Sergio Leone Movie Set Diorama

[JohnReid]

 

[JohnReid]

Here we are getting close to the finished product.I added a little shading using black pastel applied very lightly with a small soft brush(kind of a miniature make up brush).Try to be very subtle about this ,try not to overdo it.
If you blow up the picture(all my pics are 2 megs at least) you will see that the underlying wood grain is still there which is most important for this technique.Each piece of wood retains its individual pattern and color ,no two are alike.
When I come to doing the luxury hardwood stuff on the other car, I will use no paint or stain just the natural colored wood, hand selected for grain,pattern and color.

 

[JohnReid]

 

[JohnReid]

This is the opening scene from the movie and is from the film set that I am constructing now.It looks old and chaotic but everything here has been purposely selected for maximum impact on the viewer.Nothing is square or at right angles to the other.The colors,the lighting,the textures,even the old clothes line wheel, all have a role in creating the scene.The drama is created by the anticipation of who is behind the door ?What better way to open a film than the opening of a door ?

 

[JohnReid]

 

[JohnReid]

This is about the most you ever see of the other side of the set,taken from a camera high angle near the water tower.The wicket /WC (every station needs one)was created with original parts of the model.On the inside of the window was the old telegraph machine that got on everybodys nerves and was ripped out by a baddy.On a old railway car bench on the outside was where the now famous "fly on the face" scene took place.Next up will be the shed to be built over top of the old car.This should be fun!

 

[JohnReid]

 

[JohnReid]

I have a choice for set #2 ,Morton's car.I can use another passenger car like the one I am doing now or use this Bachmann passenger/baggage car.I am assuming here that they adapted an already built car for movie making purposes.It probably never happened this way but I like the idea ! This car will be on its wheels and a set built around it.
If I use the baggage car I will use one side of the already built car and adapt it to my purposes.It will not be the exact car from the movie but my interpretation of it.The passenger car section and part of the baggage area will be movie set.The rest of the baggage area will be a staging area.
I like the paint job as is ,except I will be modifying it .Most of the green I will keep but will matte spray it with acrylic sealer and then finish it using pastels.The roof area will be matte black including the area with the RR letters,I will replace them with something more appropriate. The car will be broken down and gutted so only the shell remains.The interior will be in Victorian luxury style with elements from the movie and the Disneyland train.I will install the unique brass tubing near the ceiling that Morton used to move around the car.On the prop side I will put a backdrop of Monument Valley to add to the atmosphere.

 

[JohnReid]

 

[JohnReid]

I have doubled the set side of the train station /shacks width to be more like it is in the film.At first I thought it maybe was too wide but I set everything back up on the 40 inch circular table I use for reference at it looks fine.A mock-up cardboard roof has been added to work out the dimensions and angles.Because the cars roof is blocking any view of the shacks roof interior I can fake the roof and use well lacquered cardboard.I want to build it with a slight curve in it and then sheath the exterior with wood tongue depressors.The set side of the roof will be faked with only the ends built to a point where max camera angle would reveal it as such.

 

[JohnReid]

You know the modern dioramist (word?) is soo lucky ! I am surprised that more of us haven't really used all the tools available to us for research and especially for visual playin' around.Sitting here at my computer I have available to me, in my own home,all the possible visual reference I could ever want.I can scan for the minutest detail and teach myself things that only a few short years ago you would have to go to film school for and even then it would be filtered through a teacher who has his own biases.
This is really the golden age for visual artists who want to take advantage of all the tools now available to them.
I never in my wildest dreams thought that this level of research was possible until just recently.When I was a kid going to the Saturday movies, my buds and I would come home and act out what we saw in the movies.Endless hours of childhood arguments over who did what or how, can now be solved instantly.
This may or may not be a good thing for our childhood imaginations but now at least we can get on with playing the game.

 

[JohnReid]

 

[JohnReid]

Moving on to the shack portion of this RR diorama I am starting to put up the roof rafters and boards.I want to make both the cars roof and shack roof detachable for ease of working on and any future maintenance that may be required.
I want this roof to look old so I put a little sway back in the beams.The wood was bent by simply steaming it a while over a stove top pan,then I took an old curling iron ,heated it up and hand bent it over the round tip.The center beam and rafters were then cut to length and installed right on the model.For this I used extra thick crazy glue to tack it all in place.Generally I don't use a lot of CA but for this tacking operation it really is the best way to go,from here on I will use the yellow carpenters glue as I am sensitive to the CA's fumes.
This shack is a lot of fun to do,it is easy in one aspect as exact standards are not required due to the nature of what I am building but then again you really have to study your references to make it look right.

 

[JohnReid]

 

[JohnReid]

 

[JohnReid]

Tongue depressors make great roofing boards.The boards may look wide to the modern eye but they really were easily available in those days.Each board was hand selected for color,pattern , texture and lots of defects.Ten years ago I had bought a whole load of these second quality depressors and used the best of them for hangars that I was building .I kept what I thought was junk just in case,and a good thing it was that I did, because they are perfect for my purposes now.As a modeler one thing I learned early on was not to throw anything model related or what could be model related away.
I used my usual nimbus gray/raw sienna mix and lots of water and created a wash.I put on three thin coats and dried between coats with a hair dryer.It is my normal practice to color my boards before putting them on the model but in this case I only want to paint the film set side and leave the prop side natural,like a prop would be in reality..You don't paint what won't be seen in the film!
The carpentry is crude in keeping with what I see in my references.I haven't yet decided on the weathering I will do on these boards, because the desert environment is something new to me.There are two ways I can approach this, either the rail car was brought from the east and was mostly weathered in a damper environment with lots of rust etc... or leave the wood bleached from the sun ,or something in between.

 

[JohnReid]

 

[JohnReid]

Making a little progress on the station/shack area.That hanging board fascinates me,you can be sure that it was not put there accidentally by Sergio.If you look closely at the pic you can see the top of a cowboy hat on the L/H side of the pic.That is where the famous" fly on the face" scene happened.I have not yet weathered this area until it is finished,both sides of these boards will require finishing as both areas are in the film.One of my modeling buds actually went out and took some pics for me of old desert railway cars near Carson City Nevada.That was very kind of him to do so! It always amazes me that the vast majority of modelers can be so kind to their buds.

 

[JohnReid]

 

[JohnReid]

These Bachmann kits are super for kit bashing.The way that they have been designed to go together makes them very easy to work with.They could be broken down even further by cutting the walls in four separate pieces.This wasn't necessary for my purposes here as I am not doing a lot of fancy detailing on the car/shack.When it comes to the luxury car though it will be necessary in order to do all the carpentry that will be required.The car/shack piece has turned out to be the best place to have started to become familiar with the construction methods as the work here is fairly loose in the tolerances required.

For the luxury Victorian car I plan to buy a lot of the furniture in 1/24 scale from the miniatures world (dollhouses).They seem to love Victorian furniture and have loads to chose from.Building fancy furniture is another hobby itself so I might as well take advantage of what is out there already.My principal is "buy what you can and built what you must."Up until now this has meant just about everything as what is available is very limited in 1/16th scale but in 1/24 the sky is the limit. (or should I say my hobby budget)I should have lots of time to build it back up again as after this car/shack I plan on doing the locomotive which will be mostly out of the box.I will be doing a lot of bashing on it however, as it will be depicted as a fake locomotive built for film purposes, not like the other two pieces that were adaptations of real cars.(in my world).I am sure that the way it was really done in the film studios would have been much different than I am depicting here.What I am trying to create here is an art piece using lots of artistic license,just like they do in Hollywood ! This will be an empty sound stage with no figures at all just the empty directors chair which is what the story is all about anyway.Sergio left us much too soon just when he was getting it all together as a director,who knows what other great stuff he had planned.I wonder though could he have ever have topped "Once upon at time..........? a recognized masterpiece of film making.