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Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea (1961)
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Bud Brewster
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Joined: 14 Dec 2013
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Location: North Carolina

PostPosted: Tue Oct 13, 2020 5:02 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Pow wrote:
In order to convey the sub's futuristic technology, the Control Room had a video display that was linked to the sub's exterior cameras. This was to replace the traditional submarine periscope.

However, Allen wanted a periscope, so one was put in the set. The video monitor would also remain..

By Gum, Irwin was right to include the periscope! Very Happy

The view through the periscope was much better (for the audience) than the poor TV screen in scenes like the one where Michael Ansara is first spotted on the ice.

It was also much better shortly thereafter when Captain Crane desperately pans around in hopes of finding "Jim", the colleague of Ansrara who was not rescued, which he talks about while semi-conscious.

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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)
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Pow
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Joined: 27 Sep 2014
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PostPosted: Wed Oct 14, 2020 9:20 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Special effects for the movie were filmed on the 20th Century Fox backlot water tank that was nicknamed "the moat."

The moat had concrete walls and floor, it measured 60' in width, 120' in length and was 11' deep.

Filtering out debris and algae from the water tank this vast was a nightmare.
Special effects legend L.B.Abbott and his crew dammed the moat at midpoint which cut the amount of water that required filtration by half.

In order to reduce the amount of direct sunlight so that it would allow filming of the submarine to appear it was operating deep underwater, a silk cloth diffuser was placed fifteen feet above the surface of the water.

L.B.Abbot and his team constructed 2 camera barges for the movie.

The first barge was just large enough to contain 2 cameras and looked like a streamlined van
It measured in at 10 feet long, 5 & 1/2 feet wide and 5 feet tall.

It was beveled at the forward end with clear plexiglass divided at the center.

On each side of the panes a camera was mounted inside. Directly beneath the camera's field of view a high pressure fan-shaped nozzle was mounted.

When water was fed into the pump, it would agitate the water when the barge was pulled through the moat by a cable connected onto a truck.

Because of its slanted front design, the barge would slowly submerge when pulled. When halted, it would then surface.

The action of the barge being pulled through the water combined with the agitation caused by the nozzle and filmed at high speed created the impression of a submarine cruising on the surface of the ocean, breaking waves or slowly diving beneath the sea.

The images of the water's turbulence both on the surface and below was filmed by the barge's two cameras and would be rear projected later behind the screens that formed the windows of the Seaview's nose on the sound stage.

The second barge was larger and utilized for filming miniatures and actors underwater.

A new method of shooting underwater scenes from the barge needed to be found in order to eliminate the problem of water refraction.

To overcome this problem, Voyage would rely on the earlier groundwork by the Walt Disney Studio for their film adaptation of the classic Jules Verne novel "Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea."

For the Disney movie their special effects chief Ralph Hammeras discovered that the front of convex glass became a lens which defeated the refraction of the water.

Abbott had worked with Hammaras before and was aware of this discovery.

For the Disney movie the studio constructed a huge tank onto one of its sound stages with convex glass view ports placed at various positions onto the tank.

Abbott contacted the Disney Studio who then sold their specially built convex lenses to Abbott.

The larger barge was able to hold two cameras, operators and the precious convex ports.

The barge measured 13' high was 10' square at the top, tapering to 6' square at its bottom and had four two foot diameter steel tanks mounted at the top for buoyancy.

When placed into the moat, it would sink into the water and just clear the bottom of the tank by a foot.
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Bud Brewster
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PostPosted: Fri Sep 30, 2022 6:46 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

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If ever there was a movie from the classic era that should have been given a sequel, this is the one. And I'd love to write it!

I could have spent a few hours in a Denny's restaurant with the creative friends I had back in 1980s and 1990s, and we'd have come up two or three sequels by the end of the evening. It's what we did on numerous occasions!

And whenever we did that, I'd always record them on the little gizmo shown below — which I called my Time Saving Device. Very Happy






Notice the two left/right microphones on the upper left.

They provided recordings of our conversations which (when listened to on my stereo headphones) sounded exactly like I was sitting at the table with my buddies, surrounded by the background noise of the other dinners! :shock;

I have about one hundred 90-minute cassette tapes of such occasions which were made over a period of 15 years. In other words, I have 150 hours of my life, preserved on those tapes, which I can relive anytime I want. Cool

That makes me the worlds only "practicing time traveler", capable of revisiting those golden moments from my past . . . at will. Very Happy

Unfortunately my friends and I never focused our creative gifts on concocting sequels for the movie above.

So, I'll take a shot at it now — since my NEW friends and I will be sharing this movie tonight during our very first All Sci-Fi Friday Live Chat (<— link).

With that said . . . here goes nothin'. Very Happy
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The sequel to this beloved movie will start with a montage of the Seaview in dry dock being refitted with hydrafoils which will allow it to travel faster on the ocean's surface than any other vessel on Earth.



But before she's certified ready for sea duty, a global crisis occurs, and Admiral Nelson is told he must launch the newly renovated submarine to deal with it.

Nelson agrees, and the next few minutes of this exciting movie presents us with frantic preparations for the launch of the Seaview II, with its crew desperately making certain that the newly renovated vessel is up to the task!

The crisis involves a Russian-built version of the Seaview, based on stolen blueprints and technical data! Shocked

But the Russian super-sub — known at the Marine Dreadnought — has suffered a catastrophic mechanical malfunction caused by the fact that it was launched before it was full tested. Sad

Now it's resting at the bottom of the Challenger Deep, the deepest part of the Pacific Ocean, at a depth of 35,876 feet — almost seven miles beneath the surface! Shocked

The captain of the Russian sub has strict orders to destroy the Marine Dreadnought rather than let it be captured by an enemy country — especially the United States!

But the Russian captain is mentally unstable, and he plans to prevent the sub from being captured at any coast. With that in mind, he vows to detonate all his nuclear weapons at once — which will cause an ecological disaster in the Pacific.

The radiation will kill 47% of all the marine life, resulting in starvation for many of the world's countries who depend heavily on the Pacific for food and commerce.

The Pacific would also be dangerous for shipping, since all the ships which cross it would be exposed to high levels of radiation! (Not to mention the stink of all those dead fish . . . Sad)

Can Admiral Nelson and Captain Crane reach the Marine Dreadnought in time and convince its captain that he should allow them to evacuate the crew and not destroy the Russian super-sub?
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Well, gee whiz, guys . . . I don't know myself! I haven't made up the rest of the story yet! Mr. Green

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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)
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Bud Brewster
Galactic Fleet Admiral (site admin)


Joined: 14 Dec 2013
Posts: 17020
Location: North Carolina

PostPosted: Thu Oct 06, 2022 6:35 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Bud Brewster wrote:
Can Admiral Nelson and Captain Crane reach the Marine Dreadnought in time and convince its captain that he should allow them to evacuate the crew and not destroy the Russian super-sub?
__________________________________________________

Well, gee whiz, guys . . . I don't know myself! I haven't made up the rest of the story yet! Mr. Green

Come on folks, I get to have all this fun coming up with great concepts like this one, and then I eagerly look forward to your brilliant contributions!

So . . . where's the brilliant contributions? Shocked

I know you've thought of them, but you won't post them. How come?
Sad
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)
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