film.
Always appreciate the talent these people have, just incredible
Some day you’ll run out of these interviews, and that will be a sad day. Unless you do a sequel…
One of my favorite films. So many levels of incredible effects work in this production; great interviews Piercefilm!
Thanks for watching!
Have really fallen in love with these production videos as I watch a lot of DVD special features anyway, I'm especially captivated by these as i have no tactile creativity like this myself. Rephrasing a comment i made on one of their other videos... I love how it shows things from such a human perspective and not just a technical one (I think I wrongly used the word 'professional' last time) I hope that wasn't misinterpreted the first time because it was meant as a compliment.
I tried hard to go for the more personal side of miniature effects artists with this doc. Glad to hear it is finding an audience!
DVDs are a treasure because of commentary audio tracks.. you can watch the film enjoying the insight from the director, actors, or a panel of the production. It would be Great if Hulu and Netflix ect would add that option. I bet its contractual copyright stuff that prevents it. I cant believe any of the people at these streaming services havent thought of it.
@@DVincentW There's a TH-camr i follow Called Oliver Harper. Him and some of his friends have done some pretty decent movie commentaries. Put on the movie, turn of the sound and you have a new perspective. I know they're not the first to do it but they and professional and fun at the same time. He is also involved in documentaries through Amazon Prime that follow Genres. In search of... last action heroes. In search of... Darkness. I enjoy special features that cover everything from writing to post production. And commentaries from Actors, directors, production crew. All so fascinating.
I agree. For some of us it may be a somewhat bittersweet when we realize this was the type of thing we may have been good at if “life” hadn’t taken us down a different path.
Your channel fills a void in the vacuum of directors commentary, ect that isnt available w. Hulu, Netflix ect, .. Why I love DVDs.
That's part of the reason I did these interviews. I wanted more info from the model makers, and no one else was going around to interview them! And I wanted to meet them as well.
This is fantastic.
Thanks for this -- one of my favorite films of all time.
Back when the people behind the scenes were as important or more important than the principals.
Outstanding 👍👍
Thanks for watching!
Would live to see the whole movie or series! It’s so interesting, the possibilities seem endless with miniatures.Thanks for posting. C
I have uploaded the entire Sense of Scale doc here on my channel. More new stuff coming up in 2023!
Thank you Berton. I bought sense of scale a while ago and i come back again and again to your channel for your interviews and BTS work. I enjoy that you allow the subject to speak at length about their experience so we can all visit these instances of BTS movie magic. Please keep doing this. BTS tales from the veterans is what made me want to get into film making.
Thanks for watching. I still have much more coming up!
Amazing miniatures and groundbreaking cgi and not to forget the lush score , can’t wait for a 4K release !
Great movie. Especially when you figure it was done in 1989. Holds up perfectly well today. Also, Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio and I were in high school together, although she was a couple of years behind me. She was involved in school dramatics. (And did I take any notice of here then - well, no.) The scene where Bud Brigman (Ed Harris) is trying to revive Lindsey Brigman (Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio) after she had to drown is one of the more gripping scenes I can recall seeing in movies. By the way, Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio is her given name, not a stage name.
The Abyss is one of the best films of all times!!!!
Thought the thumbnail was a real photo until I noticed the man
Loved this movie at the time and still do. How fascinating to get a glimpse into this aspect of the production.
Thanks so much for uploading this. So enjoyable.
thanks for watching!
This was a little gem. Nice to come across it, some pretty cool stuff!
Just awesome modelling skills !!!
wow I never realized so much miniature was in The Abyss.
Same. I thought all of them were full size. I was only 8 at the time.
@@seanriopel3132 They used a combination of full scale subs and a real, working underwater drilling rig built in sections, along with miniatures for any dangerous stunt work or shots where you had to see the drilling rig in its entirety.
@@dan_hitchman007 I watched a bunch of behind the scenes/making of The Abyss stuff. I absolutely loved that movie when it came out. Then eventually I learned it was the same guy who did Terminator 2 which was my single favorite movie for over a decade. Every since then I have been a huge fan. Titanic, True Lies then eventually Avatar. James Cameron is on another level. One of the biggest reasons is he actually studied physics in college. He has a very technical mind when it comes to making movies so all of his movies gave a real foundation in science and facts. When designing the flying machines for Avatar he wouldn't let the designers out something on the copters unless it had some actual fictional purpose. That attention to detail pays off in the biggest ways.
@@seanriopel3132 Yes, but it's too bad that "Terminator: Dark Fate" and "Alita" were so lousy.
@@dan_hitchman007 lol haven't seen either. But in all fairness he only produced and wrote them. He didn't direct which means he wasn't involved to the extent he normally is with his biggest movies. Whenever he writes, producers and directs a movie he always hits it out of the park... And we are finally getting the sequels to Avatar after 12 years of delays.
This was great to reveal. That crane could almost have its own name credit as an antagonist character. It gripped me and really made a dramatic impact of course in the story.
@12:30 about the problems with water I kept murmuring "alcohol, alcohol" because I knew long ago that was how Pinestone eventually got the giant water tank waves behaving down to scale around the model naval ships. Modelers are the ultimate problem solvers.
Really interesting. Thanks for posting
A masterpiece, especially in its director's cut edit.
It's about time we get it (and True Lies as well) in HD (BluRay, 4K...).
Cameron is all Avatar, Avatar, Avatar and has so little time for his prior work. T2 on 4k Blu-ray looks like ass. I only think he supervised the 3D conversion for the theatrical re-release and didn't look at what Studio Canal was doing with the 4k home video release. It's atrocious.
This is truly amazing! I loved hearing about the crane scene in particular. Need this in 4K Blu-ray!!!
I remember when they were filming The Abyss. I live about 10 miles from Gaffney, S.C.. My friends brother was local scuba diver who worked at a local dive shop who helped with others at the big tank.
Nice to see my Gaffney studio aerial photo in here!
Awesome.. Im your 106th Subscriber good sir.
It's safe to say the miniature and visual effects for The Abyss top the list of my all time favorites, if not the movie as a whole. My Cinefex issue #39 is unfortunately a little worn around the edges from years of occasional rereading.
love the effects, love the movie, just tell James C to get The Abyss Blu-ray(ed) and 4Ked.
This is so great, I love love love model work
I enjoy this soo very much. It's a shame you can't watch the documentary in 1 piece...
All these segments together would be over 12 hours long! I had to break the doc down into pieces. This TH-cam channel is a perfect way to show these segments. More coming soon!
Easily one of the Greatest Movies Ever, w/ Awesome Special Effects
I loved the Abyss. Now I'm going to watch it again.
A lovely movie! Ed Harris and Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio were wonderful
God I’ve been wanting a remaster of this movie for years. Loved this era of filmmaking.
@piercefilm productions
Many thanks for saving and sharing this interesting , informative and very entertaining video with "us".
It is (in my opinion) channels like Yours, that are run and "shaped" by the personal passions of it's creators that makes TH-cam great (when it is :)
Best regards
Thank you. It's nice to hear people enjoy the videos. I still have many more to come!
I was one of the few who saw _The Abyss_ in the theater. Loved it! Always wondered how they made the first sub crash look so good. By using a giant miniature!
AWESOME
I'm curious to know if at least some of these models still exist somewhere in a private collection. Cool video. It's always interesting to see how they do this stuff
Yes, James Cameron has a lot of the miniatures in his private collection.
What great Trade it must have been I wonder what Brand of paint and Brushes you use on thosePupoets
Its SUCH a crime that they have not released The Abyss on Blu-Ray or 4K yet. Seriously - WTF.
I genuinely love The Abyss - it's just crazy we still don't have an Blu-ray let alone 4K release of it! Apparently all the restoration work has been done for a few years now, but Cameron just can't find the time to approve it.
I never knew that crane ship in the beginning of the film was miniature. amazing
You can tell because water and miniatures or fire and miniatures don't scale well together. Still superior to a lot of CG today, though.
At 42 feet long, I'm surprised they FX guys just didnt put a motor in the Benthic Explorer then have a person inside pilot it instead of towing the thing. I mean the model is bigger than a lot of recreational watercraft.
@@bobrew461 Yeah, I can see that. When you get to that size you might as well turn it into an actual boat.
Genial and genial 👍👌 💎💎💎💎💎💎💎💎💎💎🤩🤩
Back when special effects mattered 🙏🏻
A buddy of mine used to spend weekends camping near the Salton Sea. On one trip he told me he found this huge purple thing pulled up on the shore of the lake, and that there were these big model ships further out in the water. The purple thing was damaged, and he had broken off a piece and showed it to me. Sometime later we went to see The Abyss and my buddy recognized the purple thing as the alien ship. Unfortunately when he returned to the Salton Sea, all the models were gone.
some big miniatures in here
I remember enjoying this film as a kid. Saw it in the cinema twice. Haven't seen it since. Never realised there were PUPPETS in it! So that's a compliment to how well the physical effects were done. When will CG catch up? I's been a long tome now and it still looks crap
I've got to watch The Abyss again, It's been so long I've totally forgotten the plot. The only thing I remember is Ed Harris getting his super strong ring caught in the door and looking at the alien blob.
Amazing
now I want to hear the story how they filmed the nuke explosion in terminator 2 :D
I remember the effects crew saying it was unpleasant to shoot those scenes, kids vaporized and sarah burning. I'd love to see the making of that too!
I thought the nuclear effects were shockingly vivid enough to have some political value for nuclear disarmament, like The Day After except snuck into a massive entertainment hit. The Day After had expensive effects for 1983 TV but its visual of people being vaporized looked like an animated phaser blast from 1960s Star Trek. T2, less than a decade later and with more money looked a lot more convincing.
@@MagicAl5F4781 The way the attack sequence in The Day After is cut is what does it for me: each subsequent stage of destruction is depicted in sequence, like reading a textbook on the effects of a nuclear detonation. Of course that's after watching it a dozen times over the years, but I still remember the punch it packed the night it aired.
The city model effects in some nuclear blast shots were not convincing because the miniatures didn't have a lot of detailed work (probably ran out of time), but the parts with the people being blown to bits were savage and made the effects artists like Stan Winston very depressed. The deluxe T2 Extended Cut laserdisc came chock full of making of footage of how they did it all.
Great to see those Battlestar Galactica models in the background, and is that the Buck Rogers shuttle in the low right?
Yes that is the Buck Rogers shuttle. They are castings made from the original molds.
@@piercefilm thanks for answering that question!
so many hours, so much work, so much Coke and Coffee, so many nights in the motel.
Amazing. It would have been nice to see each of the finished shots too. I think it would qualify as Fair Use.
I don't want to deal with that studio stress. You can find all the shots here on TH-cam. This doc is more about how the model makers made things.
Peter Jackson would call these Bigatures. 😊
I'd love to just see video tours of these guys' workshop spaces theyre talking in.
My "The French Dispatch" video is sort of like that. I was a fly on the wall observing the model makers at work.
@@piercefilm ah cool 🙂
How did you make those scale model.Wet Suits for the Pippet Minitures
And what Paint was used
I think that’s Ranger 3 underneath the colonial viper. It’s pilot was Captain William Buck Rogers.
It´s a casting made from the original molds.
I'm gonna call B.S. on the Coast Guard not being able to handle a storm on the water but a random guy on a special effects team was able to save the day.
The Coast Guard usually won't risk lives for an empty Hollywood boat model in a storm. But the model is so expensive that the production crew will try to save it.
Great work again, I wonder, is there anything in the PierceFilm Pipeline from the movie 'Virus?'
Damn, I love that crazy film. Cheers 👍
That's coming up in two weeks!
I loved the Abyss 😍
I found out later there was a bunch of scenes in the movie I never saw. Was there a version that just did not have the pollution plot or something? I am going to have to see the movie again.
The almost three-hour official director's cut has a lot of extra effects shots that had not been completed in time for the theatrical run along with a nuclear war subplot that everyone was trying to avert and the aliens threatened the world with gigantic tidal waves unless the super powers stood down. For the most part, it makes for a better film. It has never been released on Blu-ray or 4k Blu-ray. A travesty. Cameron made sure the long cut was the final cut as he had the extra footage hot spliced back into the cut theatrical negatives.
Legend film the hole film is just great.
Dam ! @ 8:00 & on , you can see a Slithis monster mask in the background ! .... ?
That thumbnail FUCKED me up for a sec until I read the title
This film needs to be released on Disney+ NOW!
Well, Jim needs to get his butt away from his Avatar sequels first and approve the transfer.
It needs to be on 4k Blu-ray and with quality workmanship. Disney is getting slip shod with their home video releases, even stuff put out on Disney+.
We are STILL waiting for the Blueray !!! SIGH
What is the model on the shelf below the Viper at 0:22?
The shuttle from the Buck Rogers TV show.
They used to give lots of jobs to people with little experience, now they give little jobs to people with lots of experience.
Man how many of these huge models lasted?
the large Benthic model became the ship in Virus and after that the ship in Underworld 2. You can see my videos on those films here on my channel.
@@piercefilm ok thank you.
So much work and looks cool pluss it's all hand built.
What type of paint do you use to painnnnt those scale puppets
I wonder where the bethnic Explorer model ended up trashed or sitting in a shipyard?☹
The Benthic was chopped up and re-used for ships in Underworld and Virus. I have segments about those films here on my channel.
@@piercefilm Virus [1999] is a superb movie..Great plot, great cast (Jamie Lee Curtis & Donald Sutherland) and awesome effects. It amazes me how underrated it is, and how many sci-fi fans are unaware of it.
Anyone know what the spaceship on the top right shelf is?
Shuttle from 70´s Battlestar Galactica.
@@piercefilm what about the one beneath the viper in the lower right?
@@PhazonSouffle Buck Rogers in the 25th Century (1979) shuttle.
I have been building models since the 60s nothing like what these guys do.
I'll take real props ove cgi anytime the exception is dinosaurs jurassic Park broke the bank on that.
MAN !!!!! what are the 3 masks back there from? This is BUGGIN THE SHIT outta me!!!!
I allways wanted to know how they made thed
And I thought all movies have full scale sets
wonder if the ship still about in storage or someone owns it
It was cut apart and reused in Virus (1999). I have a segment about that coming up soon. Then it was chopped up again and turned into the ship for Underworld 2. I have a segment on that already here on my channel.
@@piercefilm lol cannibal film props!
What i didn't like about the Abyss is how they drowned a rat in one of the scenes.It looked like a cruel animal experiment.Other than that.Great movie!
That's uncomfortable to watch, I'll admit, but it's supposedly actually breathing the (still experimental) breathing fluid, so it wasn't actually drowning (though it surely thought it was). Another scene along those lines is the monkeys asphyxiating in The Andromeda Strain (1971?), which was done by actually asphyxiating them with CO2 (revived immediately afterwards).
The rat was never drowned. The breathing fluid used was real and the scientists assured Cameron that the rat would not be harmed.
What is the percentage of viewers that are digital artists, doing the thumbs down out of spite?
Heeeeeeeeeeres merv....
Hippie had most of the good lines.
@@aliensoup2420 probably because he was slicker than snot...lol