ADVENTURES OF BARON MUNCHAUSEN miniature effects

Added: 2026-05-28

[00:00:07]On Baron von Munchausen, I mean, there there are so many Munchausen stories. It was a very difficult film. Terry Gilliam said he could do it for a certain price. And at a certain point that he doubled that we'd gone 100% over budget after a few months.

[00:00:27]We were filming in Italy, which was not easy because the Italians uh the crew just got bigger and bigger and bigger.

[00:00:35]And Gilliam was under immense pressure.

[00:00:38]I went to Italy with Richard and the rest of the crew and worked there for 6 months making galleons for the whale sequence.

[00:00:49]It was one of the things I did. Um helping Jamie with I made the death figure, which was an extended skeleton.

[00:00:58]We basically two skeletons joined together. So, the arms and the legs and the spine were elongated by putting half of another skeleton into them. So, the death figure I made Jamie made the wings for it. I made the body and he made the wings.

[00:01:14]Bob Hollow was also involved in that process. Steve Hamilton was there.

[00:01:19]But after a while when it came to shooting the models, it became really apparent that the Italians, fantastic though they were, I mean, incredibly skilled I mean, the sets were some of the best I've ever seen. Dante Ferretti had worked with Fellini, an an astonishingly good and accomplished production designer with an art department that was just beyond belief.

[00:01:42]Their technical drawings were some of the best I've ever seen.

[00:01:46]Um but they didn't know about filming miniatures and we did some test shots and the young guy they brought in to direct them didn't have a clue and didn't want to listen to us. So, the decision was made it was getting tricky on the film already and and the powers that be said, "Well, I think we'll send the miniatures back and do the miniatures back at Pinewood." So, after a while I was after 6 months I was sent back to Pinewood to set up a model shop there and in and hire people in and start making models for the eventual model shoot.

[00:02:22]So, when they'd finished the first unit shoot in Rome and Richard and and Terry Gilliam and Roger Roger Pratt had been lighting cameraman on Brazil and he'd been busy, so he couldn't come to Italy.

[00:02:35]So, they had an Italian photographer.

[00:02:37]But, Roger Pratt came in to to to be director of photography for the miniatures and we spent the next 4 months at Pinewood building and shooting a lot of model stuff. There was I made two different scales of the gondola and hot air balloon.

[00:02:57]Um I I had a 1/4 scale. A lot of the shots were done with a with a 1/4 scale model where the journey to the moon.

[00:03:08]Chrissie Overs and Val Charlton made miniature figures of Sally and the Baron.

[00:03:16]And then Chrissie and I made of an even smaller version of with a tiny gondola that was more more than about 12 15 cm long and Chrissie sculpted a polystyrene foam balloon which we then dressed with a mosaic of tissue paper to look like the underwear on the on the big balloon for the wide shots of the journey to the moon.

[00:03:43]Oh, we I mean there was there's the the galleons inside the whale, there's the Eric Idle's figure who could run extremely fast running through a miniature landscape was was just a a puff of dust disappearing into the distance.

[00:03:59]Yeah, lots and lots of stuff including the whale bursting out of the water.

[00:04:05]Unfortunately, though, even though the shots were fascinating and interesting to do, one I especially like was after the Baron and Sally have landed on the moon, there's a beautiful sequence with the quarter-scale gondola model that appears to be sailing through a night sky which was which was of water reflect that we had a black velvet backdrop with lots and lots of tiny pea bulbs in and that reflected in the water so that it was like stars in the water. And this and the miniature gondola which where I'd cut the bottom of the boat off and made it flat, we made a big tank of a a big shallow tank with with sand maybe just a a couple of inches deep, but we formed ripples into this sand and then very very gently filled the tank with water.

[00:05:01]And then this flat-bottomed gondola which I had sheets of lead in to make it heavy could be pulled on a cable through the water and then one side of the tank opened up and we could drain the water away by and after a while the water disappears and you realize that the boat is is actually sailing through sand. And then that shot I think is phenomenal.

[00:05:25]It's So so the things we were doing were wonderful. But unfortunately, the atmosphere had changed. Gilliam was under such a lot of stress from they'd brought the completion bond people in and now the completion bond owned the film and they could dictate what was going to happen. They needed the film to finish so they had something to release.

[00:05:48]But the atmosphere was horrible. The completion bond were running the production office and uh and it was it was a horrible atmosphere.

[00:05:57]Gilliam was under enormous pressure.

[00:06:00]Um he actually had to Well, they were threatening to take his house off him.

[00:06:04]It was that bad.

[00:06:06]And the atmosphere between Richard and Terry deteriorated to the point where they were having stand-up arguments on the set which was really unpleasant. The very last shot we did was the baron, a model of the baron on a horse jumping out of the Turkish sultan's window.

[00:06:26]And we've been up all night the night before finishing the model get I mean just finishing the model getting it getting everything to work. So we were all exhausted after by the end of the day's shooting and then they called okay wrap it's a wrap.

[00:06:41]And after 10 months work they they had a couple of trestle tables in the corner of the stage with some, you know, warm white wine and a cake.

[00:06:52]And that was it and Gilliam sat on the other side of the stage. Uma Thurman had come to visit him.

[00:06:59]He just sat talking to Uma Thurman and you know, didn't say thank you for for 10 months work.

[00:07:06]I found Of course you have to forgive the guy because he was under such enormous pressure.

[00:07:12]And perhaps I should just feel privileged to have been able to work on the film.

[00:07:18]Looking back over my career if I had to name the the things that I'd been involved with that I'm most proud of I would say Brazil because apart from apart from the fact that the work we did on it or the work I helped Richard do on it because Richard deserves all the credit for the miniatures on that shot. I was one of his soldiers.

[00:07:44]Um but it's a fantastic film. I mean, I think it works as a it works well as a feature film, as a story, but it but the the effects, I think, are are for pre-digital work, this is some of the best I think some of the best analog stuff that uh that I've seen on Brazil.

[00:08:04]Um Little Shop of Horrors, again working with Richard on Little Shop of Horrors, I think that that that that equals Brazil in technical The end sequence that they didn't use in the film, but is available on the on the on the director's cut version, that was again some of the best analog miniatures I've ever seen.

[00:08:30]I think Richard did an astonishingly good job on that film.

[00:08:34]And I was really I was really lucky to be a part of it.