Friday, June 20, 2014

Unmanned Soviet Recon Probe

Here are some more images of my scratchbuilt Unmanned Soviet Recon Probe from the movie 2010 Odyssey Two "The Year We Make Contact". Scale 1" for every 1m.
I built this model based from the old L miller plan drawings from the late 80's
Researching this model was difficult. I could find no usable photos from the Interweb and it is barely visible when it makes its appearance in the film. More silhouette and shadow than anything.
So when it came to colours and markings I was relegated imagination and guess work. Though I realize not entirely accurate.
Still I think it turned out pretty well.
A technical error I noticed about this design is that there doesn't appear to be any side thrusters. Oh well it's only a movie.
The stencil work were taken from decals left over from the Testors Mig Ferret kit and a German tank model..

Specifications:
Weight: 6390 lbs
Speed: 35ft/sec2
Range: 500,000 MI
Engines: Chemical Rockets
Weapons: None
Defenses: None
Capable of Planet Fall.

From Wikipedia"
2010 (also known as 2010: The Year We Make Contact) is a 1984 American science fiction film written and directed by Peter Hyams. It is a sequel to Stanley Kubrick's 1968 film 2001: A Space Odyssey, and is based on Arthur C. Clarke's novel 2010: Odyssey Two, a literary sequel to the film.
Roy Scheider, Helen Mirren, Bob Balaban and John Lithgow star, along with Keir Dullea and Douglas Rain of the cast of the previous film.
When Clarke published his novel 2010: Odyssey Two in 1982, he telephoned Stanley Kubrick, and jokingly said, "Your job is to stop anybody [from] making it [into a movie] so I won't be bothered." Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) subsequently worked out a contract to make a film adaptation, but Kubrick had no interest in directing it. However, Peter Hyams was interested and contacted both Clarke and Kubrick for their blessings:
I had a long conversation with Stanley and told him what was going on. If it met with his approval, I would do the film; and if it didn't, I wouldn't. I certainly would not have thought of doing the film if I had not gotten the blessing of Kubrick. He's one of my idols; simply one of the greatest talents that's ever walked the Earth. He more or less said, 'Sure. Go do it. I don't care.' And another time he said, 'Don't be afraid. Just go do your own movie.
While he was writing the screenplay in 1983, Hyams (in Los Angeles) began communicating with Clarke (in Sri Lanka) via the then-pioneering medium of e-mail. The two would discuss the planning and production of the film on an almost daily basis using this method. Their correspondence was published in 1984 as The Odyssey File: The Making of 2010. The book illustrates Clarke's fascination with the new method of communication, and also includes Clarke's list of the top science fiction films ever made. In order to give the publishers enough lead-time to have it available for the release of the movie, the book terminates while the movie is still in pre-production. At the point of the last e-mail, Clarke had not yet read the script, and Roy Scheider was the only actor who had been cast.
Principal photography on the film began in February 1984 for a 71 day schedule. The majority of the film was shot on MGM's soundstages in Los Angeles, with the exception of a week of location work in Washington DC, Rancho Palos Verdes, California, and at the Very Large Array in New Mexico.


The special effects for 2010 were filmed on 65mm film (the live action scenes were filmed on 35mm) and, due to the differences in film size and ratio, there is a noticeable "cut off" area at the side of the picture during the space scenes when the film is viewed in widescreen. The effects were produced by the Entertainment Effects Group (EEG), the special effects house created by Douglas Trumbull. However, Trumbull himself did not work on the film, and the effects were supervised by Richard Edlund, who had just left Industrial Light & Magic. After completing 2010, EEG would become a part of Edlund's own effects company Boss Film Corporation.
Early in the production of 2010, Hyams had learned that all of the original large spacecraft models from "2001", including the original 50-foot model of the "Discovery One", had been destroyed following the filming, as ordered by Kubrick, as had all of the original model-makers' designs for building the "Discovery One". Consequently, the model-makers at EEG had to use frame-by-frame enlargements from a 70mm copy of "2001" to recreate the original large "Discovery One" model. The "Leonov" spacecraft, as well as several of its interior crew areas and other elements of the spacecraft's advanced technology, were designed by the noted conceptual artist Syd Mead.
Although computer-generated imagery (or CGI) was still in an early phase of development in 1984, the special effects team of 2010 used CGI to create the dynamic-looking cloudy atmosphere of the planet Jupiter, as well as the swarm of monoliths that engulf the planet and turn it into a Sun for the planet Europa. Digital Productions would use data supplied by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory to create the turbulent Jovian atmosphere. This was one of the first instances of what the studio would later refer to as "Digital Scene Simulation", a concept they would take to the next level with The Last Starfighter.
In order to maintain the realism of the lighting in outer space, in which light would usually come from a single light source (in this case, the Sun), Edlund and Hyams decided that blue-screen photography would not be used for shooting the space scenes. Instead, a process known as front-light/back-light filming was used. The models were filmed as they would appear in space, then a white background was placed behind the model and the first pass was repeated. This isolated the model's outlines so that proper traveling mattes could be made. All of this processing doubled the amount of time that it took to film these sequences, due to the additional motion-control pass that was needed to generate the matte. This process also eliminated the problem of "blue spill", which is the main disadvantage of blue-screen photography. In this, photographed models would often have blue outlines surrounding them because a crisp matte was not always possible to make.
Blue-screen photography was used in the scene in which Floyd demonstrates his plan to use the two spaceships to achieve the change in momentum needed to leave Jovian orbit before the opening of the launch window. In this scene, Floyd uses two pens to demonstrate his plans. Roy Scheider performed this scene without the pens actually being present, and the pens were filmed separately against a blue screen—using an "Oxberry" animation stand that was programmed to match Scheider's movements. (The initial sequence of Floyd's making the pens float was carried out by simply attaching them to a piece of movable glass that was placed between him and the camera.)

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